• Wednesday, November 06, 2024
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Brand development strategy for professional services firms

How your employees’ public behaviour can damage your brand

Brand development is the process of creating and strengthening your professional services brand. This process can be divided into three phases.

• Getting your brand strategy right and aligned with your business objectives.

• Developing all the tools you will need to communicate the brand, such as your logo, tagline and website.

• Strengthening your newly developed or updated brand.

Your brand development strategy is how you go about accomplishing these tasks. To make the task a bit easier, I’ve broken the brand development strategy into 10 steps.

1. CONSIDER YOUR OVERALL BUSINESS STRATEGY 
A strong, well differentiated brand will make growing your firm much easier. But what type of firm do you want? Are you planning to grow organically? Your overall business strategy is the context for your brand development strategy, so that’s the place to start. If you are clear about where you want to take your firm, your brand will help you get there.

Read also: African Brand Congress to focus on sustainability, brands growth

2. IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET CLIENTS
Who are your target clients? If you say “everybody” you are making a very big mistake. Research clearly shows that high growth, high profit firms are focused on having clearly defined target clients. The narrower the focus, the faster the growth. The more diverse the target audience, the more diluted your marketing efforts will be.

3. RESEARCH YOUR TARGET CLIENT GROUP
Firms that do systematic research on their target client group grow faster and are more profitable (see figure below). Further, those that do research more frequently (at least once per quarter) grow faster still. Research helps you understand your target client’s perspective and priorities, anticipate their needs and put your message in language that resonates with them. It also tells you how they view your firm’s strengths and your current brand.

4. DEVELOP YOUR BRAND POSITIONING
You are now ready to determine your firm’s brand positioning within the professional services marketplace (also called market positioning). How is your firm different from others and why should potential clients within your target audience choose to work with you?
A positioning statement is typically three to five sentences in length and captures the essence of your brand positioning. It must be grounded in reality, as you will have to deliver on what you promise. It must also be a bit aspirational so you have something to strive for.

5. DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGING STRATEGY
Your next step is a messaging strategy that translates your brand positioning into messages to your various target audiences. Your target audiences typically include potential clients, potential employees, referral sources or other influencers and potential partnering opportunities, to name a few of the usual suspects.
While your core brand positioning must be the same for all audiences, each audience will be interested in different aspects of it. The messages to each audience will emphasize the most relevant points. Each audience will also have specific concerns that must be addressed, and each will need different types of evidence to support your messages. Your messaging strategy should address all of these needs. This is an important step in making your brand relevant to your target audiences.

Read also: Brand activation as key to building brand equity

6. DEVELOP YOUR NAME, LOGO AND TAGLINE
For many firms, a name change is not required. But if you are a new firm, are undergoing a merger or are burdened with a name that no longer suits your positioning, a name change may be in order. Even if you don’t change your firm name, a new logo and tagline may make sense to better support your brand positioning.
Remember, your name, logo and tagline are not your brand. They are a part of your brand identity, the ways to communicate or symbolize your brand. You must live it to make it real. And don’t make the mistake of showing the new logo around internally to get a consensus. The name, logo and tagline are not for you. They are for your marketplace and should be judged on how well they communicate, not how much the partners like them.

7. DEVELOP YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
I could have called this step “develop your marketing strategy.” But didn’t. Why? Content marketing is particularly well suited to professional services firms in the Internet age. It does all things traditional marketing does but it does them more efficiently. It uses valuable educational content to attract, nurture and qualify prospects.
Remember that your brand strength is driven by both reputation and visibility. Increasing visibility alone, without strengthening your reputation, is rarely successful. That’s why traditional “awareness-building” advertising or sponsorships so often yield disappointing results. On the other hand, content marketing increases both visibility and reputation at the same time. It is also the perfect way to make your brand relevant to your target audiences. Case closed.

8. DEVELOP YOUR WEBSITE
Your website is your single most important brand development tool. It is the place where all your audiences turn to learn what you do, how you do it and who your clients are. Prospective clients are not likely to choose your firm solely based on your website. But they may well rule you out if your site sends the wrong message.

9. BUILD YOUR MARKETING TOOLKIT
The next step in the process is to build out the remainder of your marketing toolkit. This might include one-page “sales sheets” that describe core services offerings or key markets served. In addition, there may be a brief “pitch deck” that overviews the firm or key offerings and an e-brochure about the firm. These are rarely printed pieces anymore.
Increasingly, this marketing toolkit also includes videos. Popular video topics include firm overviews, case studies or “meet the partner” videos. Key services offerings are also very useful. If prepared appropriately, these tools serve not only a business development function but also are important for brand development.

Read also: How to grow your brand from obscurity to fame on digital media CEO, Tooki Media

10. IMPLEMENT, TRACK, AND ADJUST
This final step in the brand development process may be one of the most important. Obviously, a winning brand development strategy doesn’t do much good if it is never implemented. You might be surprised at how often that happens. A solid strategy is developed and started with all the good intentions the firm can muster. Then reality intervenes. People get busy with client work and brand development tasks get put off… then forgotten. That’s why tracking is so important.

Last line
The most important part of the process is you keeping at it. Remember, consistency is the key to driving and sustaining the growth and profitability of your firm.

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