Articles
Key Factors to Consider Before Hiring a Brand Consultancy Agency
by Jhon G. Digital Media Services Partners+ Brand ConsultantsIn
the last two decades, many companies have seen how their traditional sales
strategy has become obsolete or simply does not fit the dynamics of the 21st
century, which is characterized by the increasingly leading role of consumers,
the speed of information, and the use of technological resources.
A
good number of them have understood the challenges of the market and the need
to catch up on these issues, in some cases achieving adaptation processes that
have served as a reference for other businesses in their area or in general.
Those
who have had it much easier are the companies that have emerged in the digital
era. In this case, the challenge of those responsible has been to effectively
apply all the resources and tools that are already part of everyday life. So,
what do you need to know before you hire a brand consultancy?
BRAND STRATEGY VS BRAND CONSULTING: BIG
DIFFERENCES
We
use the term strategy every time we want to give content and reason to a
decision we make — the investment strategy, the network strategy, the political
strategy, the Brand strategy
,
and so on.
The
strategy is nothing more than the ability to draw an optimal path to obtain an
expected result. As simple as that.
And
that's what Branding is about. To define the right way to care for someone.
Few
are dedicated or want to devote themselves to Branding, the construction, and
management of Brands, those who use the word 'Brand Strategy.' Referring to
your intellectual ability to make sense of the decisions we make to create an
Identity or build a Positioning.
The
Brand Strategy is the way we have to establish what place we want to occupy in
the world of those around us, defining a differential and relevant space for
them, creating value and preference over our competition.
A path that we must follow for the
creation of all our Identities: Visual, Verbal, Sensory, and Attitudinal.
But
there is a notable difference between Brand Strategy and Brand Consulting. The
same that exists between the Branding Agencies and the Branding Consultants.
There
are two types of actors in this of Branding, those that use Strategic
Creativity to build Brands. Places where the 'chrome' prevails, the visual
result of what we do. And places where creativity is nothing more than a
consequence of consulting, where the 'transformation' takes precedence over
chrome.
That
is if to function competitively in your market, you just have to transform the
way you pick up the phone, your tone of voice, your brand architecture, or
redefine the value proposition for the employee without touching the color of
your identity does not involve trauma. Not everything has to end in a 'chrome.'
That is the difference between Agency and
Consultant. Or between Strategy and Consulting.
While
the strategy is common to any brand building process, the Consultancy
establishes more complex tools and methodologies to accompany its development
and management. Consulting is the ability to define and accompany a Brand in
its development so that it remains in good health.
Consulting
is not only to define the Strategy of a Brand (Brand Platform), but to help you
understand its Optical Architecture model, reformulate its Portfolio
nomenclature to boost positioning, establish migration strategies, create
engagement plans, define Behaviors of a Brand, develop Trees and Decision
Filters, define KPI Plans to control the brand, download an Activation Plan for
the correct construction of the experience, and so on.
No
one will give a prize to a Consultant for helping a Brand to have a more
efficient architecture and focused on its positioning. No one will give a
design award to a Consultant that changed the way employees behave to adjust
more to their positioning, and no one will ever give a prize to a Consultant
for making Managers have the right tools to manage it.
Now,
many Agencies look for the 'chrome' prize. And many Agencies that say they make
Brand Strategy.
SO, HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU SHOULD HIRE A BRAND
CONSULTANCY AGENCY?
- You are not sure what your goal is when working on your brand;
- If your brand has no visibility and is not positioned and you don't know how to improve that;
- If you don't know how to define your value proposition ;
- You are not clear about your buyer person ;
- You can't reach potential customers ;
- You don't know how to plan an effective personal branding strategy ;
- You don't know how to create a communication and promotion strategy for your brand (which channels and media are suitable for my goals);
- Or if you don't know what KPIs you should measure in your strategy(those that tell you if you're on the right track or not), etc.
WHY YOU NEED BRAND CONSULTANCY?
The
figure of the marketing consultant is exclusive to our era. But not because
marketing is a new discipline; On the contrary, it is as old as the fact of marketing
products and services and has been applied since antiquity.
What
happens is that it is a field that was unexplored until recently. The vast
majority of companies understood it as secondary or, at best, as an appendix to
the sales department. Today we know, fortunately, that marketing and sales are
not the same and that it is necessary to learn to separate the two issues.
They
had to break into new technologies to realize the real importance of marketing
and the multiple possibilities it offered in a context marked by the speed of
information, permanent interaction between users and brands, and the emergence
of new customer segments.
Expand your radius of action
Often,
we get involved with our company and find it hard to see beyond. A brand consultancy
agency, accustomed to analyzing company after company, market aftermarket, and
in continuous contact with other teams, can bring a lot of wisdom and expand
the vision of your company's management dome.
Start working outside the "comfort
zone."
Some
companies survive hundreds of years doing the same. However, in recent times,
there has been a great change that has influenced one of the most important
areas of any business: marketing. It is nothing more, and nothing less than new
technologies, and more specifically, the Internet, which in addition to
changing the ways of communicating with the customer, has also changed the
concept of sales (e-commerce) and even improved production systems and I work
inside companies.
All the experience of a great professional
for the moment in time you need at your service
You
probably do not have a budget in your Human Resources plan to sign a
professional with such experience and professional career on an ongoing basis,
and you may not even need it. An external brand consultant is a very
well-priced person, but whose work, to be effective, must be temporary. As its
own name indicates, it is a person "external" to the company,
something fundamental so that it is not influenced by certain factors that
could jeopardize the creation of a totally reliable audit of the company.
Therefore,
hiring an external consultant is ideal for getting talent for your company and
spread it to your employees, without incurring a fixed cost more than hiring.
Update you on the latest in business,
marketing, tools, technology applied to the company, etc.
As
an entrepreneur, you have a lot of work in your day to day, and although you
know you could and should update your company, you don't have time! An external
consultant will tell you everything you need to know to grow your company and
will ignore the elements that are not really interesting for the nature of your
business. That is, it will act as a filter for all the information that you can
find today on the subject. It will give you really valuable time for you!
Useful, practical and applied training to
your business
Your
entire team can be updated and receive training, especially focused on the
business. The standard courses that are often offered in the companies and that
take a lot of productive time are finished, without being generally useful and
100% applicable to the business.
Identification of problems that have gone
unobserved for years
Discover
problems that you did not know existed inside your organization, along with the
solutions that may arise. It will seem incredible not to have detected them
before, but without a doubt, it is an exercise that only an external person can
do and get.
We
hope that with these factors, you have no more doubts about whether or not to
hire an external consultant/brand consultancy agency. In case you have them,
you can write your questions in this post, and we will try to answer them as
soon as possible.
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About Jhon G. 
Digital Media Services Partners+ Brand Consultants
2 connections, 0 recommendations, 9 honor points.Joined APSense since, October 3rd, 2019, From Haryana, India.
Created on Dec 5th 2019 00:37. Viewed 473 times.
