BUILDING POWERFUL PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BRANDS 

Authentic Identity has worked extensively with professional services firms and their leaders, and we have a deep understanding of the particular challenges these businesses face when it comes to building their brands and marketing their services.

Professional services firms are a difficult group to differentiate: business models, practices, frameworks and deliverables are all very similar. They sell something intangible – advice.  And their brand is conveyed by people – often highly educated, independent-minded people who don’t much like being managed and are unlikely to parrot a script or march in lockstep. So starting with image isn’t going to get you very far. To build the organizational brand, you have to uncover the value-creating identity that binds the firm's people together - and them make it operational throughout the business. 

Professional services firms, possibly more than any other type of business, really need the consistency and direction provided by a clear identity.  There are at least three good reasons.

• Focus: Professional service firms' offerings are intangible, hard to explain, and easy to expand and change. Without a clear, shared sense of the real meaning and purpose that underpins the business, the problems that it solves, and the value that it creates, a professional firm can easily morph into whatever the client – any client – wants it to be at any given time, or whatever each new senior hire thinks it should be 
• Talent: Attracting and retaining top talent is the second reason why professional services firms need the compass of a clear, value-creating identity. A professional firm’s assets are its people, and these assets appreciate significantly with seasoning – i.e., their expertise builds over time. A clear, shared sense of the purpose and meaning (therefore value) in the organization helps bind your best people to the firm, and helps elevate morale and motivation during tough times
• Differentiation: The sheer proliferation of professional services firms, and the relative ease with which concepts and marketing messages can be copied by a competitor, mean that the stated differences between firms are often onion-skin thin.  Add to that the fact that the firm’s “brand” is conveyed in large part via its people, and you have a uniquely difficult industry in which to create meaningful differentiation or build a brand. A clear, strong value-creating identity is the foundation for a strong organizational brand. 

To learn more about how Authentic Identity can help your professional services firm to attract and keep the right clients and the right people, click here or check out the What We Do section of our website.