Accountants are increasingly aware that strong branding is an essential part of how clients perceive value in a firm. Josh Waldhorn and Jeremy Richman explain how firms can get it right.
How to be brand smart
When you cut through the mystique surrounding the term 'branding', it comes down to one essential element: your brand is the promise that you make to your clients and prospective clients, to your employees and to yourselves.
How effective your brand is at contributing to your growth and profitability will depend to a very large extent on how well you have articulated and communicated that promise, whether the market wants what you are promising and how good you are at aligning your behaviours to it.
How do you formulate your brand promise? This is probably the most difficult task that you will have to undertake. Bouncing tag lines back and forth across the boardroom table may sound like a fun opportunity for creativity and expression, but it is unlikely to gain you much ground. A more productive approach is to have an open discussion among the firm's partners and leaders, using the language that you (and your clients) are comfortable with.
Be honest about what your firm stands for and the real values that drive it. Take a pragmatic look at where you are positioned in the market and what specialist and generalist services you are capable of delivering. Then test the validity of your claims.
View your firm from your clients' perspective and be realistic in assessing your client profiles, what they are buying and, above all, why they should choose to buy it from you and not from a larger, smaller or same-size competitor. Then distil that to the most succinct message that you can.
If, at the culmination, you emerge with a wishy-washy brand promise that does not reflect your aspirations for the business or differentiate you from others in your market, you won't be the first. As stated, this isn't easy. Either take another crack at it or bring in some external help.
One of the most highly regarded brand promises (it wasn't called that in those days) was created in the late 1880s by Collis P Huntington, the founder of Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company. It is brief. It is clear. 'We shall build good ships here. At a profit, if we can. At a loss, if we must. But always good ships.' This speaks volumes to customers and gives them good reason to trust the company and its ships, and it directs and supports the actions of management and employees. The company, now called Northrop Grumman Newport News, is the largest privately owned shipyard in the US.
Translating your brand promise into your brand identity Once you have your brand promise, you have a measure against which to assess the visual identity that you take to market. Ask yourself if your current visual identity aligns to your brand promise. If so, great. Make sure to regularly review this. If not, the mismatch could be costing you in lost business and lost opportunities, and you should probably do something to remedy it.
When you decide to commission a design firm to develop your new visual identity or marketing and communication materials, your brand promise should form a significant part of the brief. This will greatly aid the designers and copywriters in channelling their thinking, and it will aid you and your team in evaluating their proposals. Being able to tell a designer that 'those images do not align with our brand promise' is far more productive than 'I don't like green'.
What do you have, what do you need, what are the priorities? You will need to develop a marketing plan along with a matrix of all the marketing and communication tools that will enable you to implement it.
Much will depend on the size and nature of your business. Items you may want to consider include print advertisements, a company profile, case studies, credentials, service line brochures, press releases, newsletters, bulletins, presentations, client proposals, client reports, white papers, a website, email format, signage and the usual suite of livery.
Once you have established and documented a clear purpose for each item, and you understand where it fits into your marketing mix and how it supports your sales process and your client communication, you can prioritise.
Is that all there is to it? No. There is a lot more to successful branding than we can cover here. A logo and a colour palette are not a brand, and a brochure is not a marketing program. You won't find many customers or clients, especially those who purchase professional services, who will be persuaded to do business with you based on sugar coating and unclear or unkept promises.
Ultimately, perceptions of your brand will hinge on all your touchpoints: your business culture, beliefs, services, delivery processes, feedback mechanisms, personal relationships, recruitment and staff-management policies, and your market presence.
A reality check: we don't have the people or the budget Most small and medium-sized accounting firms cannot justify the expense of dedicated marketing departments, and the partners who run the business are often fully occupied dealing with clients and operational matters. However, when the branding fundamentals are in place, you at least are creating a mechanism to corral your activities towards a clear goal. This will help you and your team to focus on how you present your firm to the market (including your visual identity), who you hire, what services you choose to offer and what clients you choose to offer them to.
It's up to you to take control of your marketing materials It's not uncommon to see professional firms leaving a stack of brochures in the store room to gather dust because they are out of date and lag behind the firm's development and market offering.
We have a particular axe to grind here. Updating marketing and communication materials is a slow process that, typically, costs too much and consumes too much management time. Many design and marketing companies don't seem to mind this, they seek to control clients by controlling their marketing materials. When you need something updated or added, you have to call them. In many cases this is a disservice to clients.
Fortunately, there are alternative ways to commission and manage a suite of marketing and communication materials that place the control where it belongs: with clients. And it doesn't require any major investment or specialist skills. In fact, with the right approach and the right system, you should be able to dramatically reduce costs.
The brand manifesto At a minimum, these are some of the features that should be included in any suite of materials.
It should encompass all your current and foreseeable needs:
The suite should work in its entirety from day one. You shouldn't have to go to market with a mixed bag of marketing documents that may detract from your brand value.
You should be able to update your own materials, and produce new ones, quickly and without third-party involvement. These should look as professional, and 'on-brand', as the materials produced externally.
You should have controls to ensure that the information that you send to clients is current and that you are not running multiple versions of the same document.
You should be able to tailor packages to each client and to each opportunity. Professional services is rarely a one-size-fits-all approach.
Make a lasting impression The CPA logo stands for quality, credibility and integrity. Research consistently shows extremely high awareness levels of the CPA designation by business and the public. That's why, how and where you display your CPA Australia public practice logo is vital to the presentation of your practice. The first impression you make on clients will largely depend on how you present your practice, from your street signage to your reception area.
The CPA Australia logo style guide offers straightforward advice on how you and your practice can benefit from promoting your CPA status, including:
instructions on how to use the CPA public practice logo
guidelines on how to co-brand your stationery
letterhead, business card, 'with compliments' and fax cover sheet templates
use and availability of promotional brochures and CPA Australia branded merchandise (exclusive to CPA public practitioners).
These guidelines are simple to understand and implement in your practice. More importantly, they are designed to make the most of your biggest asset: your CPA status.
