5 Factors To Consider When Hiring A Branding Expert For Your Business

Published on: 30 October 2021 Last Updated on: 18 January 2025

In the last few years, more and more businesses are realizing the importance of branding. As against sales and marketing, businesses know that branding is essential for the long-term vision, sustainability, and growth of an organization.

While many businesses have made the mistake of equating branding with marketing, there is growing awareness that the two are separate in form and function. This is leading many businesses to invest in strategic branding experts that can help them.

In this resource article, we are going to look at five factors that businesses should consider before hiring branding experts, consultants, or strategists. If you are a business owner looking to invest in a long-term branding exercise, this article will guide you in the right direction.

How can a Branding Expert help a Business: What you need to know

Before we get to the list of factors that should be considered, it would be better if we discuss how a branding expert can help a business in the first place.

Business owners are in agreement that branding is important. What they do not know is how they should proceed. Many have the mistaken assumption that branding is only logo designing, social media presence, and marketing!

While this is not entirely false, the above constitutes just about 5% of what branding is all about.

In reality, a branding expert can help a business optimize three main focus areas about the brand-

Tangible Visual Properties- photoshoots, imagery, social media presence, logo designs, color schemas, fonts, website, blog section, and videos.
Tangible Textual Content- brand motto, values, culture, mission statement, blog articles, slogans or taglines, social media copy, and content.
Intangible Brand Promise- credibility, culture, personality, trust, levels and positioning, perception, experiences, customer service, and support.

As you can see from what we have mentioned above, this is a fairly exhaustive list of topics. An experienced and credible branding expert will help you address all the above goals and objectives.

List of 5 Factors to Consider when Hiring a Branding Expert for your Business

1. Creativity-

While technical specializations are an important aspect of the digital age, you want the branding expert/consultant/agency to be creative. Some of the leading brand strategists like Bennet Schwartz have several years of experience as Creative Director. Creativity is an essential factor you should look at as branding is all about good storytelling that captures audiences.

2. Experience-

Being great at branding requires years of experience. This is not something you can get up and get good at. It requires sophistication, expertise, and years of executing marketing and social media strategies. Great branding experts that lead organizations are often Creative Directors with a graphic design or copywriting background. You need to look for at least five years.

3. Past Client Credentials-

If you are lucky enough to get a branding expert that has worked with a business in your niche, you are on the right path. Even if you do not get one, the key is to look at past client portfolios. Ask the agency or expert to take you through the kind of work they did. Focus on both the creative as well as the technical ROIs. Do not hire someone before establishing credentials.

4. Timelines and ROIs on the Project-

Small trick- if the branding expert says that they will get you the moon and stars within six months, they are lying. You should bail immediately. Experts will tell you that branding is a long-term gain where you need to invest for at least two or three years to start seeing results. It is best to get a definite answer in this regard as it will help guide your business expectations.

5. Prices, Payment Structures, and Affordability-

This ultimately depends on what you are asking the branding agency to do. If you want the whole suite of what we mentioned in the earlier sections, you are looking at sizable costs. However, you can always break it up into stages and ensure incremental payments. Make sure to discuss the same with the agency so that there are no problems later on the payment front.

The Final Word

Branding differs from business to business. It is a completely individualized experience that comes with a customized strategy. In other words, what worked for one brand might not necessarily work for someone else. This is something that separates great branding experts from the ones who are just in the market to make some money. If you have any questions, you would like us to address, please let us know in the comments below.

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5 Reasons Why Having Software for Your Business Matters

