The online market is volatile – everything keeps fluctuating. The audience who liked your brand today might not like it tomorrow for various personal reasons. And, your business’s success depends upon the audience’s perception of your brand.
To build a successful digital footprint for your business in Dubai, you will need an appealing website, a strong brand image, a powerful brand presence, and quality content that attracts and retains the audience. Everything here boils down to branding and marketing.
Tapping into a market like Dubai, your business needs to have strategic and cultural branding. With people being sensitive towards their culture and religion, you need to be vigilant to not offend them And make a place for yourself in the audience’s minds by being relatable.
Taking care of expanding your business online while maintaining the in-house business activities like production, accounting, customer service, sales, etc, is impossible. Hiring an in-house team to DIY your creative work will not only cost you your precious time but also hard-earned money, and valuable resources.
To get ahead of your competitors in Dubai, the right choice is to hire a creative agency and have experts working on your project with proven frameworks that are bound to give you fruitful results.
In this article you will learn about:
1. What is a creative agency?
2. 6 ways a branding agency pushes your business toward success
3. How to know when you need one?
4. How to find the right creative agency?
5. Questions to ask before you seal the deal with a creative agency
What is a creative agency?
An agency that offers different services under marketing and advertising is called a creative agency. They are the go-to agency if you’re looking to get any creative work, promotion, strategy, etc.
The creative agencies differ in their area of specialization but they usually provide:
- Content: creating different content formats for various channels like ebooks, blogs, case studies, web content, and more.
- Strategy: creating a solid plan of action for different social media channels and purposes like ads strategy, content strategy, brand strategy, etc.
- Design: designing media creatives like webpages, social media posts, ads, etc.
- Photo/Video: providing professional photography/videography services
- Social media: optimizing social media, optimizing content, scheduling, engagement, and more for all social media platforms.
- Marketing: conducting market research and competitor analysis to create strategies for increasing brand awareness, and generating leads and sales.
- Advertising: creating and launching campaigns to promote your brand or product through print, digital and other channels.
- Communication: managing communications by PR, influencer marketing, sponsored content, etc to build brand reputation and increase brand awareness.
Simply put, creative agencies help you tell your brand story in a way that attracts and hooks the audience.
6 ways a branding agency pushes your business toward success
A brand isn’t built overnight. It takes a strategic approach and consistent marketing efforts to develop strong relationships with the audience and turn them into loyal customers.
The search engine is the first place where most people research a brand/product for their purchase decisions. No wonder it is the largest traffic source driving more than 50% of web traffic. The rest 50% depends upon branding and content marketing.
Businesses look for additional support for their content, optimization, branding, design, content marketing, curating strategies, etc, that brings traffic and also converts. Hiring various individuals to create and execute branding and content marketing strategies in-house and paying them monthly salaries and incentives will cost you high. And, Hiring a creative agency is the best bet here.
Here are the 6 ways a branding agency pushes your business toward success:
1. Fresh perspective:
It is difficult for a business to understand its gaps let alone fill them. Hiring a creative agency can help your business gain a third-person perspective of what’s working and what’s not. A creative agency not only understands the gaps but also brainstorms new ideas and finds new opportunities to fill the gaps. A fresh perspective is exactly what’s needed for a business to stay on top of its consumers’ minds.
2. Insider knowledge
You know your brand inside out but do you know about your industry, competitors, audience, recent trends, etc? A creative agency works with diverse brands across the globe and has skilled professionals on board. They know what works, what doesn’t, what strategies can improve your results, etc. By hiring a creative agency, you get to enjoy the tried and tested frameworks that have resulted in the successes of the big brands.
3. Strong network:
A creative agency is your one-stop solution if you require additional support for your business for any reason, including a lack of resources, bandwidth, or expertise. They have all skilled professionals on board and also have an established network of experts outside. If you need help with something beyond their forte like coding or videography etc, they’ll give the best referrals.
4. Quick production:
Whether it is creating strategies or enforcing them, creative agencies are accustomed to producing different types of content in volume. Creative agencies also have various skill sets and resources to tackle the instant need for production and distribution. Hence hiring a creative agency is your answer if you’re looking to elevate your brand presence via quick production of brand assets.
5. Quality content:
Creating quality content is a huge problem for businesses let alone being consistent with it. With skilled professionals and resources, a creative agency can pump up quality content in large quantities to help you keep up consistency in content. Creative agencies work hard and bring the best possible results for your business.
6. Increased ROI:
Creative agencies have the resources, experience, and talent to execute high-budget branding strategies which in turn results in increased ROI. They will do everything in their power to help you achieve your goals. Because If you win – they win.
How to know when you need one?
Hiring a creative agency might look like a huge investment and you want to be sure it is the right solution for your business. But, how do you know if you need a creative agency?
