5 Questions to Consider When Hiring Someone to Manage Your Brand

It’s not uncommon for professional athletes, coaches at all levels, and student-athletes turning pro to turn to full-service agencies to manage their business, legal, and marketing needs. After all, these professional services are key business components and are best not to be managed by amateurs.

Developing and growing your brand is so much more than a few “Likes” to your Instagram account. With so much riding on your in-person and online reputation, your brand should be managed by someone with integrated marketing and public relations know-how. Someone who doesn’t just know how paid, earned, owned, and shared media works, but knows how these visibility channels influence one another and ultimately impact your bottom line.

Unlike your accountant or attorney, knowing if your brand manager is effective may be difficult to discern. How can you be assured that the strategy provided and the content suggested to you is truly going to raise your visibility? Or, more importantly, attract lucrative endorsements, partnership opportunities, or future employment?

Here are a few things to consider before you place your brand into the hands of someone else:

Do they understand you holistically?

It’s one thing to understand the sport or identify with you culturally. But is the team who’s managing your brand asking the right questions of you and your potential partners to position you for long-term visibility? If they don’t know how to go beyond the obvious questions, chances are they are going to take a very cookie-cutter approach to build your brand.

Do they think strategically?

Managing your brand isn’t merely about placing content on a few social media platforms. Paid (ads you purchase), Earned (print, TV, radio), Owned (any content created by you), and Shared (anything shared on social platforms) media needs consideration when building a plan for your brand. Keeping you at the “top of the feed” goes beyond just your celebrity. This task requires a great deal of strategic message creation and content development.

Are they proactive?

Social media is an ever-evolving medium. Does your brand manager have the capacity to stay on top of emerging trends? Additionally, opportunities within earned media and endorsements are also fluid. Does your team have the ability to seek out opportunities on your behalf daily or only forward you what is presented to them?

Are they honest with you?

Regular reevaluation is necessary for a brand to see growth continually. This evaluation may involve those around you being honest about what is happening (and what isn’t) on their end and what they see (or don’t) on yours.

Do you feel valued?

Jerry McGuire wasn’t too far off base when he suggested to his agency that they needed to provide their clients with “more personal attention.” Clients should feel that the people they have entrusted to manage their image treat it as it were their own. Do you have that feeling when you meet with your team? Does that feeling carry over into the day-to-day?

Your brand deserves the same amount of attention and care as the rest of your business assets. Failing to do so is risky and costly. Meet with a professional brand manager today to examine where your brand is and where it can go.