LAW FIRM BRANDING

WTF makes a good brand anyway?

By Tony Reardon

Your brand is the entire experience anyone has when dealing with your company.

It’s what your business stands for, a promise it makes, and the personality it conveys. And while it includes a logo, colour palette, and maybe a strapline/tag line or positioning statement, those are only creative elements that convey the brand.

A brand lives in every day-to-day interaction you have with your market:

• Images conveyed;
• Messages delivered on your website, proposals, and collateral;
• The way employees interact with customers;
• A client’s opinion of you versus your competition; and
• The experiences people have when interacting with your business.

Branding is crucial for products and services sold in consumer markets. It’s also important in B2B and professional services because it helps you stand out from your competitors. It brings your company’s competitive position and value proposition to life; it positions your company in some way in the mind of your clients or customers. Your brand consistently and repeatedly tells people why they should buy from you or deal with you.

How does your brand stack up?
Think about successful brands like Virgin, Nokia, or Rolls Royce. You probably know what each brand represents. Now imagine that you’re competing with one of these companies. To capture significant, or any market share, it would be a good idea to start with a strong and unique brand identity – or you may not get far. You may want to consider your true business competitors here. What are their brands like compared to yours? Cut the bull and get honest – how do you stack up?

In any industry, when you put two companies up against each other, the one that represents something valuable will have an easier time reaching, engaging, closing, and retaining business. A strong brand strategy can be a big advantage.

Successful branding also creates ‘brand equity’ – the amount of money customers are willing to pay just because it’s your brand. Think Nike, Tiffany, or iPhone here. They all have competitors with similar products, but it’s the brand equity customers pay for. If you think this may not apply to your industry – consider this: when we employ the services of a professional, in any area, we expect the best and are already prepared to pay for it when we engage that business. We find that professional by word of mouth or research – all of which will point to the professional with a solid brand and plenty of stock in their brand equity. If we don’t feel confident with who they are, what their brand is telling us, we go somewhere else we do feel comfortable. Brand recognition follows positive brand messaging and solid brand strategy.

In addition to generating revenue, brand equity makes your company itself more valuable in the long run. By defining your brand strategy and using it in every interaction with your market, you strengthen your messages and relationships

If you have a brand strategy, it better be effective
Ask your clients, employees, and associates what they really think. And don’t do it over a beer or after a good meeting or you won’t get honesty. Are their impressions and what they think of when thinking of your company consistent with your strategy? If not, maybe you need to work on the areas you can improve on.

Get emotional
Marketing 101. List features and benefits of your product or service. A feature is an attribute, a configuration; a benefit is what that feature does for your clients. This is a good one for the whole company to do – yep… even the big bosses. The answers, when pooled, will give a great snapshot of what the features and benefits really are.

Determine which benefits are the most important to each of your key markets.

Break this all down to which benefits are emotional – the most powerful brand strategies must tap into the emotions of those who are making buying decisions in your markets, even business buyers.

Drill down further to the one thing your customers should think of when they think of you.

And that one thing is what your brand should represent.

Define your brand
This may sound a bit old hat, but think of your brand as a person with a distinct personality. Describe ‘him or her’, and then convey these traits in everything you do and create. Write positioning statements and a story about your brand; use them throughout your company materials.

Choose colours, fonts, and other visual elements that match your personality.

Determine how your employees will interact with prospects and customers to convey the personality and make sure your brand ‘lives’ within your company.

This is where we start when we consider developing or creating your brand, your identity.

What’s next?
A great brand strategy helps you communicate more effectively with your market, so follow it in every interaction you have with your prospects and your customers.

You have to ‘live’ your brand for it to become successful. Which is why it’s so important to get it right – it’s impossible to live up to something you are not – so get honest about what and who you really are. If you don’t like what you see, you can change it.

If you do – go tell the world about it.

Tony Reardon is a brand strategy specialist and business manager at Lemonade Design.

NZLawyer extra, edition 26, 27 May 2011