7 Branding Blunders That Will Cost You Time, Money and Lost Opportunity

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Branding (or re-branding) your professional services firm can be tricky.  After all, your people are your product and they are not subject to “brand control” in the same way a box of breakfast cereal is.  Further, most professional services firms are run by technical experts, not marketing mavens.  So, it’s not surprising that professional services firms are prone to branding missteps.

Our experience and research have uncovered seven common issues that we have documented in a white paper. These common missteps can derail firms: costing them new clients, eating into profitability, and adding countless headaches. Fortunately, they are all avoidable if you know what to look for.

Here is a rundowb of the 7 biggest branding blunders (love that alliteration!):

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The Amazing Story of High Growth, High Value Professional Services Firms

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Today marks the launch of our new book, Spiraling Up: How to Build a High Growth, High Value Professional Services Firm. To say that the book is an accident is perhaps overstating the case. But this much is true: it is not what we set out to do three years ago. No, our goals were much more modest. We just wanted to grow our firm. And being marketers, we reasoned that the first thing to do was to look more systematically at our target client group.

That first study of 100 professional services firms started a chain of events that led to a book that describes an extraordinary group of firms that outperform their peers on almost every measure of success.  They grow 9 times faster, are 50% more profitable and command a premium valuation in the marketplace. And amazingly, they do it while spending less than average on sales and marketing.

We didn’t start out looking for high performers, nor did we have any pet theories to prove. We just wanted to see what our target clients needed. But as we analyzed the data from the first study, we came across a group of fast growing firms. We isolated what they were doing differently, but were left with a big question: So what?

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Differentiating Your Firm: How One Accounting Practice Embraces Becoming A Commodity

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Boy, do I have an interesting firm to tell you about. I came across this very cleverly positioned firm In Dennis Howlett’s always interesting blog, AccMan. He always has a thought provoking perspective that is nicely captured by his tagline, “Never knowingly under opinionated.”

The firm he profiled is a UK based accounting firm called Mazuma, and it takes a very counterintuitive approach to differentiating itself.

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Client Targeting Drives Growth and Profitability

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

You’ve heard it a million times before: to build a commanding reputation you need to narrowly target your prospects. But you probably don’t really believe it. After all, if a potential client goes to your website and sees that you specialize in a different type of client, won’t that turn them off? (Answer: yes, it probably will.) So most firms write their target client description to be as broad as possible. It seems safer. But does it really work?

Well, we have an answer to that question and it comes from our new research study, The High Growth Professional Services Firm. These firms grow 9 times faster, are 50% more profitable, yet spend slightly less than average on marketing and sales. How do they do it? As we covered in a recent post, one of the keys is strategy. High growth firms are much more likely to use counterintuitive approaches, such as narrow specialization, and tend to have easily understood, believable differentiators. But that’s only part of the answer.

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Your professional services firm can be different

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Sometimes it can feel like it is impossible for a professional services firm to be truly different. Simply saying that you have great people or are very dedicated to client satisfaction can ring hollow.

So how can you go about differentiating your firm? What will make it special enough to give you a competitive advantage?

In the professional services marketplace, there are a variety of approaches to this thorny problem. The most straightforward technique is to specialize in a particular type of client or vertical: “We work exclusively with IT companies;” or “We do marketing for credit unions.” You get the drift.

If that option isn’t available, however, you might consider a twist on that approach — specialize in a customer segment that your clients service. Let me give you a example. My partner Aaron Taylor pointed me to a Maryland-based interactive firm called Immersion Active. One look at their website and I knew they had nailed a clear and easy-to-understand differentiator. Here is how they put it:

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Professional Services Strategy Made Simple

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

As business leaders, we’re supposed to know all about strategy. After all we’re typically responsible for setting the strategic direction of our firms. But it’s a widely misunderstood topic. So it’s a real joy to encounter someone who can put the topic in perspective.

Recently, I attended a workshop on the topic of execution conducted by Patrick Thean of the Gazelles organization. In my experience, strategy and execution are closely related, and a point Thean made only deepened this conviction. Thean was emphasizing how important it was that tracking performance indicators support your business strategy. That’s when he said it

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