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The Three Rs Of Service Branding: Reach, Recognition, And Reputation

Think about your most recent branding campaign. Were your television ads as successful as you'd like them to be? Perhaps the billboards didn't create the recognition that you were looking for, but your online ads on Yahoo! and AOL worked quite well. Did you pick the right professional athlete to represent your firm's services?

If you're reading this far, and you work at most service businesses, you probably think I'm nuts. You don't do any of this.

Well, maybe you're a big firm and you do (kudos to you), or you've tried something here and there. But in most of our service business realities, advertising-as-a-primary-branding-vehicle is not the norm. And it shouldn't be.

The process these companies take to get their messages ready for the prime time spotlight isn't cheap. It takes real money to employ TV commercials, print ads, radio, internet, and the host of other brand impression-based media. While these are the traditional branding tactics for product and super-large service firms, for most of us, "traditional" branding just doesn't make sense.

Service firms that are not multi-national conglomerates can only play a limited amount of marketing cards, so to speak. Play your cards right, and you can build a strong brand in a way that will help you grow your firm...and do it for the right amount of effort and money.

If You Are Not Bank of America, Don't Use Their Strategy

I have helped companies such as General Motors and Bank of America build their brands the traditional way. Traditional brand development is great when you want to reach the 18 to 35 suburban female audience of 17 million people. You, on the other hand, likely don't need to reach 17 million people. Maybe you need to reach 70 people, 700, or 7,000. You don't need Bank of America's branding strategy applied to your smaller firm. It's overkill.

This does not mean that you don't need a strong brand. You do. (That is, if you want to grow your firm and fight price competition.)

The Three R's of Service Branding: Reach, Recognition, and Reputation

So how do you influence your market — small or large as it might be — in a meaningful way that produces a favorable impression in the minds of your prospects?

1. Reach the right audience by picking the right targets. Only the largest companies, where broad based awareness and recognition are important to front load a very large sales funnel, need to communicate to the entire market. You don't have to influence such a large universe to be successful, so don't.

   Target your list. Many service business leaders have an idea of what the ideal client or prospect looks like. Define your target market in terms of company size, location, industry, title, and other key factors that pertain to your services. Then find out who those companies are.

   Once you have the company names, do some digging to find the name of the actual decision makers you are trying to reach. Rather than casting a wide net, focus your efforts on these individuals. This list may only have 500 or 5,000 people on it, but no matter what it is, it is not 17 million.

2. Build brand recognition with direct marketing. I have seen too many a service firm "experiment" with various communication media only to be disappointed with the results. I recently spoke with a firm leader that was going to put a substantial portion of their marketing budget into advertising.

   "Well, our competitors are doing it," he reasoned. Advertising does work in the right context, but to be successful it needs to be sustained month after month at a level that will have enough impact to break through the clutter of the market. This takes a considerable investment. And while you'll engage many (and pay for it), you'll impact few.

   Focus on building your brand one prospect at a time by influencing only those who could be buyers of your services. It's fairly straightforward: focus on direct and targeted outreach to a defined audience. This means direct mail, email, telephone, and any other direct one-to-one contact method.

3. Enhance your reputation by demonstrating your value. If you want impact (and qualified leads) that can actually grow your business, focus on a specific target, make a specific offer, and rely on the value of the offer to establish your brand and reputation.

   Sales cycles for professional services are long.(It often takes a number months (or years) to nurture a prospect into a client. This calls for an extremely deep relationship that can only be established through direct, integrated, and sustained contact. If each contact is meaningful and delivers value in the form of a best practice study, white paper, seminar invite, or the like, you create an impression and gain awareness with that prospect.

   That impression, if reinforced consistently over time, develops not just recognition but reputation in the minds of your prospects.

The 4th "R": Reality

This approach assumes that, in reality, your company delivers a high quality service. If you don't deliver a high quality service, even the best marketing can't save you. Poor reputation trumps bad marketing every time.

We'll assume, however, that your services are great and deliver high value to a focused number of excellent clients. Take that same approach and deliver high value in your marketing to a targeted and focused number of excellent prospects, and the cards will fall nicely in your favor.