A brand is more than a logo and a website. Though these creative assets are part of a brand – they’re really only the start.
The essence of a brand is a consistent, positive experience across all customer touchpoints. A strong brand says that you have a mission and a vision, you deliver on your promises, and you exist to improve your customers’ lives.
Still, many businesses fail to recognize what it takes to build a great brand, often choosing to do the work in-house. Inevitably, the brand suffers from inconsistency and the business wastes time and money trying to find the winning formula.
What can a creative branding agency do for you? Let’s take a look at the benefits.
Leverage Industry Experience and Expertise
You’re an expert in your business and industry, but are there external trends or factors you could be benefiting from? A branding agency that works with clients in diverse industries understands marketing and branding strategies, and can help you leverage out-of-industry trends for your own brand success.
After working with a variety of businesses and seeing how their strategies perform, agencies understand what works – and what doesn’t – for specific industries. This saves a lot of time and resources wasted on trial and error, which can then be devoted to building your brand.
Focused Creativity
If you try to work on your branding on your own, it has to be balanced and prioritized with all the other responsibilities of running a business. When you outsource the work to a branding agency, you have an entire team of creative, expert minds who are devoted to achieving your vision.
Branding agencies employ experts across multiple disciplines, including strategists, copywriters, illustrators, and designers, giving you a full team at your disposal. If you do it on your own, you have to rely on your in-house team, with their current workloads, or hire new staff to work on your branding.
A Diverse Team of Brand Experts
You may have some experts on your in-house team that can handle some aspects of your branding, such as a marketer with design skills or a natural wordsmith. But without a full in-house brand strategy team, a few employees can’t deliver the same powerful brand as a branding agency.
When you enlist the help of a branding agency, you have a team of professionals with expertise across all aspects of branding – from design to strategy – to bring your brand’s story to life. They’ve learned effective branding strategy through experience, understand the market trends, and know how to build you a strong brand from scratch.
Cost and Time Efficiency
Branding takes time and money, no matter how you do it. If you stay in-house, you must balance your brand work with the other demands of your business and your employees. Branding is just one component of your marketing tasks. You can’t leave marketing campaigns and advertising on the back burner while you work on your brand.
However, if you hire a team of professionals, you can relieve the burden on your team and leave the work to the agency. They’ll focus exclusively on your brand’s development and the execution of the strategy, building you a better brand, faster, and getting you into the market.
Similarly, building a brand costs money, even if you keep the work in-house. Aside from allocating branding work to employees, you may spend some money experimenting with your brand and campaigns before you create a winner.
While you have to pay for a brand from a branding agency, the price includes expertise, proven results, and a commitment to positive performance. In addition, a strong brand has positive effects on your sales and company value – something you may take time to build on your own.
Access to Outside Perspective
You may have a vision for how you want your brand to be perceived by customers, but you and your team are too close to the subject. It’s difficult to envision your brand as others may see you, and that can be a big mistake when it comes to developing your brand.
Branding agencies know how to pinpoint the core values of your brand and create a powerful story that connects with customers. They can look at where your brand is, and where you want it to be, bridging the two to cultivate a brand with staying power.
Less Strain on Your Internal Team
This can’t be overstated – brand development takes a lot of time and commitment. Most businesses simply don’t have the staff to dedicate just to branding, especially if they’re in the early stages of building a name. Whatever branding work you allocate to your staff will mean time and attention pulled away from other important tasks.
Does your team have time for that? Do you want to hire? If not, outsourcing the work to a branding team is the best decision. You can relieve an additional burden on your internal team without compromising the strong brand you want.
A Strong Brand from the Start
Consistency is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a positive brand, and often one of the biggest obstacles for businesses looking to build a brand on their own. Even if you begin with a plan, a schedule, and a vision, it’s likely that other tasks will disrupt your process and hurt your consistency.
A branding agency understands the power of consistency for a brand and how it can impact your customers. It’s not only important to be consistent across assets like the logo, typography, and color scheme but the personality, tone, and customer interactions to create a cohesive brand that customers can relate to.
Build a Powerful Brand from Scratch
Branding is more than a marketing buzzword – it’s a crucial aspect of your business’s growth and success. With so much riding on your brand, it’s crucial to get it right from the start. Brand development requires expertise and a dedicated team, which is what you get from a branding agency.
