5 Things to Keep in Mind while Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

Once upon a time a brand walked into a digital marketing agency. And realised by 2025, digital ad spending will reach $800 billion!

Evidently, that isn’t a joke, but neither is hiring a digital marketing agency. Because with the rise in digital spending, more brands want a marketing partner who helps in telling their brand story to the right audience, over the right medium, at the right moment to evoke the right response and get the best ROI.

Too overwhelming? Too many metrics to measure? Too …

Worry not, Flora Fountain, the leading social media marketing agency in Ahmedabad and India shares just 5 things that can help you make a better decision while hiring a digital marketing agency.

TOP 5 FACTORS TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOUR HIRE A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY

To hire or not to … hire a branding agency, is a question that you must answer after considering the following points:

• Identify your purpose
• Look for an agency with experience and expertise
• Understand the agency’s processes and strategies
• Evaluate the results promised
• Value for money and price play

Let’s dive into the details.

Identify your purpose

Before you venture out to hire a digital marketing agency, introspect and ask yourself:

What end goal am I trying to reach?

• Is it to increase my reach online?
• Or keep the existing audience more engaged through content?
• Do I need help creating content?
• Evaluate the results promised
• Or help enhancing conversions?

What particular service does my brand require?

• What services am I expecting the agency to deliver? (Hint: You want to hire a branding agency for things like brand strategy, identity & logo creation and an eCommerce website development company for things like website development or eCommerce management)
• Will I require one set of services like social media marketing services and then need to expand my scope beyond it? (In such cases you might want to go with a full-service digital marketing agency, which can provide multiple services)

How much am I willing to keep aside as a marketing budget?

• Will I be dedicating a percentage of my sales to marketing?
• Or do I want to invest an initial amount and decide based on the results?

By answering these three questions you will be able to pinpoint WHY you need to hire a digital marketing agency and WHAT services you require from them today or in the future.

LOOK FOR INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE

Once your goal is set, initiate filtering to identify agencies that have an expertise in your particular industry or the services you are looking for.

It is important to make sure the digital agency has relevant expertise and experience. Inquire and research their specialities and previous successes.

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Package Design: The OG Influencer of Your Brand!

YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE AT MAKING A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION!

No, we didn’t leave the caps-lock on but are screaming at the top of our lungs to make the point. Ever noticed how some of the most delicious looking candy and gum bars are placed right in the customers’ eye-line at the billing counters of supermarkets? Yeah, these products want to draw the customers’ attention towards the bright red, buoyant blue and puckering green through their package design and eventually convince customers to add them to their shopping bag.

Now we’re not just telling you this because we’re the best package design company in Ahmedabad and across Gujarat (which of course we are! *flips hair*), but because we know for a fact that it takes hardly 7 seconds for your potential customer to make a purchase decision. And that’s why your packaging is the biggest influencer of your product. That pretty boy or girl with 100K Instagram followers comes second.

Hear it from the best branding agency on how package design influences purchasing choices among customers and how they can drive your sales in an upward graph.

THE ONE WHERE YOU CATCH THEIR EYE!

Attractive colours, eclectic typography, distinctive shape and size. These elements tend to draw the attention of the consumers, and differentiate a package’s design from the sea of products out there in the market. For instance, walk into a store to buy a box of green tea. Now, in the store shelf, almost all the brands end up using the same light green packaging. But then there is the one which sticks out, with a pastel colour scheme.

A more premium metal container instead of the usual cardboard box and an uncommon, fun mascot in place of the omnipresent slim waist of a woman and the stock image of a glass cup.

It goes without saying that the buyer does check out this odd-one-out product. Whether he/she buys it or not depends on several other factors, but the first round is yours, where the package design has generated curiosity for the brand and caught the eye of the potential customer.

THE ONE WHERE YOU WIN WITH THE EASE OF ACCESS

Your writer here was once struggling to open a tray of a ready-to-eat meal, and at the end of that bout that lasted precisely 2 minutes, the office floor was the winner as the packet ripped into two and the contents flew out like the squashed tomatoes at the La Tomatina Festival. And she swore to never order such inconvenience again. This was bad packaging costing the brand a customer.

