UBlac: How A Team From Jordan Started An Award-Winning Branding Agency
UBlac is a digital creative agency that combines art, science, design, marketing, and web development to create sleek, professional brands.
GrindSuccess Magazine recently sat down with Saad Seddiq to discuss his entrepreneurial journey…
It’s so great to meet you! Please tell us a little about yourself and what line of business you’re in?
My name is Saad Seddiq and I am a co-founder of UBlac, an award-winning branding and digital marketing agency with a core focus on creating new brands. We work with a variety of local businesses as well as eCommerce brands, tech start-ups, and more – helping them sustainably grow their businesses!
My dream is to start an agency that helps other business, so we’ve started UBlac in October 2010. Since then, we’ve helped many local and international brands deliver their messages in an elegant and creative way.
What’s your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
We started as passionate friends who were eager to succeed and conquer. In 2009 we created our first project (Hatem, a virtual game). It was published in the al-Rai newspaper as one of the first online games in Jordan, and later we began to provide brands with support and business solutions. Our mission back then was to deliver and design the absolute best quality websites for our clients.
In 2010 we realised that we could team up and build something special. Our service grew to include branding and digital marketing, and this is where UBlac began. UBlac is an innovative premium agency that unites Art and Science to create attractive elite shining brands through branding and marketing.
Through the past years, we have served over 150 customers region-wide. We built memories and relationships with every single one of them, and here we are now receiving a special award on our 10th anniversary.
Describe the process of launching the business
Getting started for us wasn’t easy. We didn’t know much about doing business back then. I invested all the money that I’d gained from our freelance work with some financial help from my dad and, finally, I registered the company and rented office space in Amman, Jordan.
What have been the most effective methods of attracting and retaining customers?
Attracting customers and then building long-term relationships is one of the best strategies you can use to keep your company healthy for many years. Client retention starts with investing in the right clients. You can’t just say yes to every client without understanding if they are valuable for your service.
As a company owner, you need to be aware that your client base is an essential part of your overall business. You should never ignore the importance of customer experience or satisfaction. Customer opinions and feelings about the brand can affect, in both positive and negative way.
Happy customers will not look at your competitors – they will happily interact with your brand again, and recommend the service/product further.
What is your main tactic when it comes to boosting brand awareness and engaging with your customers? How do you ensure that your business stands out?
I think it is necessary to build a personal relationship with your clients. If you truly create a positive experience, they will wholeheartedly become ambassadors that continually introduce people to your brand. We call it the power of the word of mouth strategy.
We work hard to publish high-quality service to all our clients, we see each one like family and treat them all as our own business, our clients trust us completely because of this, and because they understand that we always have the best interest of their project in mind.
When you give away good content, trust and credibility are built. You then become a trusted and reliable voice that they’ll come to know, love, and share with others.
How are you doing these days, and what does the future look like?
Today we couldn’t really be happier with where the business is at. We are well-known in our country and we have an incredible team that able to create outstanding work.
We also won a global award ‘Most Creative Digital Agency’ of 2020 The future looks great, the industry is only growing and more and more businesses are waking up to the fact that they need to either get with what is happening in the digital world or be left behind.
That makes it easy for us because we are no longer needing to educate them on what digital marketing is important, we just need to map a strategy to their needs and have it make sense!
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’ve learned that you need to hire people to have the same beliefs as you do and treat them as partners, not employees, there’s no I in teamwork and no-one can create such a creative agency alone, so I have been fortunate to work with such loyal and creative team.
Another major learning that I didn’t expect so early on is that not all of your clients are going to pay on time. This was particularly frustrating. It can be a massive hindrance to growth if clients are not paying in a timely fashion, and this brought with it a lot of challenges and frustrations early on.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Building a brand doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of work to forge strong relationships with people—and much of that work is done through marketing platforms. So nowadays, if you don’t have an online presence, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity!
Our primary tool is our website, containing all our services, case studies, and blogs about the latest marketing technologies and our company’s business news.
We use Facebook & Instagram to interact with our clients and followers. We share content regarding our work, participate with the latest social trends and share our daily activities and events on the Instagram story feature.
In addition to LinkedIn, we use YouTube, Pinterest, and we joined TikTok recently.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Steve Jobs, How To Win Friends and Influence People, The Go-Giver and Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
Do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting?
My advice is don’t let people’s noise stop you from doing things you love, and don’t do it just for money because it will be a tough journey – if the only driver is the money then eventually you will stop at some point.
Where can our readers keep up-to-date with you?
You can always keep in touch with our updates and latest work
Our website: www.ublac.com
Our social media accounts @UBlacagency
And my personal account @saadseddiq
