You’ve seen the hype from successful youtube channels, Instagram influencers, and well-optimized websites. Their crafts, messages, products, and services are well presented through perfectly curated visual content. Not only that, but these brands know that audiences stick around longer when something catches their eyes upon scrolling over the content. People are naturally pleased with aesthetics. In fact, Brain Rules shared that you’ll remember content with a picture 55% more than the ones without it. Thus, you need a graphic designer that’s at your beck and call to make your marketing materials. One of the digital transformation pros today is you can get their services without hiring in-house. With this graphic design outsourcing guide, you can work with the best and most effective offshore talents without breaking the bank.
What is a Graphic Designer?
To start, a graphic designer is someone who is dedicated to bringing your brand to life through visuals. That’s a lot of work and a lot of responsibility. There are so many details to consider and you have to think of the smallest attributes, like the font and the color. That’s why the best way to go about it is to have a team of people, with each creative person focusing on a particular aspect.
Graphic designers are responsible for creating the visuals that often drive the visual perception of a brand. It can be the images, videos, or illustrations used to promote a brand. As such, they are the ones who are in charge of brand management. This includes promotional items such as merchandise and packaging, advertisements, logos, and even website interfaces. They are responsible for making sure that the brand is properly conveyed to their audience.
To get the best out of your graphic design team, you’ll just need a content specialist or a specialized virtual assistant that will plot your content calendar consistently. Your graphic design team will then be able to follow through on the materials they will be working on. This is also for your brand to be able to publish visual content regularly.
How to Outsource Your Graphic Design Team
There are two types of outsourcing which are offshore and onshore. Onshore outsourcing is when you avail business process services from a third-party provider that is operating in your country. Although this may seem to be a good alternative to hiring your own employee, hiring onshore is way more limiting and expensive than offshore outsourcing.
Offshore outsourcing is when you avail business services from a third-party provider outside your country. You can save almost a third of the expenses from hiring onshore. The countries where these business process outsourcing or BPO agencies are operating significantly have lower costs of living. Therefore, business operations and employee salaries are also relatively lower. What you could offer to this flexible workforce would already be way above their minimum wage. Thus, you can already expect exceptional outputs from well-experienced and knowledge-ready professionals at a reasonable price.
The smartest move you can make to avoid complicated outsourcing situations is to get a well-vetted BPO partner from a trusted outsourcing marketplace. By doing so, you get a list of legit and credible BPO companies that have gone through background checks.
Your Graphic Design Outsourcing Guide: What to Look For
A BPO Center With Graphic Design Expertise
It is crucial to consider the extensive experience of the outsourcing center when it comes to graphic designing. Have they handled such projects before? Do they have the proper quality assurance and control over the outputs? What tools do they use? These are only some of the critical questions that should have satisfactory answers.
Asking for samples of their previous works will help you decide whether they’re the company you need or not. Also, always see where the brands they have handled are now. It would be a good deal to know that they have high client retention.
Qualities of a Successful Design
- The marketing materials designed get many clicks and conversions. Examples of materials are website popup messages with photos, paid advertisements, and clickable visual content in email campaigns.
- It gets high engagement in social media visual content specifically on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube platforms. This pertains to the comments, likes, shares, and new subscribers or followers. You may ask for their social ad managers’ reports.
- Their content has gained an excellent time-on-page benchmark. You can see this from their analytics.
- Their clients achieve their marketing goals on a timeline. Check out their clients’ testimonials on their page.
- They can fulfill their clients’ return on investment expectations.
An Outsourcing Provider With Advanced Design Tools and Processes
The reliability of their processes and their adaptation to digital transformation with their advanced tools should not be missed. Always ask your prospects about their process flow for each project, the tools they use, and how they keep their staff engaged to produce an exemplary output. Do they have weekly meetings? Do they provide proper and updated training to the workforce regularly and upon onboarding? See how they manage their graphic design talents to make sure that they are active in ensuring great outputs.
For tools, here are the most essential ones:
- Project management software
- Adobe Photoshop software or equivalent for graphic design
- Adobe Illustrator or equivalent for vector graphic design, ideal for digital products and slideshow content
- Google Slides or equivalent for creating slideshows
- Adobe After Effects or equivalent for visual effects and motion graphics, ideal for video content
- Adobe Acrobat or equivalent for creating PDFs, ideal for marketing materials such as free ebooks
- Project management software
- Adobe Animate or equivalent for vector animation, ideal for digital products and storytelling video content
Talents That Meet Your Requirements
Get to know the BPO center’s talents more through one-on-one interviews. They must meet the requirements on your checklists such as years of experience, graphic design skills, and expertise in using specific software.
Once a company meets all its standards and requirements, you can proceed to secure your agreement through contract along with your legal team.
In conclusion to this graphic design outsourcing guide, investing in outsourced graphic design services is always achievable. As long as you source first your potential BPO offshore partners from an excellent outsourcing marketplace, you will be at ease to have options that can be trusted. Then, you can smoothly proceed to the next steps of vetting your options using the guide above.