Gaurav Jalan of Packman Packaging emphasises on the importance of ease of access. According to him, when you are designing your packaging, look to incorporate several methods to open it. A package that includes multiple mechanisms, such as loops, hinges, and slide-out trays, would be a lot easier to open than a package that can merely be opened using one way.

Kamaii, a home-cooked food ordering and delivery app, onboarded Flora Fountain as their branding agency and digital marketing agency. As one of the premier package design companies in Ahmedabad, we understood the assignment well and upgraded their packaging to easy-to-open containers that separates the food items of their thaali or meals, all shut perfectly with a see-through lid and placed conveniently in an attractively designed sleeve.

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Brand Strategy 101 for Start-Up Founders

When the term ‘amazon’ comes up, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Online shopping, right? You definitely didn’t think of Amazon rainforests.

Similarly, when a term like ‘apple’ pops, rather than thinking of the fruit we remember the tech giant Apple. And when you search online, you are Google-ing. This is the power of good branding. All consuming their user’s mind. But these brands are famous not just because of their products or services, but because they have mastered the art of branding themselves to their user.

And if you have decided to join the legion of start-ups shaking up the market, you will have to achieve such a level of memorable and, perhaps even disruptive, branding.

Flora Fountain, currently one of the best branding agencies in ahmedabad, was also a start-up back in the year 2016. Through our experience, we understand that building a new business from scratch is tough. But still exciting!

So here we are, with a simple brand strategy for you to not be “just another start-up”!

RESEARCH & FIND YOUR NICHE

The first thing as a start-up you need to know is – who is your audience and what moves them. Finding answers to simple questions can help you get clarity on what you need to do next. Questions like:

• Who is my target audience?
• What do they like or dislike?
• Where are they?
• How old are they?
• How likely are they to seek a service or product like mine?
• How would they come across a product or service like mine?
• Who are my competitors?

And so on.

If you think you need help in finding the answers to the above questions, you can also hire the brand strategy services from agencies that hold expertise in these segments and find answers to these questions through user and market research. Such services include interviews, surveys, focus groups and workshops which help find answers to such questions.

As one of the best branding agencies in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain also conducted a similar branding workshop for a manufacturing company. With the help of innovative questions and exercises, we assisted them in finding their niche.

IDENTITY CREATION

According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, 95% of all the thinking that prompts our behaviour (including consumer decisions) is subconscious. That means your target audience will be driven by subconscious factors that they associate with the brand. How the brand makes them feel, whether or not it aligns with their values and lifestyle, how they think associating with this brand will be perceived in their peer group and so on.

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Lift Up Your Brand Spirits with Humour

An entrepreneur, an advertiser and a comedian walk into a bar….

Yes, they made a knock off your pants funny campaign together, got featured on Social Samosa, generated a whole lot of ‘shares’ and ‘saves’ on Instagram and branded their message right into their TG’s minds!

You get the drift.

So why anad how are some of the best branding agencies in India and Ahmedabad, yours truly at Flora Fountain included, using humour to create memorability and differentiation for a brand? Read on to know it all…

WHY HUMOUR WORKS IN SELLING?

People love to laugh. It’s something that almost everyone has in common. That’s why using humor is a popular advertising technique. The key, of course, is doing something that a majority of people will find funny. Laughter is always good for people. It can reduce pain and stress as well as lower blood pressure. Getting people to laugh also makes them more inclined to think positively about a business and buy its products.

And guess everyone knows, that the best ice breaker in the world is jokes (after food of course). And some of the most commonly heard conversation starters are, “have you seen/heard that ad where…”. That’s how humour creates a recall for brands, making it stand out and get its message shared among more people.

POPULAR BRANDS THAT HAVE USED HUMOUR TO SPICE UP THEIR MARKETING GAME

Let’s take a look at how some of the brands became household names with their wit and humour in delivering the message and marketing their products.

OLD SPICE

The popular men’s deodorant and hygiene products brand is known to go meta with their campaigns, making fun of the whole idea of advertising in itself. It usually features a very well built, handsome man, doing something completely out of context in their commercials, like riding a horse on a beach while mouthing the catchphrase addressing women, “Ladies, your man can smell just like me”. Here, take a look at one of their television commercials that aired sometime back.

