Your firm is not alone in addressing issues of "branding." Many professional services firms have begun to explore, and in some cases execute, serious branding strategies in an effort to gain market share. 

There are a number of points to consider as you start to ponder your firm's branding. First, of course, is the firm's level of commitment to invest in a strategy. 

There are some that argue that you can't brand a service like you can a product. We disagree, and believe it takes similar degrees of difficulty. Research supports the assertion that commitment to a brand strategy is at least a three-to-five year commitment. 

It is not an easy, or overnight, process. It takes time, money and creativity to establish a strategic position in the markets you want to grow in. 

Although the process itself is complex, most marketing consultants boil the branding process down into four basic steps: 

Analyze your offering (who are we, why would someone buy from us) 
Define value (and your values) for your audience 
Take a position (you cannot be all things to all people) 
"Burn it into their minds" (persistently, consistently put your message in front of your desired audiences)

Why brand?

So how do buyers make a decision among services that are hard to tell apart? It is a fairly well accepted notion that buyers of accounting and legal services, for example, are not particularly qualified to know whether one professional is, say, more technically competent, than another professional.

If the services offered by accounting and law firms are similar in price and performance, and assuming most other things are equal, how does the brand help differentiate one firm from another? Is it even necessary to offer a public interpretation (or paid advertisements) of who you are and what you have to offer? Aren't word-of-mouth and personal referrals enough? 

Begin with brand analysis

In deciphering whether your firm should invest in a branding strategy, you may want to do your homework first. You will want to conduct an analysis or who you are, and what you want to be. If there is a gap, you could benefit from investing in awareness and reputation-building advertising.

Hire a strategic marketing consultant to help facilitate this process if the partners find it difficult to carve out the time to do it. You'll want to address such questions as: where does 80% of my work come from? Where does my competition come from?

What brand is possible and achievable? What should you hire us for?

Branding is not about creating name recognition to just to drive business in the door, it's about attracting the "right" business. When you define your clients, for example, you are defining yourselves. How are you different? What is the "emotional difference" that clients are willing to pay for? Your commodity business is probably not worth advertising for, it's the hard-to-find or services that offer the highest emotional benefit to potential clients ("help me get out of trouble with the IRS" for accountants, for example) and are the "cash cows" for the firm.

As you engage in this analysis, you will also need to define your values as a company, and you may be startled to discover that your client's values reflect and resonate with yours.

Establish a market position

"A brand is a memorable promise made visible." This, and other widely publicized definitions of branding are readily available to professional services firms. The services professions are a little behind the curve in adopting the philosophies that consumer products companies have successfully held for decades, and that were made quite popular in more recent years by the books and articles created by positioning gurus Al Reis and Jack Trout. David Ogilvie of Ogilvie and Mather was one of the first advertising giants to pick up on the concept in a dramatic way with such campaigns as the "Hathaway Man" and other classic advertising campaigns.

The general claim is that we receive about 3,000 messages a day, and some estimates are higher. The glory of a great brand is being able to cut through the clutter and gain "top of mind" awareness.

A popular test that some marketers like to use is to challenge an audience to come up with the first names that come to mind in a particular product category. For example, can you name the top brands of toothpaste? Most people can easily come up with three, or four. After that, the exercise takes real effort.

The general rule of thumb in the consumer products industry is that the leading position owns 45% of the market, the second owns 30%, the third owns 15% and every one else is battling for the last 15%. (I know you accountants out there are calculating these numbers to see if they "foot.")

Awareness and name recognition is really pretty basic: Noone can hire you if they can't think of your name.

How do you break into a crowded category? For example, if there are a number of firms competing for the emerging-companies market in a geographic area, how is your firm going to stand out? Again, taking some lessons from the consumer products folks:

Redefine the category. Nyquil redefined the category of cough suppressants by not trying to compete with the day-time leaders who dominated the category (Contac, Sudafed). Nyquil was the "night-time" congestion reliever, and even introduced the idea of helping you sleep peacefully with your cold. 
Find a vacancy in the mind. Great brands want to find the place in your mind that isn't occupied by something else. The goals again are very simple: to get noticed, and, to be remembered. 
Define your position. There are many considerations you can take into account as you develop your positioning strategy. And your creative strategy will grow from these discussions. Some of the positioning considerations you may consider are your firm's size, methods of delivery, geographic service area/s, the brand promise, specialized expertise, "battle stories" won for clients and other things you do well or better than your competition.


Here are some examples of headlines from print ads to give you an idea of how one East Coast intellectual property law firm established its market position, according to ad man Burkey Belser:

Example: "We know what keeps you up at night, and we have the answers."

Example: "About to spend a hundred million dollars for a biotech company that has never made a dime? Cash cow or bum steer?"

Example: "Cyberthieves are selling knock-offs of your product on the internet. Cutting-edge, or cutting corners?"

The promise offered by each of these ads supports the claim that this firm would know your issues, and have the answers you need, even if you don't know much about them and the ads don't tell you much more than that.

"Burn it into their minds"

Why does Coca-Cola continue to advertise? Do they really need to generate more revenues as the market leader in their category? According to David Aaker, author of "Brand Leadership," in January of 1998 Coke had a market value more than four times that of GM, in part because the value of the Coke brand equity was over twice the value of the entire GM firm.

Think of branding as an alternative to price competition. Tom Peters sums it up this way: "In an increasingly crowded marketplace, fools will compete on price. Winners will find a way to create lasting value in the customer's mind."

The value of a brand cannot be measured precisely, but it can be estimated roughly. Marketers use formulas to estimate the value of the brand by evaluating the earnings of a product market carrying the brand, divided into those attributable (1) to the brand, (2) to fixed assets like plants and equipment, and (3) to other intangibles like people, systems, processes or patents. The earnings attributable to the brand are capitalized.

In 1999, an Interbrand study of brands with significant market presence (globally) showed sixty brands that had values over $1 billion; the leaders were Coca-Cola at $83.8 billion and Microsoft at $56.7 billion. This is a dramatic illustration that creating strong brands does pay off and that brands have created meaningful value.

So what is a reasonable formula for a large local or regional services firm, in terms of the investment needed to create brand assets? There are many ways to elaborate the brand identity; the extent of the investment depends on the services being offered, the markets being reached, the degree to which a firm desires to grow, and other key elements. The investment doesn't have to be huge, it just has to be "right" for your firm.