What to Look for in Branding San Francisco

It’s quite easy to launch a business—as long as you have the capital and a real saleable concept, then, by all means, start a business. But launching a successful business? Now that’s a different story. That is definitely not an easy ride. The good thing is that you don’t have to create a successful business by yourself. Check out branding San Francisco and you will realize that the Golden City has some really great branding agencies that can help you mold your company into a successful entity.

An agency with offices in San Francisco is great at this stuff—why? Because San Francisco is the place to be when you want to start a business. And it is the startup companies that really need an efficient brand strategy in order to be able to compete with their more established counterparts. Since the demand is in San Francisco, it also means that the supply of top branding companies is in the City by the Bay.

Case in point: Ramotion. The company aims to create visual identities and develop brand strategies for growing startups. The San Francisco-based strategy and design agency has been creating significant brand identities for various companies in the last decade.

So what do you look for in branding San Francisco? Here are some points that you should consider important:

Branding San Francisco should be in touch with digital strategies

We live in a digital world and branding agencies should honor that. No branding agency should ever exist in this generation without the digital aspect of branding ingrained in the strategy. So when you meet with an agency, always ask for the digital strategies: how is Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram going to be used in the branding? Will LinkedIn and Pinterest be necessary? Would having Snapchat and TikTok be important?

Not only that—there are web designs to think about and SEO. Of course, you can’t expect the branding agency to be on top of the digital designs as well, there will be a design agency for that. But a good branding firm will be able to get in touch with the right design firm that can help you with the right web design for your company. The branding firm needs to be on top of this because there has to be cohesion in everything. Your brand identity should shine through in whatever digital promotion is being done in relation to the company.

Innovative

The thing about this modern digital age is that everything is just so fast. The trend today may already be outdated tomorrow. So you need a firm that can look well ahead of the time. You want an agency that is innovative, one that can think about branding in a post-digital world.

Branding is somewhat interlinked with marketing. When a firm creates a brand identity, the wheels should already be churning on how to market the brand—from paper ads to broadcast commercials and digital campaigns. Even if the branding agency doesn’t have to do the marketing itself if should be able to map out a strategy on how that can be handled.

This is why you have to meet with various agencies before you set your eyes on just one firm. You have to hear their thoughts on the matter and you have to interact because it is only during the discussion that more ideas will come out and that is when you will be able to recognize if you are talking to an innovative team of a team that is just good at memorizing talking points.

Startup agencies can be good, too

If you are a startup, don’t you think that you should give another startup a chance too? This is always a great debate. If you are a startup, it would be nice to balance it out with an experienced branding agency that has been in the business long enough to know its ins and outs. They already know what works and what doesn’t. However, here is an even compelling argument on why a startup is better: it’s cheap!

But just because it is only a startup it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a track record. Meet with a few startups and check out what they have already done. Chances are they have only worked with smaller brands as well but you might like the principles that they adhere to. Maybe these are the same as yours. The great thing about startups is that they don’t want to fail. They are starting at the bottom with every intention of eventually being on top. So you know that a startup will always do its best.

Besides, branding is not just a gig for a branding agency. It is a two-way street. It is your company after all. You need to put forth your inputs and not just listen to the firm’s ideas just because you are paying them to do just that. Make the partnership work by bouncing ideas off each other.

You are also bound to have a more emotive brand with a startup because the ideas are expected to be fresh, unlike veteran agencies that might just recycle ideas that have worked for generations. Give startups a chance. It would be a great idea to grow big together.

A full-service agency would be great

If you can find a branding firm that does web design, marketing and beyond, then that would be the best-case scenario. When it comes to branding, everything has to be cohesive. Branding, web development and marketing can be handled by different agencies. It would be hard to keep track of the brand identity in that case. However, if you just have one company handling all of these, it means that your brand identity will never lose its core in the process.

Also, a full-service agency tends to be cheaper compared to paying different agencies to cater to all your needs.