We’ve listed 5 parameters to help you decide if you could use the services of a creative agency:
1. Expertise: In this forever evolving world it’s almost impossible for any business to have all the required skill sets and expertise in-house. Even the thought of incorporating it will cost a fortune. Hiring a creative agency is the best bet here. Creative agencies offer top-notch expertise in various areas and functions. They have all the experts you would need under one roof.
2. Experience: It takes experience for a skilled individual to become an expert in their area. And, creative agencies have experienced individuals who are aware of everything that’s happening in their field of experience. Hiring an experienced individual will cost you high when compared to hiring a full-fledged creative agency.
3. Resources: Lack of resources makes it challenging for brands to implement their business strategies. Creative agencies have all the necessary resources to help you execute all your business strategies with ease and perfection.
4. Bandwidth: With your employees being preoccupied with other projects, the online marketing projects get delayed. A creative agency can help take the load off them while working effectively and efficiently at a much faster pace.
5. Results: Businesses are biased when it comes to themselves. Most of the time, They don’t understand the gap or reason for their failure. They need experts to fill in the gaps and tweak or revise the strategy and set it up for success. And, that’s when they need creative agencies to bring in desired results.
How to find the right creative agency for your business?
No wonder there are a lot of creative agencies and the way to selecting the best among them is a rocky ride. Having worked with hundreds of brands, we have curated a list of 6 things to analyze before you start looking for an agency.
1. Know your goals: It’s okay if you don’t know the strategies to execute now or don’t know what’s next when it comes to your business marketing. But you need to know your business goals and objectives. And, for that, study your business performance and define clear goals and objectives. This will also help you in conveying your expectations to a creative agency.
2. Search for a niche agency: There are indeed plenty of creative agencies out there. Due to this, finding one that suits your requirements is a tedious task. Hence, looking for someone in your niche such as a ‘creative agency for health & fitness’, will narrow down your list and help you find a specialized agency with insider knowledge and experience to tackle every roadblock on the way.
3. Ask for recommendations: Ask your professional network to recommend you a creative agency for your business. This is one of the effective and efficient ways of finding a creative agency. Individuals who know you and your brand well are most likely to set you up with a potential creative agency that’s the best fit for you.
4. Look for previous results: Every agency has the best work portfolio but not the best case studies. Ask them about their previous work results to understand the kind of ROI they can bring. If you closely assess their portfolio you can understand their skills, style, approach, and whether or not they have worked in your industry, etc.
5. Check their content: Have a look at their socials, website, blogs, or any other content you can get hold of. Understand how they’re presenting themselves through their content. Check whether their content aligns with what they preach and matches your expectations.
6. Demonstrated expertise: The right agency always has something to teach. They share thought leadership pieces through blogs, articles, social media, features, newsletters, etc. They share their expertise because they have confidence in what they do and want to help others succeed. It helps you in distinguishing the best creative agency from the rest.
Questions to ask before you seal the deal with a creative agency
Your job isn’t done after finding the best creative agency. The actual work begins from there. Your business success not only depends upon quality work but also on how well you both work together.
We’ve curated a list of questions for you to ask at the discovery call to figure out if they’re the best fit for you.
1. Do you have the bandwidth to accommodate our work?
This should be the first question you ask. It helps you understand their availability and get a sense of the timelines for projects similar to yours.
2. How many years of experience do you have in our industry?
This question will help you understand how much of an expert they are in your industry and whether they’ll be able to provide in-depth quality work or not.
3. Who will be my point of contact?
It’s an important question because nobody has the time for going back and forth just to figure out the point of contact.
4. Can you walk me through your work process?
This question helps in understanding the transparency of the work process. Also, don’t forget to ask about data security and privacy If they’re reluctant about sharing it with you, run.
5. Can you provide detailed pricing in the invoice?
This question helps businesses as well as agencies to keep everything on track and avoid hidden costs.
6. What will be the amount of work done by your staff and outsourced?
Certain creative agencies outsource their work to freelancers. You should ask about the outsourced work process and know if the work quality is ensured.
7. When and how will the deliverables be submitted?
This question will help you understand if the agency you’re going to work for has any project management software and deliver the project via that or how else should you expect the asset delivery and when.
8. How often do we hop on meetings?
It’s difficult to schedule a meeting every time there’s something to inform. It’s crucial to decide how often the communication will happen and how, in the beginning, itself.
Conclusion
Asking the right questions helps you decide if they are the best fit for your business. Hire a creative agency whose goals align with your business goals and work on your projects like it’s theirs.
We hope the information we provided has aided you in deciding to hire a creative agency. As we’ve stated, employing a creative agency is crucial for any business to grow and develop a relationship with its target market.
At The Go-To Guy, we cater to a wide variety of content needs including but not limited to eBooks, ad copy, website copy, case studies, infographics, whitepapers, etc.
If you’re looking for help with your creative marketing, then talk to us today!
