3 reasons to use a retained design service
Once you’ve got your new brand and website sorted you might think: “Right, that’s me. I can now do everything myself with the assets I have available.” Whereas that is probably true to some extent, it is worth considering whether staying with your creative agency and using them as a resource for design-related requirements would not only provide you with high-quality consistent design but also with a relationship that would lighten your daily load and grow closely over the years. The reasons to keep a retained design service are various.
Consistency
Consistency within your brand is absolutely vital in your communications to make your organisation recognisable to users and customers. Having brand guidelines written down and ensuring your team follows them will get you half-way there. But most often creating new assets from those guidelines can still be tricky as those guidelines can’t account for every potential design need.
You could say you don’t care, or you could commission a variety of service providers across a variety of creative disciplines to keep your design in check. But by far the best choice to keep things consistent is to have retained design service that does all your creative work. It will ensure that across all your channels and content your brand and voice is coherent and consistent. This agency will grow with you and really get to know your needs and voice when communicating with your ideal client/user.
Value for money
While any retained relationship accounts for peaks and troughs in work, generally, retained clients get more hours than they pay for as latitude is earned through the long-term relationship. That means more value for your money. Additionally, keeping a retained agency has the advantage of not having to induct a new person/agency to your organisation and brand whenever you need a design job to be done. Your retained agency will already know you and will easily be able to convert your requirements into beautiful assets that speak with your voice.
Agility
Last but not least, the relationship that you develop with your retained design agency presents an opportunity to develop trusted partnerships where work can be produced both proactively and reactively. With an established understanding and compiled assets, the agency can respond quickly to creative requirements across a range of platforms.
If you are thinking about getting a retainer with an agency, why not check our post about our values to see if we’re a good fit for you? Or drop us a message directly.
4 reasons for using Hubspot as a small & medium-sized enterprise
If you’re one of our clients you will know that we like talking about Hubspot. This article firstly looks at what is behind the name and, secondly, why this piece of software is great for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
Hubspot, in a nutshell, is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Or in other words: it lets you manage all your customers – and potential ones – in one place. That includes your marketing, sales, services and content management. Pretty neat, isn’t it? When you use Hubspot, all of your (potential) customers are registered with their email-address and specific interests and communications with you, whether it’s via downloading a PDF from your website, signing up to a talk or a plain email. As their engagement with you continues, their profile grows and provides you with a better picture of what their needs are and how you can help and support them best. This video shows best what we’re talking about:
Note: We do not promote Hubspot because it is a fee earning service (although small businesses start for free!). We promote Hubspot because it works for small businesses that have growth ambitions. When coupled with They Ask, You Answer and Assignment Marketing, it has proven to increase sales cycle speeds, conversions and reduce wasted time, while building up trust with the customer and the authority of trust in the business.
So, why should your SME use Hubspot?
Efficency
The software package is a great way to help you become more efficient. Instead of answering potential client emails and the same questions over and over again, Hubspot in combination with content marketing will bring well-informed, sales-qualified leads to your team, ready-to-buy, sympathetic to your pitch. This means you spend less time and costs with chasing your clients. Instead, you are free to create more valuable content while the software does the heavy lifting for you. It’s like having an additional team member that never sleeps, takes breaks, gets ill or goes on annual leave.
Insight
Hubspot will help you better understand why someone might be interested in your organisation and how you can best serve and cater to them. By automatically creating a profile for each of your potential customers, you don’t have to do the heavy lifting of finding out who engaged with your content when, where and why.
Scalable
The CRM is equally great for SMEs because it grows with you. You do not have to commit to a chunk of money every month that gives you access to tools that you might not even need. Instead, depending on the number of your clients and employees, Hubspot will grow with you. Brilliantly, you can start small and only increase your functionality and access as your company grows and you can afford it.
Expertise
Last but not least, it adds expertise to your communications. Or rather, it adds expertise by educating customers before they engage with your team. That way they get the information they need when they want it and you can focus on engaging with them when they are already quite clear on how you can help them. Plus, as mentioned above, you free up extra time to create more valuable content for your marketing and knowledge hub.
Do you think Hubspot could be for you? Get in touch to discuss how we can help you set it up.