Seeking the knowledge and experience of an expert team for your marketing efforts is a great step toward increasing your brand’s visibility. While it’s true that there’s a lot of DIY marketing you can do for no monetary cost, a lucrative marketing strategy is best executed by a team that has the training to make it worth the cost.
In our experience as a brand design agency, we’ve seen countless brands seek out a marketing agency to help with brand identity, packaging design, and digital marketing. While many marketing agencies are great for implementing digital marketing campaigns, they are often lacking in expertise when it comes to brand design.
The result? Not-so-good brand identity and packaging design. And, the natural product of less-than-stellar design is a less-than-stellar sales performance.
Brand design and marketing both have the same goal: getting your product or service sold. But the means they use to achieve this goal are distinctly different (although, every agency is different, and there may be some crossover between agency types). This article will help you avoid making the mistake of hiring the wrong team and will make sure you know what type of agency best fits your needs.
What is a brand design agency?
So, let’s start by breaking down what these agencies are. A brand design agency is one that specializes in developing a brand from nothing. they offer services such as naming, logo design, website design, packaging design, or anything having to do with a brand’s visual identity. In some cases, these agencies may also offer copy or content writing services as well.
Think of these agencies as the “creative power” behind your brand. They help to create all of the collateral you could possibly need to market your brand, but stop short at the actual marketing itself.
If this sort of agency is what you’re seeking, be sure to do your homework! Design agencies can range from comprehensive to very, very niche. Some focus on products as narrow as just logo design. Take care to really read into what services the agency offers before moving forward with them. If you need something more comprehensive, make sure they offer that.
Lastly, it’s important to understand that a brand agency is going to focus intensely on studying competition and user experience in relation to your brand. Gathering this knowledge is an important step in achieving a brand identity that speaks to the pain points and aspirational identities of your clientele.
What is a marketing agency?
As the name suggests, a marketing agency is one that generally focuses solely on attracting an audience to your already-created brand. A marketing agency uses modern advertising methods to get your products noticed, recognized, and in the hands of your customers.
A digital marketing agency often offers services like creating and running digital ad campaigns, experiential marketing events, media advertising, email marketing campaigns, implementing best SEO practices for your site to rank higher in search engines, and using paid and organic social media marketing strategies.
Some marketing agencies employ design professionals to help tweak or fine-tune a brand’s visual identity, but their efforts are often spent toward visual assets for, you guessed it, marketing. Things like ads, email newsletters, website banners, etc. would fall under this category, not the foundational visual assets like logo, web design, and brand aesthetic. Marketing agencies will sell brand design services, but then often outsource those services to other brand designers, and markup the cost of the work when charging you. They also lack the design aesthetics and nuanced details of design that come naturally with a true brand design agency.
Marketing agencies conduct market research to determine how your business should position itself against its competition. A marketing agency would normally expect that user experience research has been conducted far before this and was used to inform the brand’s identity.
Brand design agency or marketing agency? Which should you choose?
So, where does your brand need help? If you’re not sure, the best next step is to identify your greatest problem.
- Does your brand’s visual identity need work? Are your visual assets falling short of what you envision for your brand?
- Are you looking to offload your business’s social media responsibilities?
- Do you have decent website traffic but are struggling to convert visitors into customers?
- Are you struggling to leverage the power of your email list?
- Do you feel overwhelmed by ad campaigns?
- Do you need help articulating the pain points of your audience and how to speak to them?
After you have a better understanding of your problem, you’ll feel more confident in making a decision about what sort of help you need.
If you decide that you could use help in both the design and marketing aspects of your brand, a full-service agency like Deal Design might be the perfect fit for you. Full-service agencies offer the best of both worlds.
You’ll get professional designers and marketers who know how to develop a strong visual brand identity and then get that brand in front of boatloads of potential clients.
Another added perk? You’ll have fewer hands on your brand than working with two distance agencies. A simplified team makes for a more streamlined approach and launch. This minimizes any unwanted discrepancies that can occur as a result of miscommunication between parties.
We’d argue that working with a full-service brand design agency like ourselves is the best move you can make for your business. With expert eyes and hands on your brand every step of the way, you’re more inclined to achieve your business goals without a lot of headache.
For help with either your brand’s visual identity or your marketing efforts, contact our team at Deal Design.