Are you running a business on your own? If yes, chances are you may face many hurdles along the way, especially if things get too busy in your shop. You have to look out for numerous aspects to make sure that your business will grow and every operation will run as smoothly as possible. Businesses flourish not only because of the customers buying their goods but also because the operations inside are also well-controlled and tracked, thanks to various business software that makes the hardest tasks easier! As a business owner, you must be wise in making decisions and taking rightful actions to smooth sailing sales. This is why having software for your business matters because it could make complex things simpler. Also, get a chance to save a lot of money too! You may check out the information stated below about reasons why having software matters in running a business. Reduces Workload If you have a fast-growing business, it is not a shock to encounter complex and numerous customer demands. Not to mention, trends change from time to time, which adds to the workload you have to face. To better handle these kinds of situations, business software could make the challenging and most time-consuming jobs finish faster than manually. So, if you're one of those starters who can't afford to hire new employees, having the right kind of software could help your company's progress. Additionally, you could significantly cut costs of your business and allow your employees to focus on other, more important priorities. Helps Improve the Company's Customer Service If you want to build a good and long-lasting relationship with your customers, getting business software could help. As technology gets better over time, connecting with a wide audience is also more accessible and faster. Software specializing in phone systems like Weave VOIP phones could help you track your customer's requests and easily respond to them right away. In this way, you could also build a better business image. Additionally, having great software makes it easier for you to reach out to your customers and respond to numerous requests, even if you have a long list of notifications. You could manage, organize, and be reminded through the software about your urgent schedule with it. Makes Scheduling Easier and Faster Time management is vital in running a business. There's no time you could waste, and employees should be productive in their work. In helping you improve in this aspect of your business operations, scheduling business software could help promote better workflow and prevent misunderstandings. Not to mention, it gives a better work-life balance and cuts down on labor costs and the overtime employees. As your business grows, you will also deal with training new staff, adding time shifts, handling orders, and the good thing is that software will take charge of your scheduling needs. It could also remind you of your important tasks and projects to help you keep track of your progress. If you could execute professional scheduling in your business, you will see positive changes. Good and Reliable Tracking In having a better run business, you must have a backup wherein you could keep the important information of your customers using the software. The software will make things easier for you and help in organizing them too. For instance, if you have a customer that you have not gotten into contact with for a couple of months, your chosen software could help you identify who they are and give you valuable information about the history of the relationship you have with them. Through this, you could establish a better response to them. Eliminate Space for Mistakes Everyone is indeed capable of committing mistakes. That is something that we all cannot deny. Committing an error is a natural part of life. Still, with the help of software, it could significantly reduce the usual human errors that are usually the roots of losing customers and business profit. Technology has grown better over time, and obviously, more people are now dependent on gadgets and various advancements. Thus, it has been very beneficial to business owners who use software to reduce human error since technologies are accurate and well-trusted. Some of the common mistakes that software could help solve are misunderstandings, forgetfulness, proper standardization, and more. But, you have to remember that you must not be frustrated when something goes wrong. Mistakes are made for people to learn and improve, and fortunately, the software is one of the best ways to reduce its likelihood of occurring. Takeaway There are many more ways on how good business software could help create better and faster operations. Having software is proven to help in management, sales, tracking, and many more. If you wish to have business software in handling some of your business needs, this could be the right time. You may check out the reasons, as mentioned earlier, why it's good to have one! Read Also: The Value of Business Systems Try These Mac Screen Recording Software For Your Next Webinar Tips to Choose the Best Inventory Management Software

How Photography Projects Can Improve Wedding Business

It is not easy to combine personal style and professional work. When we are doing a real wedding, we are usually confined to several limitations during the shoot such as the place, time, and subjects. However, if you try combining them from time to time you will fall in love with what you do professionally as you will feel more comfortable with creating a unique thing with each and every photo you take. How to create a personal shoot that will help you professionally : First of all, it is important to determine the part of shooting that you would like to experiment with. Do you want to improve your bridal portraits? Are you struggling with posing groups? Are you not good at shooting details and lay-flat shots? Determine where you would like to improve on and practice as much as you can. Doing this will help you a lot as it will relieve the pressure on you and make you confident when you take photos. Doing such a shoot does not imply that you will exactly recreate it on a wedding day. It will enable you to be more confident in using your creativity in situations where you need to make a split-second decision and decide whether to stop because you have got “safe shots” or to continue experimenting. Most of us myself included sometimes revert to what we find safe and comfortable when placed in challenging situations rather than allowing ourselves to try more unique things. The issue is not whether we can or cannot create a unique thing. It is the lack of confidence to even try it in the first place. What are the practicalities? After settling on the kind of shoot you would like to do, decide who or what you need to use the shoot for. You can plan an elaborately styled shoot that will bring together wedding vendors or you can opt for something that will not cost you anything. If you want a styled shoot that involves many people, then you need to know that the process of planning can teach you a lot. Ensure that all the vendors participating are aware of what you want them to do and the reward they will receive which means sending contracts and meeting deadlines. Business cards and album samples : If you are noticing a trend in person, face to face interaction in this first couple of wedding photography business marketing strategies, then you are noticing something that is very important to success in the industry. Educating yourself on how to socialize and promote your business to potential and existing clients and the people you will work with is very important. It may be a good idea to leave business cards with all the people we just mentioned as it will provide a physical representation of your business with them. Other marketing forms : According to The Wed Café, it is up to you to decide what you want to do with the images you shoot. Depending on the content, you can submit them to wedding magazines or blogs to make them reach a wider audience or you can use the best ones on your social media to introduce your personal work to potential clients while still keeping it within the wedding theme. If you want the best wedding photographs, then it may be a good idea to consider Houston wedding photographers. Read Also : Handy Tools For Outdoor Photography Why You Trust Your Photographer? How To Best Photograph A Corporate Event

