When the time comes to give your brand image a makeover many businesses choose to hire an outside agency to handle this task due to their industry knowledge and experience.

However, you can’t just go and choose any old agency. You want to be sure that the agency that you partner with is going to bring your brand to life.

There are a number of things that you should consider before you hire an agency. Let’s explore these things and see how you can work towards finding the best agency to breathe life into your brand image.

Narrow Down the Field

There are a lot of agencies out there that do good work, but who is going to work best for you?

You are going to want to interview at least five agencies at the bare minimum. Agencies will vary from one another on services offered, aesthetic styles, and levels of quality. Ask friends for references. Use these references to check out an agency’s portfolio. This is a great way to get a feel for the kind of work they are capable of doing and the work they execute really well. But how do you know what is a good portfolio and what is not? It is easier than you think!

There are four big facets of a portfolio that you should focus on. The agency that excels the best at these four facets is probably the agency that you will want to hire for your brand.

1. The Overall Quality of the Work

You may think that you are not qualified to determine what is and is not good work, after all you are trying to hire an agency to help with branding. However, you don’t need to be interested in art or even artistic to be able to determine the overall quality and effectiveness of an agency’s work.

Look at their portfolio and see the jobs they have done for other customers. Is it clear? Does it accomplish the things the company and product are trying to accomplish? What is your reaction to it? Judging creative work is not as complicated as it may sound. The key to any brand is real-world functionality. If it works it is good.

2. The Cost

Budget is an important aspect of branding to consider. If your budget for this project is going to be small then you probably do not want to hire a big agency to do work for you. For example, a budget of thirty-thousand dollars is going to do a lot more for you at a smaller agency than a larger one that is used to budgets in the hundred thousands or millions. It is important to remain realistic about your finances if you shoot to high and you run out of money you may end up with an incomplete project or a project of low-quality.

3. Style

The best branding work straddles the line between the practical and the artistic with grace and composure. The goal of branding is to be iconic and timeless. Take a look at potential agencies’ work and see how it works on mobile devices, computers, and other devices. Branding in the modern age is all about being able to easily access the information on a myriad of devices and platforms.

4. Customization

This point might be at the bottom of the list, but that doesn’t mean that it is not an important point to take note of. Ultimately, your brand is you so you want to work with an agency that understands you. When looking at an agency’s portfolio you’ll be able to see the level of customization they do. If there are a number of different styles in their portfolio for a number of different customers, you know that they excel at executing a design that fits the project and not their own personal aesthetic tastes.

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