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The impact of having a strong and compelling brand in professional services

  1. Brand vs Reputation

I believe it is important to distinguish between a ‘brand’ and ‘reputation’ in professional services. While linked and equally important (yes, equally), they are not the same thing.

The reputation of a firm pertains to the acknowledged expertise of a firm in a certain field(s). It is what people who know the firm would say they are good at. But it is not the same thing as what a firm stands for as a company, as a group of people, a collective. What their attitude to business is, what characterises them (as a collective) and what values bring them together. Ergo, what it is like to work with them, or what you imagine it will be like to work with them. This is what a firm’s brand is about.

Many firms invest in their reputation, but few consider their brand to be of equal importance. Reputation is earned, often by having a key opinion leader(s) in a particular field(s). One person, or a few people, carry the reputation of a firm. Everyone, as a collective, carries the brand. A compelling brand gives that sense of purpose and mission to your working day, a reason to get out of bed, some excitement. Writing a list of worthy values does not constitute having a brand. A brand is something people need to feel. It acts like a magnet.

In the end, a strong reputation will draw consideration from talent and clients alike, but a strong brand is what seals the deal. More on this to come.

2. A View on Brands in Professional Services

I see few real brands in professional services. Firms tend to come across as a fragmented sum of their parts, a laundry list of people and experiences lumped together and displayed on a website with some generic sounding values. Websites, the shop windows, tend to look the same as, frankly, many others in their field. Visually, they tend to use similar colour schemes, imagery (cheesy smiles in suits, hand-shaking), and graphics that show arrows pointing upwards or conquering maps of the world. Reading them gives you a sense of déjà-vu… or rather, déjà-lu.

They lack vision, purpose, identity. When what they need is distinctiveness, charm, and memorability. You know, the things that make people, or a brand, likable.

If it weren’t for word-of-mouth, how would anyone find them? And if they did, why would they choose them? Some would answer ‘reputation’, but reputation only gets you so far. It does not make people like you or want to work with you. Brands do. Brands build businesses because businesses that have a strong brand attract and retain talent better, and they attract and retain clients better. That’s the value of a brand right there, and it is an intuitive truth.

Professional Services firms (in the UK) are investing more in their brands as traditional ways of marketing have become less effective, and new clients and business are a lot harder to get in the door. Advertising executives (shockingly!) now occupy senior roles and directorships in Law Firms.

When it comes to building a brand, there are barriers to overcome, and it will likely require a change in mindset, a change in marketing approach. But if you agree that marketing is about creating demand for services (a simple but universal definition of marketing), a compelling brand has to be front and centre of your marketing drive.

3. How People Choose a Firm

It is clichéd, but true to say, that the way people buy (or choose) a firm is much like how you choose a car, assuming your budget gives you access to a range of brands. It’s not a life commitment, but it’s still an important choice. After all, your car is a reflection of you, so while you may want to pay as little as possible, if you pay too little, that may not rub well with your social status. The same goes for your choice of partner in professional services, and there are rational and emotional criteria that influence decision-making.

Rational criteria: when it comes to professional services firms, it is a given that clients want to work with smart educated people, who have relevant training and proven experience, priced roughly in line with market rate. If your marketing only factors in these arguments, the chances are, you will not make a compelling argument. And you know it.

Emotional criteria: that’s where the brand comes into play. The pull of a brand, in the end, comes down to likability, or what many call an ‘emotional connection’. Put simply, when you have the choice of firms with relatively equal standing who meet your rational criteria, emotion will take over the decision-making process.

Do you win at least 25% of your pitches?

If you have a brand of substance and meaning, for the target audience, it gives a clear and appealing sense of what the firm will be like to work with (not just the person spearheading the pitch). You open up the emotional side of the buying process: that hidden, underlying, powerful sense of ‘I just like them’. That sense of likability is what gets you over the line.

Likability comes not just from one key contact, but emerges sub-consciously when a client starts looking your firm up, encounters your website or foyer, and begins to make soft, intuitive observations about a firm, based on its tone, what it says about itself, how it comes across in terms of attitude and anticipated behaviour(s), what its visual appearance feels like. There is no criteria checklist here, just that ‘gut feel’.

Decision made.

4. Barriers to investing in a brand

Firms I have spoken to tell me they recognise the need to up their brand game. They know of peers or other firms who have done so, and by the time we get around a table, it is probably the most important item on the marketing to-do list. Yet there is hesitancy. Questions I am asked:

“How will you get everyone on board?” (i.e. not everyone thinks this is important)

“How will you make it happen” (i.e. I can’t get my people behind this, so how will you?)

“How will we align” (i.e. we are an argumentative lot and rarely agree on anything)

“How do I know this will work?” (i.e. I am afraid of taking a leap of faith)

Whatever the hesitation(s), there is a reason we are having this conversation, and while you could be charging this hour out to a client at £500, you have chosen to spend it with me. A firm, or at least the decision-making part of the firm, needs to arrive at the conclusion that things are not working well enough, and something has to change. That investing in the brand is the single most important initiative to get the business moving in the right direction.

The tipping point? Acceptance that a compelling brand attracts and retains talent better than a weak brand, and it attracts and retains clients better.

You can, and should, measure the change in a stronger, more compelling brand. Compare your talent retention rates and the quality and fit of new candidates, look at your new client win %, look at your culture and employee satisfaction. But before those numbers materialise, see if you feel renewed pride in your brand, and if you (and others) get out of bed in the morning with a little more spring in your step.

The juice, surely, is worth the squeeze.