PRIME VIDEO

Amazon’s video streaming service Prime Video in India has decided go all out and tickle the funny bone to promote the movies and shows on their platform. One look at their India Instagram page and you’ll find out posts peppered with humorous memes and jokes all involving some scene or dialogue from one of the movies in their catalogue, and a pop culture reference. One of their longest running advertising and marketing gags is wishing its followers “Good Morning” through funny memes. Here check out a few:

A funny take on WFH scenes with Welcome

 

Using a popular scene and dialogue from ZNMD for morning wishes

NETFLIX

Everyone hates spoilers. And everyone hates that one Netflix subscriber in the group who watches every movie, every TV show right when they release and give out spoilers to everyone. Netflix gave out fake spoilers of its highly popular shows through huge outdoor billboards as a part of their smart and funny campaign asking people to stay at home during the pandemic, to stay safe from the coronavirus and spoilers.

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Brand Voice: The What, Why & How It Matters

Imagine entering a family event and meeting your reticent uncle who doesn’t talk much until you ask or tell him something. But then you meet his enthusiastic world-traveller son, and you both just can’t stop talking and exchanging notes on shared interests established during the conversation! Now think about it, do you give the same attention to both of them? Are you equally engaged talking to both of them? The answer, of course, is no. Just like your uncle and cousin have different personalities and voices, on which your level of engagement with them differs, just like that, brands too can have different voices based on their personalities.

But the million-dollar question, does your brand need a voice? And is it ready to have one? But what even is a brand voice?

Read on to find out answers to these and many more questions from the best known branding and digital marketing company in Ahmedabad.

WHAT IS A BRAND VOICE?

Every brand has a defining persona that leaves a lasting impression on the audience it interacts with and the customers it serves. This happens through the various ways it communicates with them, through advertisements, social media posts, branding activities, promotions, etc. The language it uses, their flow of words, the personality it imbibes on, is what comes together to form a brand voice that makes people remember the brand and talk about it to others, hence ‘spreading the word’ about it.

HOW IT MATTERS…

A brand’s distinctive voice makes it consistent, memorable and recognisable. A brand increases the awareness of its product, services, ideology, mission and vision through its voice. With the digital landscape now massively crowded, it seems like a competition of who is the loudest. But when a brand maintains its consistency in voice through its words, graphics, pictures, it stands out amidst the din and people are able to identify it out of the crowd.

DEFINING A BRAND’S VOICE…

Don’t know what your brand should sound like? Worry not… everyone starts somewhere, even Coca Cola did. The branding and content marketing teams from one of the best branding companies in Ahmedabad has these five tips for you to figure it out and get started.

IDENTIFY THE BRAND’S AUDIENCE

Every brand must ask this question to themselves first, “Who are we serving?” This question unravels many aspects of the ideal customer a brand wants. It further brings out more questions like, what is their age, what language do they speak, where do they live, how much do they earn and spend, who do they hang out with, do they travel and where, etc…

When a brand starts to find answers to all these questions, they come up with the persona of their ideal customer, and that helps them target and speak to the right audience in the language that resonates with them. For instance, a Taj hotel will speak impeccable English in their posts, but a local café like Eleven11 in Ahmedabad would prefer using slang, puns and jokes in their communication. You get the drift…

BE CONSISTENT, AND DOCUMENT EVERYTHING ABOUT IT

The success of a well-defined brand voice lies in the consistency of its application. And to maintain this brand voice, it is important to document every important feature and aspect that defined it in the first place.

This brand voice document must mention the company and brand’s mission, vision, the personality traits of its ideal customer, their vocabulary, the brand tagline & the story behind it, some examples of the correct usage of brand language, and mistakes to avoid.

This practice will be helpful for multiple departments, from the strategist racking his brains over the next promotional campaign idea, to the rookie writer who will be writing for the brand’s social media and marketing copies, to not got astray.

