Brand Development For Professional Services

Branding forms a critical part of your professional services firm. Brand development is the process of using marketing strategies to enhance relevance, shape reputation, as well as boost the visibility of your company. Your brand is what makes your company stand out from the crowd and increase in value. This means that investing in brand development is a fundamental requirement for any company's growth and positioning within their industry. Kindly read on to understand the benefits of brand development and the steps you need to follow to develop your brand.

Why is Brand Development Critical?

Brand development helps you to differentiate from the rest of the competition and creates a unique perception in your market. Developing a great brand will make you visible and distinguish your value to prospective customers and make them want to buy your services. Brand development helps you to build trust with the customers. When your core brand message is communicated with regularity and you deliver on your brand promise with consistency, you will begin to build the trust that is essential for long term success. This means that brand development involves making a promise and continuously fulfilling customer expectations.

Brand development establishes customer loyalty. Loyalty is when a customer forgoes alternative options to what you offer only to purchase your services. This happens because your services have something unique that customers really want or you solve a problem for them. To build a loyal customer base, your brand has to resonate around meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Branding conveys your company's value and uniqueness. The resources and effort you put into building your brand will determine how much value your customers will attach to it. This means that proper branding not only attracts customers to your services, but it also raises the value of your services.

Step 1: Consider Your Overall Business Strategy

A strong and well-differentiated brand will help you to grow your business more easily. Thus, you need to define what your sustainable competitive advantage is, who your target customers are and how to succeed relative to the competition. Your overall business strategy forms the foundation for your brand development strategy. If you clearly understand your key business objectives, what customers and market you are serving, you will develop your brand accordingly.

Step 2: Determine Your Target Audience

After establishing your overall business strategy, you now need to determine your target audience. High growth and profitable companies are usually focused on having clearly defined target clients. When building your brand, keep in mind the people you want to reach with your services. You need to tailor your mission and goals towards meeting their exact needs.

Targeting a niche requires committing to focusing your time and resources to understanding and addressing the needs of your ideal customer. Your competitive advantage should directly relate to your ability to serve your target client base better than any other business else can. This will help ensure that your brand message is crystal clear in communicating the value you offer to the intended audience.

Step 3: Define Your Company's Personality

To a large extent, a brand conveys your business identity. An important step in developing your brand entails determining the company's personality (see our article on Brand Archetypes). You can start the process by thinking of the company as a person. What will come into people's minds when they think about your company? Asking this question will help you to determine what people should think about your products or services. Deciding on your company's personality may also require the input of other members of your branding team.

Step 4: Develop Your Positioning

Positioning your business entails deciding on how to distinguish your services from other similar offerings in the marketplace. You need to gather enough information about your direct competition. Then, determine possible shortcomings in their products or services and use the information to your advantage. Develop a unique selling proposition that differentiates you from your competitors, and one that convinces prospective customers that your services are better or fulfill an unaddressed need of theirs.

Step 5: Develop Your Messaging Strategy

Your messaging strategy should translate your brand positioning into communications that reach and resonate with your target audience. Your target audience can include prospective customers, potential employees, referral sources, and potential partners, among others. The message to each audience will emphasize the most relevant points of your business and address the specific concerns of each segment you serve. A messaging strategy is essential to forming connections with your clients and making your brand relevant to your audience.

Step 6: Develop Your Name, Logo, and Slogan

Choose a brand name that has a connotation to your offerings, is memorable and doesn’t limit future growth. Be sure to check your name for trademarks, that it isn’t being used by a competitor and that a domain name and social media handles are available for you to use.

A logo conveys the image and personality of your brand. An effective logo will make your brand visually appealing, while a successful slogan will help customers remember your products or services. A slogan is a short, catchy phrase that you can employ during marketing campaigns to give your brand an extra edge.

Step 7: Develop Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing involves providing a steady stream of useful information to potential clients. Your brand is usually driven by reputation and visibility. Think about being educational rather than just promotional. This will address the relevance, reputation, and visibility of your company. Over time, prospective customers understand how you approach problems through the content you produce. Eventually, they trust your products or services and start buying.

Step 8: Deliver Consistent Communication

Once your company has developed an effective brand, it must be implemented consistently via every point of contact with customers. Your brand message should remain the same across various aspects of your business such as advertisements, signage, and public relations, among other touchpoints. This means that you need to get your employees on board because they are your greatest brand advocates. You should create an internal branding model that will help employees to understand and connect to the core values of your brand. This will effectively equip them to communicate the brand to your customers.

Step 9: Implement Your Branding Strategy

After developing a brand strategy, you need to implement it. Ensure that all areas of your branding are being addressed during the implementation stage. Also, remember that branding is an ongoing effort and it doesn't stop at any given point. Your brand will continue to determine who you are as a company and your audience perception towards your services.