10 Steps to Building a Brand with a Local Marketing Agency

Building a brand with the help of a local marketing agency is vital to the survival of your business because your brand is the entire identity of your business. Although some consider a brand as consisting only of elements such as logos and colours, it is way more than that. Your brand gives your business personality and evokes perceptions about your company that can either draw customers to or repel them from your business. Thus, branding gives your business uniqueness through establishing such major traits as its interests, drives, values, and abilities.

Imagine your favourite phone, car, clothing line or even household detergent and consider why you prefer that product line. Your reasons are informed by that product’s branding and that’s why it is critical to be particular about your company’s brand.

This is even more critical as the modern world has so much competition in business and your company needs to stand out in the crowd, get noticed and make the sale! To do this, you need a strong brand that gets and keeps people’s attention with help of your local marketing agency. Your branding must ensure that you always make a lasting impression in your target market.

With the importance of branding to your business, it is understandable that you would want to put your best foot forward from the first day in your branding journey. That usually means getting the help of branding professionals in the form of a local marketing agency. You wouldn’t want to spend money on an agency that would fail to deliver to expectations. While this can be because of issues that are out of your control, here are 10 steps to help you make the right decision and build a strong brand with a local marketing agency of your choice.

1. Choose the right local marketing agency

Because a lot is dependent on the ability of the marketing agency you choose to help with your branding, it is important to choose the right one. Agencies specialise in different areas of marketing, so it is important to consider what help you will need from the agency and select with that in mind. Your business might, for example, need an agency with top notch digital marketing skills like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or one that specialises in specific technologies. On the other hand, you might need a marketing agency that will handle the entire marketing function. This means you cannot just take up a marketing agency without checking if they align with your requirements. Also consider whether you operate in the B2B or B2C market because this will have an impact – marketing strategies vary between the two.

2. Check the marketing agency’s background

As part of choosing the right local marketing agency, you need to actively do a background check of the agency for both capacity and reputation assessment. You can do this by asking to see results from previous campaigns, requesting references, clients that can vouch in their own words for the agency’s aptitude and their experience working with them.

This step includes verifying the agency’s experience in your sector. Although a key skill for a marketing agency would be their ability to adapt to different businesses and industries, making it optional to choose an agency with experience in your sector, there is an advantage of choosing an agency that has a good understanding of your industry, your customers, who the likely buyers are, the best channels to reach them and what marketing messages they’re likely to respond to.

You should also note the reputation of the agency and assess if you would want your brand to be associated with that. Some agencies are notorious for scandals that include financial mismanagement, gender-based violence, sexual abuse and misleading messaging, to mention a few. You need to check if the agency you are hiring has been found wanting in any way and decide if this history would not hurt your branding efforts.

3. Set a trial period for the marketing agency

To ensure that you select the best local marketing agency for your requirements, you need to set a trial period for the agency working on your brand. Allocate them tasks to complete and confirm if their products sync well with the brand you envision for your business. Many organisations use trial periods when hiring employees in the form of probation but do not apply the same due diligence when hiring agencies and with the amount of puffing that companies use to make their products or services desirable, your brand could be a casualty of a great pitch with no practical substance. To shield your business from this, try out your local marketing agency before giving them long term work.

4. Conduct market research and define target audiences

To build a strong brand, you also need to understand your market, know the preferences of your potential customers, their demographics and what messages they are likely to respond to. Your brand’s messaging needs to identify with and project the needs of your target market. To achieve this, you need to conduct market research and define your target audiences. Market research helps you establish your brand as a leader in your market and build a good brand reputation which is made stronger by authority and innovation. By conducting research into the common concerns of people in your market, you can place your brand in a position to provide vital needs for your market. This cultivates innovation which in turn brings increased exposure and authority through ownership of a product. The best marketing strategy is simply knowing your market and market research gives you this insight.

5. Conduct competitor research

Research should not end with the market but extend to your competitors. As we have already established, your brand needs to stand out in the crowd and you need to know what the crowd is doing to set yourself apart. Competitor research involves identifying your competition, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their products and services. Getting more information about your biggest competitors helps you measure how your own products and services compare. You can also establish what kind of threat competitors pose to your business and identify industry trends you and the whole industry could have been missing.

The most important result of competitive research is that it will help you create a strategic plan for your business. This includes things like improving your product or service, using more strategic pricing strategies, and improving the promotion of your products. Knowing your competition and how it operates gives you insights into best practice, including the dos and don’ts of the industry. A local marketing agency can play a vital role in giving you insights into these industry variables without breaking client confidentiality and non-disclosure standards that are expected of agencies. You need to understand that the strength of any research is also dependent on experience to pick out faults and extreme deviations from the norm in your findings. A local marketing agency would have such experience and historical insight of your industry.

6. Design your brands name and look with the agency

Names can be seen as the most basic identifier in the world but because they carry meaning and sometimes sentimental value, they are one of the most important components of your brand. You should put a lot of thought into your brand name and consider such variables as the nature of your business, is it local, global, public or luxury, among many other ways to describe your business.

One example of this where your preferred name could be inspirational and attractive in one language but offensive in another. This means you need to research all the meanings of your chosen name within your target market. You also need to choose a brand name that will stand the test of time; strong brands do not change names regularly. Ad campaigns, websites and logos can change but a brand’s name usually stays the same. Great brand names are strategic, creative, short and simple but it is not a stroll in the park to get it right. You might need to engage a local marketing agency to help you put together a name that works – they have the expertise to give you great options.

After you have decided on a name, you also need to decide on your brand’s look, how it is designed. This involves setting out how you will visually represent your brand—namely your colours and typography. Colours don’t just define the look of your brand; they also convey the feeling you want to communicate and help you make it consistent across everything you do. You need to choose colours that differentiate you from direct competitors to avoid confusing your potential customers. As branding experts, your local marketing agency will have colour psychologists or at least people who understand colours and the emotions they evoke. Engaging a local marketing agency can, therefore, help you make informed choices, especially when it comes to the colour you pick for your brand logo.

7. Establish brand mission and vision statements with the agency

Every strong brand needs to have a mission and vision statement. These are forward looking company commitments that inform customers of your business’s purpose, guide your decision making, and keep you focused on future goals. Although these statements are not a guarantee that your brand will be successful, they increase the possibility of success. Because they are very strategic statements that give a synopsis of your business, you need to draft them carefully. It would also help to look to your local marketing agency for guidance and assistance in coming up with strong statements.

8. Create a compelling brand message

Your brand message is the message communicated to your target audience through your products and your verbal and non-verbal communication messages that describe what you do and how you’re different from others. It is your value proposition that tells customers why they should buy your product or service. Part of building a strong brand is having a brand message that calls for your desired action.

9. Implement effective marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns are part of the overall marketing strategy and the most effective way to communicate a specific message to targeted, segmented audiences. Effective marketing campaigns are clear, memorable, value laden and scalable. To achieve this mix of wins, you can engage a local marketing agency which will have the personnel to ensure each component is achieved.

10. Evaluate your brand

After taking all the steps to build a brand, you need to go through a process of brand evaluation which measures a brand’s worth using pertinent metrics that determine how the brand affects users and consumers. The brand assessment considers financial and non-financial factors which will signal if you have managed to build your desired brand. However, tracking and measuring these metrics could be made simpler by engaging a local marketing agency which would come in with specialised tools to pick and analyse indicators of your brands performance.

Looking for a local marketing agency in Oman for your brand?

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