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Designing a Logo? Don’t Forget To Include These…

So you want to make your customers sit up and take notice, maybe do a little dance of joy and discovery too? So you want to let them know your brand’s story, how different it is from all the competition out there? After all, in the 90s, there were lover boys and then there was Shakhrukh aka Rahul.

Enter BRAND LOGO

And just like in the movies, brand love does happen at first sight. And logos, being the metaphorical face of a brand, are often carriers of the brand’s first impression for new and future audiences. Logos are also a great way to distinguish your brand from other companies with similar products. So let’s dig a little deeper with the experts from one of Ahmedabad’s best-known logo design and branding agencies to find out all that a logo can be and should be…

Brand or pictorial mark

Made up of a graphic symbol or icon which represents a real-world object. A perfect example would be, Apple.

Abstract

Logos which consist of a unique symbol tailor-made for the brand, like the one for Pepsi.

Mascots

These logos are made of images of a character that act as a visual representation of the business, like Colonel Sanders in the KFC logo.

Emblem

Logos which consist of a typeface that sits within a border or a seal. For example, Starbucks.

Dynamic

These are adaptable logos, which change themselves according to the context in which they are being used, instead of having a standard font-color-text combination.

Wordmark

These logos consist of text only with company names, monograms or initials. Think Subway or Coca Cola.

Knowing the whole gamut of logo options, how does one choose which logo style works best for your business? Well, here’s how…

1. DO EXTENSIVE RESEARCH

You have only one chance to get the logo right! So, do it properly! And how can you do it? With the help of thorough research. Good research will show how you can explore different logos to create a perfect one for your brand.

Dig deep and research your competitors’ logos as well. Don’t do it, to copy from them, but rather to check what kind of design, scheme and layout they have. See what worked and what didn’t work for them. And with the help of your research.

You should show customers that you are unique and different. Plus, being too close to your competitors could be detrimental, and get you into legal trouble. Moreover, be clear of your audience and find out what colours or concepts work on them.

After your research, create a brand concept that reflects the ethos and goals of the brand.

2. ALWAYS HAVE A STORY

Have you ever seen a big brand without a logo? No, because there isn’t one. Logo tells the story of the brand. And you need to create that story too.

When consumers see any brand logo, they are reminded of the stories of the businesses those logos represent. For example, when people see an iconic Golden Arches, they know it’s McDonald’s. It is a brand which people recognise without even seeing the name. The arches represent the newly-constructed architecture of the first franchised restaurant in 1952. Did you see? A story!

This is how companies which have logos connected to the company’s stories or mission are often the most successful.

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Turning businesses into brands: The case for a professional creative agency

Any marketing agency out there can design hoardings, create logos or manage social media.

But what differentiates a brand from business?

Hard-to-miss presence in the market, on-point messaging to its exact audience and a knowledge of the brand even outside its demographic. These are the hallmarks of a brand. And this magic happens when a creative agency comes into the picture.

So how does a professional creative agency turn a business into a brand? Read on to know…

TEAM OF CREATIVE GENIUSES

From researching to strategizing, designing to writing, and planning to executing; a creative agency has experienced professionals working on every aspect of your business. They use their learnings from working with multiple brands to understand the market and create an effective strategy for the business to succeed.

IT IS COST EFFECTIVE

With a creative agency on board, businesses can get their branding and promotional work done for a fraction of the cost of hiring an entire team of professionals in-house. Think about it. There is a huge expense in acquiring the required tools and softwares. Then there’s the cost of paying salaries to writers, designers, strategists, and consultants. This will drive the cost per lead up through the roof!

GET A FRESH PERSPECTIVE

Sometimes the best way to sustain customer interest and attract a new audience for the brand is by introducing newness; in the brand communication, the product range and the promotional activities.

And this is where a creative agency comes to your rescue. A creative agency in India like Flora Fountain looks at the brand from a neutral perspective, sometimes even from a consumer’s viewpoint. It then identifies the challenges that the brand might be facing. Such as product acceptance, brand communication, the brand’s central idea getting lost or even customer service and feedback.

A creative agency thinks outside the box and comes up with new ideas, and creates innovative solutions to solve problems and delight the target audience.

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