Last month we wrote about the importance of owning your brand’s assets to maintain brand control. We mentioned that many firms retain ownership of there creative work. This can lead to possible issues when a third party gets involved in working with your brand.
This month we would like to expose one more problem that is yet more pervasive in our industry. The common practice of a firm registering a web domain for your company — but never yielding control to you. This same issue can also be experienced with web business listings and social media accounts.
The way this works is that a firm contacts you, and they sell you on a turnkey solution. Their offering covers website development, SEO, and Social Media Marketing. It seems like a good idea at first, and it may even bring new business your way. The problem is when they hike up the price, or you decide to change agencies.
Bad industry practices
The majority of the companies we work with are small. Such companies usually don’t have in-house marketing departments. They rely on companies like ours to register, configure, and open accounts on there behalf. It has been our experience that a lot of agencies, open the accounts for their clients, but retain the control of said accounts. With Social Media and Business Listings, it can sometimes be cumbersome to gain control of said accounts. But not impossible. However, when it comes to domain registration, that is a huge problem. Sometimes even leading to expensive litigation to force the offending agency to relinquish control of your domain.
Our own experience with a brand control
More than once, we have encountered this problem. Small business owners who are seeking our services stumble into the ugly truth they don’t own their website’s domain. It was either registered by an agency that is no longer in business, or they refuse to transfer the domain’s ownership to its rightful owner. Ether way, it can be a costly problem.
That is why our policy is to open all accounts using the email address, phone number, and information of our client. Or, if we need to use one of our email accounts, we always transfer the account to them after it has been configured.
In conclusion, you must always have access to all the accounts that pertain to our business, even if you don’t interact with them. But at the very least it is your choice who does.
At Grapho Studio we place our clients first. We are firm believers that everything related to your business is yours to control. If you retain our services it would be because of the quality of work we do, not because we possess control of your bran’s assets.
If you have a need for a rebrand, or you are opening a new business, contact us, we are here to help you set up your companies image.
Protecting your Brand