How to find the right branding partner

For businesses, finding the right branding studio to work with is key to your business progression. You’ve spent a lot of time developing your business and idea, you don’t want to let it fall over by choosing the wrong partner or worse going through the branding process multiple times, so it’s key to find the right partner to help you bring your company to life visually and verbally. There are a number of steps to deciding on the correct branding studio, to help you we have detailed some of the key considerations below.

Set your deliverables and budget

First of all you need to establish what you want to get out of working with a branding agency. To help, here are a few questions you could ask yourself:

• Do you need a new brand from scratch, or are you rebranding?
• If it’s a new business do you have a name, or do you need one?
• Do you have a business plan?
• Have you thought about your target market?
• Do you have a vision and values clearly defined yet?
• Do you know what channels you’re your business will appear in?
• What is your budget?

Once you know those it will help any agency define the scope of size of your project. Finding an agency that can deliver brand strategy and clear creative solutions in response to the strategy is key to bringing your new identity to life.

Do your homework

Once you’ve identified what your deliverables are, you can start your search for the right branding studio. You should always make a shortlist of agencies to approach, not all agencies will be able to work with you due to current workload, project fit, or budget, so it’s good to have a few options. To find a branding studio that you’ll click with, try asking yourself:

• What is their portfolio like?
• Have they previously worked with clients similar to you?
• Have they got work examples from across multiple channels, including both digital and traditional marketing channels?
• Do they have any reviews or testimonials from past clients?
• Do they align with your vision and goals?
• What are their values?
• What is the size of the agency?
• Where are they based?

To get a real insight into a branding agency, why not follow them on social media? This way, you’ll get to know their identity, their company culture and get a sense of their personality. Plus, social media will give you a peak into the kind of work they have previously created.

Find your branding studio

Following these steps will help you identify a list of potential branding agencies you might want to work with, and once you have a short list you can reach out to them and have an informal chat about your project and agree if it’s something you could work together on, if it is, it’s likely they will want to meet again to flesh out the finer details and put together a proposal or scope of works that outlines all the deliverables. This document should include a process, timelines, final deliverables, and costings.

Once you have that you can feel confident that you can choose the right partner for your project.

Good luck!