Can’t decide if your small business needs a brand consultant? Here are four telltale signs.
Many startups and small businesses believe branding is a luxury reserved for large enterprises, but that’s not true. Branding is just as important for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). It helps set you apart from competitors, people recall your brand, and build customer loyalty.
If you’re a marketing leader at an SMB who’s unsure how to create a brand or doesn’t have the time to do so, hiring a branding agency could be a great option.
An external agency can help develop a brand strategy that perfectly captures your business’s unique personality and speaks clearly to your audience. Although branding requires upfront investment, it also brings in more customers and boosts your bottom line in the long run.
Kira Karmazin [1], founder of California-based women’s athleisure wear company KiraGrace, sheds light on four reasons it makes sense to get support from branding agencies.
"Working with a branding agency was an efficiency play for us. Your team can spend a lot of time creating branded assets, but those assets usually won't be at the same level you get with a professional agency. We see a direct correlation between good design and better click-throughs, conversions, and customer loyalty."
Kira Karmazin
Founder and CEO, KiraGrace
Narrow your search for a branding agency with our list of companies in the following areas:
1. You’re missing your sales or conversion goals
Are you getting many visitors but few sales? Are your marketing and advertising campaigns generating leads but, combined with your website and other branding touchpoints, not converting those prospects?
A weak brand foundation could be the reason. A well-branded company sees better results in marketing effort and sales. With an external branding expert, you’ll get a fresh perspective and industry experience to identify where your brand story might be failing.
Before Kira hired a consultant, her brand voice wasn't consistent throughout the customer journey. Through the brand consultant, she could bring consistency across email marketing campaigns, social ads, and product packaging using a brand style guide.
“In 2018, we moved from a business-to-business (B2B) to a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model and found our ready-made templates failed to meet our needs. Our original design template wasn't optimal for a branded customer journey. The branding agency helped us develop a strong brand strategy with a brand style guide and then executed it clearly for email journeys and other marketing activities.”
Kira Karmazin
Founder and CEO, KiraGrace
Signs you need help: Lagging sales, increased abandoned shopping carts, low website traffic conversion.
Look for an agency that understands your business objective, vision, and culture and offers services that cater to those needs.
2. Your budget restricts your ability to grow talent in-house
As an entrepreneur, you could be wearing many hats, leaving you with limited bandwidth to set up an in-house branding team. A strict budget could also restrict your ability to grow in-house talent.
With branding agencies, you get access to a variety of skill sets and services—from brand design and copywriting to market research and branding strategy. A team of trained professionals takes care of everything you need to build a strong brand, allowing you to focus on running your core business activity.
Despite having worked with major corporations in marketing, Kira hired a branding agency to transition from a B2B company that sold to retailers and clothing stores to a D2C business that sold directly to consumers.
“The creative level that you can tap into with the right agency is often much higher than what you can access internally. You get to work with someone who's a specialist and has years of experience versus training someone in-house. You may get lucky and hire an in-house talent that happens to be very creative, but you’ll still need to spend time training them in all branding elements. An agency understands all that and much more.”
Kira Karmazin
Founder and CEO, KiraGrace
Signs you need help: Always busy in-house marketing team, in-house team’s efforts not reaping desired results, budget limiting the ability to hire specialized talent.
Look for an agency that understands your performance expectations and has the skills, tools, and resources you need to meet your brand objectives.
3. You need quality and consistency in design
Do you use out-of-the-box templates for your website, social posts, and other creatives? While these are excellent starting points, they fall short of clearly and consistently communicating your brand identity across customer touchpoints.
A branding company can laser-focus your design and messaging by bringing consistency to everything. From product design to marketing messaging and customer engagement, they make sure all elements work together to create the greatest impact for your brand.
Kira’s shift to a branding consultant was also marked by the realization that her existing creative collaterals weren’t aligned.
“It’s typical for new retail businesses to use a branding agency when developing a logo, but for all other things, I see a lot of businesses use template creatives. As our brand position shifted, we realized templates constrained our messaging. Our website, emails, social media templates, product pages, and campaigns—all needed to be aligned and reflect the same messaging, sentiment, and feeling to consumers. Our branding consultants worked to connect all of it with a brand style guide and new branded templates.”
Kira Karmazin
Founder and CEO, KiraGrace
Signs you need help: Absence of a brand style guide; website, product pages, and welcome emails don’t reflect the same color, design, and brand promise; products lack brand recognition.
Look for an agency that designs branding solutions for multiple channels, including, but not limited to, email, social media, and websites. The agency should also have strong user experience (UX) and creative capabilities and should understand your vision for brand identity and voice.
4. You want to rebrand or launch a new product line
If you’re shifting your business model—say, from B2B to D2C (as in the case of KiraGrace)—or expanding your business to new regions or product lines, rebranding becomes necessary.
A branding agency can help you develop a new brand strategy that builds on your existing success. Hiring a branding expert at a growing stage also sends out a positive message to investors about your seriousness for the future of the business and your efforts to better (re)align with your customers.
At KiraGrace, brand refresh is an ongoing process for its 300 odd products.
“We launch four collections a year: fall, holiday, spring, and summer. And within those seasons, we launch different capsule marketing campaigns. Our branding consultants help us differentiate our collections and messages while maintaining the brand voice.”
Kira Karmazin
Founder and CEO, KiraGrace
KiraGrace’s email marketing template before and after hiring a professional branding agency
Signs you need help: Pivoting to a new brand position, introducing new products, negative reviews on social channels.
Look for an agency that provides brand audit services, conducts surveys among focus groups, has a portfolio of innovative solutions, and understands your target market and customer segments.
Do this before hiring a branding agency
Having worked with many independent contractors and creative agencies before zeroing in on a favorite, Kira shares, “It’s not easy to find an agency that aligns with your brand.
“Take your time. Conduct interviews and review portfolios. It’s important to make sure you align on the brand voice and market positioning.”
Kira Karmazin
Founder and CEO, KiraGrace
Here are the steps to choose the right branding agency for your SMB:
Identify your goals for hiring a branding agency, such as rebranding, email journey optimization, or developing a brand style guide.
Align key stakeholders from marketing, advertising, product, and sales on those goals, and agree on what a successful partnership with a branding service agency will look like.
Create a list of branding agencies potentially suited to your goals, and shortlist the one that caters to your needs within your budget.