10 Brand Development Blunders: A Guide for Professional Services Firms

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Whether you are developing a brand new brand (a brand launch) or updating and repositioning an existing firm (a re-branding), there are several common blunders that can cost you dearly. Falling prey to them can kill the effectiveness of your brand development efforts and waste precious time and money.

Let’s begin with a definition of brand development.

Brand Development Defined

Brand development, as we use it here, is the process of creating or updating a professional services brand. It typically involves three phases.

• Getting the brand strategy right. The opening phase often involves client and target audience research, brand positioning, and brand or messaging architecture.
• Building the brand. In this phase, a firm develops a new identity and business development tools, such as a name, logo, tagline, stationary, website, marketing collateral, proposal templates, and a content marketing strategy.
• Rolling out the newly developed brand. Here, marketing plans, internal staff training, and a wide range of promotional techniques are brought into play to increase the visibility of the brand with target audiences (from potential new clients to referral sources and prospective new hires).

The brand development process can be daunting. The payoff is huge and the costs are significant, so the stakes are high. All the more reason to avoid costly blunders. Here is my list of the top 10 mistakes:

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What is a Brand? A Professional Services Firm Perspective

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

For most professional services firms, your brand is arguably your most valuable asset — and perhaps the least well understood.  It’s not too surprising, given that few professional services firms are run by executives with a marketing background.

As a matter of fact, many professionals have never had a single marketing class in their entire formal education.  Further, their advancement and promotions have been centered around their ability to close new business based on personal relationships and referrals.  Branding considerations seem far removed.  Big mistake.

Why Formal Brand Definitions Fail

Consult a marketing textbook and you are likely to find a brand defined as the sum total of a customer’s emotion and experience with your firm.  You’ll probably find the discussion abstract and not very practical.  It seems far removed from the day-to-day realities of bringing in new clients and recruiting staff.  In reality, the opposite is true. Your brand has a direct impact on building your firm.

What a Brand is Not

Let’s first peel away some very common misconceptions:

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Internal Branding for Professional Services Firms: 10 Key Success Strategies

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Internal branding is much more important for a professional services firm than for almost any other industry. There are three main reasons for this:

• Your staff is your product. Right there, you separate yourself from product-oriented companies.
• The interaction between professional services providers and clients is often more prolonged and happens over time, so the impression is strong.
• Because of the nature of the work, the need for key attributes such as trust and confidence are paramount.

Given these factors, you might expect that internal branding receives a lot of attention in the professional services. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.

Here are 10 key strategies to get your internal branding on track:

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Rebranding Strategies for Professional Services Firms

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

There are a lot of different reasons that professional services firms consider rebranding. Sometimes there is an easy to understand event such as a merger or a catastrophic failure (think Arthur Anderson). But most often it is driven by a desire to accelerate growth or enter a new market.

Sooner or later, the discussion gets around to the “how” question. That’s where rebranding strategies come into play. While there are a lot of variations and combinations possible, there are five basic re-branding strategies to consider:

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Why Online Branding Matters

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

Online branding may be the most important marketing concept that you never think about. Granted, you may spend your brainpower thinking about online marketing and how you can generate more leads, but online branding is the Cinderella of the digital world.

So what exactly is online branding and why should you care?

Online Branding Defined

Simply put, online branding is the process of developing and promoting your firm’s brand online. Easy enough to understand the basic concept.

It generally involves two basic activities. The first of these is making sure that your firm’s brand identity and positioning is accurately represented online. Does your You Tube channel reflect your identity? Are your various company profiles all consistent and up to date? And, of course the big one, does your website accurately reflect your brand?

The second activity is using online tools and channels to build your brand. Almost every firm is engaged in some activities that either directly or indirectly do this. Whether it’s Social Media, SEO, or their website itself, professionals are increasingly looking online for cost effective ways to boost their firm’s profile.

Why Should You Care?

This one is actually pretty easy. Let’s start with your professional services brand. As I have blogged about before, your firm’s brand can be thought of as your reputation times your visibility. The greater these factors, the stronger your brand:

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Branding Services for Professional Services Firms: 10 Insider Tips

By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.

So you are thinking about rebranding your professional services firm.  Where do you start?  Or perhaps you are launching a new services line or even a new firm.  What do you need to consider?

Here are 10 tips to help you get started on the right foot.  These will help you avoid some of the common branding mis-steps that waste resources and set firms back.

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