B2B Brand Strategy Archives

Why Law Firms Need Brand Strategy

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Tracy Lloyd

Consulting Firms are brands too

Within professional services and consulting firms, there’s very little that distinguishes one brand from another. Practice areas and services all lead with the same claims: excellent client service, tailored solutions, and global reach. So much similarity makes all consulting firms blend together. Taglines echo. Logos mirror each other. Marketing copy follows the same jargon. Ultimately, they become indistinguishable.

As the shift to a buyer’s market solidifies, competitive rivalries intensify. It’s no longer enough for a firm’s identity to be solely linked to overall profitability or arbitrary rankings. In order to truly compete, more attention needs to be paid to differentiation of values, POV, and behavior to make a firm stand apart.

For most consulting firms, business development depends on the individual star power of partner personalities. Though these individuals may represent the firm’s larger brand, the specific behavior, image, attitude, and message they portray can vary significantly. While clients may feel attached to these individuals, the firm’s reliance on inconsistent personal brands over its greater brand presents an inherent barrier for long-term growth, retention of talent, and overall success.

A purposeful brand strategy helps consolidate all the personal brands into one global brand identity. Here are four things to consider when building a brand strategy for your firm.

What is the overarching brand story?

Everyone within the firm – from the most senior partners to the office administrators – need a consistent brand story that clearly communicates why the brand matters. By laddering up the brand stories of individuals into one global brand story, the brand becomes stronger, more reliable, more resilient, and more respected.

Evaluate a go-t0-market strategy that addresses the top target audiences.

Explore the needs, motivations, pain points, and expectations of your target audiences and go to market with a strategy that speaks directly to them. Brands that make an emotional impact on the people most important to the brand’s success create long-term appeal and loyalty.

Develop an internal behavior guide.

When people at all levels of a firm understand how to live and breathe the brand promise throughout their everyday behavior, the brand promise becomes a reality. A guide can help everyone within the firm get aligned and unified, moving forward as the best and most consistent advocates of the brand.

How does the firm want to make people feel?

Successful brand strategy revolves around understanding how your brand makes people feel. Aligning the feelings your brand evokes through your brand’s the voice, messaging, narrative, and visual identity will make your firm more meaningful to the people who matter.

When a firm mobilizes with a purposeful brand strategy that informs and guides the behavior of every person in every office, the brand will stand apart as a top choice for clients and talent alike. Investing in your brand strategy is the most valuable investment your firm will make.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm.

Time to Reconnect Your B2B Brand to Your Bottom Line

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Tracy Lloyd

Is your B2B brand disconnected from your daily operations?

Do your senior executives consider your brand as they make decisions, sell to clients, hire staff?
Are your employees able to draw from your brand the inspiration and motivation they need to be effective and gratified in their work?
Do your partners know enough about what your brand is trying to achieve to offer the best possible assistance?
Are your investors believing that your brand is building value for them?
Do your customers resonate with your brand in ways that distance you from your competition?

If your brand is simply a logo and two word slogan, good luck.

If your brand is a document buried deep inside your system, good luck.

If your brand is someone else’s responsibility, good luck.

If your brand is weak, misunderstood and unappreciated, good luck.

On the other hand, if your brand starts to reach out and connect to people in meaningfully ways, if your brand’s behavior begins to make people feel that you are a special and valued partner, and if everyone in your firm starts to embrace and be led by your brand’s meaning…

Your senior executive will make smarter, more profitable decisions
Your employees will work more eagerly and with greater satisfaction
Your partners will go out of their ways to help you
Your investors will sleep at night
Your customers will be loyal advocates of your brand

Meaning for your B2B brand flows from having a clear, concise and compelling “why” that works to make your brand personally relevant to people.

When coupled with a behavior that makes people feel special every time they interact with your brand, this meaning becomes emotionally important to them.

These two factors change the way people think and act with respect to your brand – and this new behavior connects directly to your bottom line.

This is the role of emotive branding.

It takes tired, neglected B2B brands and makes them bottom-line contributors.

Emotive Brand is a B2B branding agency.

Capitalizing on the Human Dimension of Professional Services

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Jerry Holtaway

I find it ironic that many of the most people-driven enterprises in our economy – law, architecture, consulting, and engineering firms – are often the most superficial with branding.

For most professional service firms, “branding” is only about logos and color palettes. It seems branding’s only goal is to project a serious, professional, and trustworthy identity.

Unfortunately, this limited view of branding leads most professional service firms to the same bland destination.

Indeed, the Internet is littered with the drab, me-too, institutional websites of professional service firms. Flipping from site to site, one has a hard time distinguishing one firm from another. Across an industry, you’ll find the same, tired and predictable rational presentations of facts about each firm. In almost all cases, there are strikingly similar, and weirdly unnatural, photos of executives posed in front of wood paneling.

Does this sound like your professional service brand? If so, it’s really time to shift your view of what branding is capable of doing, and what a more humanly meaningful brand can do for your partners and your firm.

Challenged firms need a new approach

If your firm is struggling to attract new business, finding it hard to retain clients, losing the best recruits to other firms and languishing in the me-too land of professional services branding, its time a for a dose of human emotion in your workplace and in the marketplace.

Human emotion? Well, this is not about presenting happy, smiling faces or tear-jerking situations. Rather, it is about connecting in a more meaningful way with emotional human beings. The emotions and feelings I am talking about – which have the potential to propel your firm forward in a distinct way – are not frivolous or mercenary. They are relevant, engaging and accessible feelings that are totally natural to what your firm does, and what it does for people.

Creating a presence that resonates emotionally

For decades, branding has skirted around the fact that all rational decisions – from which mayonnaise jar to pick up off the shelf, to which firm to appoint – occur within a swirl of emotions. Apart from the emotions which an individual naturally brings to the moment (feeling in love, or feeling mad about being passed up for a promotion), there are also emotions in play that are introduced when an individual thinks about a particular brand.

These emotions – and the feelings they trigger – are either neutral, negative, or positive. Naturally, no brand intentionally strives for a neutral or negative emotional aura. But, what is strange is that few professional service brands strive for a uniquely positive emotional aura. This is particularly strange because of the human nature of the work professional service firms perform.

Emotive branding elevates professional service firms

We’ve found a way to bring professional service brands new meaning and relevance. We start by thinking of the best way for your clients, prospects and recruits to feel about your firm. We then guide you on how to update your processes, policies and practices so they better evoke these feelings. We create tools that get your partners and support staff to understand the value of emotional differentiation (both for the firm and individually). We help you revamp your firm’s communications, marrying your new emotional aura to your current rational presentation (the look and feel, the story you tell, and the voice you use).

Use emotions to differentiate in profoundly meaningful ways

Strive to make each experience people have with your firm more emotionally involving. Do it in specific, own-able ways that positively predispose them to act in your firm’s best interests. Create a distinctively appealing presence for your firm that stands apart from the crowd. Reach out using human emotion to make your rational story more compelling.

After all, people will decide based on how they feel about your firm’s brand. Why not do all you can to influence how they feel?

To see examples of B2B brand strategy and professional services examples please visit our client page.

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Tag: B2B Brand Strategy