7 Tools Your Business Can Utilize to Simplify the Customer Onboarding

In the current customer-centric business environment, a poor Customer Onboarding experience can easily kill growth prospects and jeopardize the survival of a business. Customer Onboarding helps define the early relationship between clients and businesses. B2B SaaS enterprises can use Customer Onboarding strategies to gain a competitive market advantage and promote customer service and retention. According to Smartsheet, an effective Customer Onboarding plan requires a proper understanding of customer needs, support analytics, and a statement identifying causes of customer defection or discontent. Support analytics give business proprietors an intuitive understanding of the customer persona, among other valuable insights. While serving customers, enterprises also need to avoid information overload and underestimating the power of providing basic customer service. The services should be provided without overpromising something that a business cannot deliver; avoiding the use of complex pricing structures and delaying responses to customer queries. Customer Onboarding is a journey that takes a lot of resources and effort to perfect. According to the Entrepreneur, SaaS-based entities can simply the Customer Onboarding process using the following strategies: Use personalized welcome greetings and messages – personal attention can make or break the Customer Onboarding campaign. You can start your offline engagement with a greeting or personalized welcome if you are working online. The other strategies include calling the name of the customer or company when communicating and issuing bonus materials like eBooks. 7 Tools Your Business Can Utilize to Simplify the Customer Onboarding: 1. Product demonstration: If your customers know your product, but do not know how to use it. You need to step up and give a demonstration. This can be done using a short video program that demonstrates how the product works. Alternatively, you can provide a features guide to enlighten your customers. 2. Define your milestones: You can benchmark the progress the business is making by setting the goals you want your customers to achieve. You must ensure your team fully understands the customer’s objectives and how the service is helping them achieve their goals. You can start by creating a progression checklist highlighting the goals. 3. Submit useful content: Besides the SaaS product, your content is a very crucial component in the Customer Onboarding equation. The content can help you add value to your product and transform you into a trusted advisor. Remember, good content is one that is realistic, objective, and helps solve customer concerns. 4. Offer assistance: Customer assistance is best exhibited through customer service. Being an integral component of a business, good customer service can help a business grow its client base, breed satisfaction, and strengthen relationships. The service can be offered using phone, email, and live chat service. 5. Showcase successful examples: Everybody wants to be associated with success; the same applies to customers. If you are selling a product or service, it is highly advisable to attach success stories to show customers that your product is actually working. The strategy can also go a long way to inspire customers to try your product and positively amplify your brand. 6. Ensure frequent follow-up: Regular follow-ups are crucial in any marketing campaign because they can help a business retain customers, grow revenue and speak more personally to the customers. Away from the initial pomp and optimism that often characterize the Customer Onboarding process, the latter stages of selling also need to be strengthened to steady the ship all through the process. 7. Looking for Best SaaS Customer Onboarding Experience; Try User IQ's Platform! The highly transformative User IQ's Platform makes it easy to analyze user activity and guide the user to value. For enhanced user adoption, the platform offers boundless customer engagement. Businesses looking to grow their reach in terms of smart marketing and revenue will be glad to know that the Customer Onboarding process is enhanced with access to in-app creators and personal segmented tutorials. The multifaceted User IQ's Platform engages seamlessly with other popular platforms such as Salesforce, Gainsight, and Zendesk. Read Also : Not All Customers Are Always Right How To Write And Design An Article That Attracts New Customers To Your Business

5 Factors To Consider When Hiring A Branding Expert For Your Business

How can a Branding Expert help a Business: What you need to know