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A Game-Changing Business Development Strategy to Achieve Consistent Growth

Joe Pope — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 12:00:26 +0000

Your business development strategy can be key to the success or failure of your firm. In this post, we’ll explore how to create a strategy and associated plan that can propel an individual, a practice or an entire firm to new levels of growth and profitability.

Business Development Defined

Business development (BD) is the process used to identify, nurture and acquire new clients and business opportunities to drive growth and profitability. A business development strategy is a document that describes the strategy you will use to accomplish that goal.

The scope of business development can vary a lot from organization to organization. Consider the model professional services organizations use to get new business shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The three stages of the business development funnel

The first two stages of the model, Attract Prospects and Build Engagement, are traditional marketing functions. The final stage, Turn Opportunities into Clients, is a traditional sales function. In its traditional role, business development would be looking for new channels of distribution or marketing partners.

But roles are changing and naming conventions evolve. In today’s world many firms refer to the entire marketing and sales process as business development. We know, it can be confusing. So let’s sort it out a bit.

Business Development vs. Marketing

Marketing is the process of determining which products and services you will offer to which target audiences, at what price. It also addresses how you will position and promote your firm and its offerings in the competitive marketplace. The result of all this activity should be an increasing awareness of your firm among your target audience — and a stronger flow of qualified leads and opportunities.

Download the Business Development Guide

Historically, business development has been a subset of the marketing function that was focused on acquiring new marketing or distribution relationships and channels. While this role still exists in many companies, the business development title has become interchangeable with many marketing and sales functions.

Business Development vs. Sales

Sales is the task of converting leads or opportunities into new clients. Business development is a broader term that encompasses many activities beyond the sales function. And while there is some overlap, most traditional BD roles are only lightly involved in closing new clients.

Business development is often confused with sales. This is not too surprising because many people who are clearly in sales have taken to using the title of Business Developer. Presumably this is done because the organization believes that the BD designation avoids the stigma sometimes associated with sales.

Nowhere is this practice more prevalent than in professional services. Accountants, lawyers and strategy consultants do not want to be seen as “pushy sales people.” This titular bias is firmly rooted despite the fact that developing new business is an important role of most senior members of professional services firms. Also, the many aspects of the traditional business development role (finding new distribution channels, for instance) don’t translate easily to the professional services environment.

Since so many clients want to meet and get to know the professionals they will be working with, the Seller-Doer role is well established in many firms. The preference for Seller-Doers also tends to discourage firms from fielding a full-time sales force.

As an alternative approach to leveraging fee-earners’ time, some firms have one or more Business Developers on staff. In the professional services context, these folks are often involved in lead generation and qualification, as well as supporting the Seller-doers in their efforts to close new clients. In other organizational contexts, this role might be thought of as a sales support role.

The result of this confusing picture is that many professional services firms call sales “business development” and make it part of every senior professional’s role. They may also include some marketing functions, such as lead generation and lead nurturing, into the professional’s BD responsibilities.

It is on this expanded role — in which business development encompasses the full range of lead-generation, nurturing and sales tasks — that we will concentrate on in this post.

Business Development Examples

To clarify what the professional services business development role entails, let’s consider this business development example:

Bethany is the Director of Business Development at a fictional mid-sized architecture firm. She is not an architect herself. Nor is she involved in any aspect of delivering client projects. Instead, her role is exclusively focused on signing new business for her firm—whether new or existing clients.

For new clients, Bethany spends much of her time responding to RFPs, communicating directly with inbound leads generated by the marketing/sales enablement team, and nurturing potential clients that she met at a recent industry conference. Bethany also collaborates with the marketing team in the development of any materials she needs to sell to new accounts.

When it comes to existing accounts, Bethany also plays a major role. She meets monthly with delivery teams to understand whether current client projects are on scope or if change orders are needed. She also maintains a relationship with clients’ key stakeholders. If an opportunity for more work opens, she knows that her relationship with the client is an important component of the potential deal.

In this example, Bethany is the primary driver of business development but that does not mean she is doing this alone. Her colleague, Greg, is a lead architect at the firm. While Greg’s primary focus is delivering for his clients, business development—and even marketing—is also an important part of his professional life. Greg often attends industry conferences with Bethany, where he is a speaker and subject matter expert and she is the primary networker. The business development dynamic should not end with Bethany, and it should permeate the whole organization.

In this business development example, you can see that the range of roles and responsibilities is wide. This is why it is essential that business development be delivered strategically. Let’s talk about what that means.

Strategic Business Development

Not every business development activity has the same impact. In fact, many are opportunistic and tactical in nature. This is especially true for many Seller-Doers.

Caught between the pressures of client work and an urgent need to bring in new business, they cast about for something quick and easy—maybe a small piece of business at a low price point—that will produce short term results. Of course, this is no real strategy at all.

Strategic business development is the alignment of business development processes and procedures with your firm’s strategic business goals. The role of strategic business development is to acquire ideal clients—the kind that are highly profitable and aren’t overly demanding—for your highest priority services using brand promises that you can deliver upon.

Deciding which targets to pursue and strategies to employ can be a high stakes decision. A good strategy, well implemented, can drive high levels of growth and profitability. A poorly conceived strategy can stymie growth and frustrate valuable talent.

Yet many firms falter at this critical step. They rely on habit, anecdotes and fads — or worse still, that innovation killer, “this is how we have always done it.” In a later section, we’ll explain how to develop your strategic business development plan. But first let’s explore some of the strategies that might go into that plan.

Top Business Development Strategies

Let’s look at some of the most common business development strategies and how they stack up agains what today’s buyers are looking for.

Networking

Networking is probably the most universally used business development technique. It’s built on the ideas that professional services buying decisions are rooted in relationships, and the best way to develop new relationships is through face-to-face networking.

It certainly is true that many relationships are established in that way. And if you are networking with members of your target audience, you can develop new business. But there are limitations. Today’s buyers, however, are very time pressured, and networking is time consuming. It can be very expensive, if you consider travel and time away from the office.

Newer digital networking techniques can help on the cost and time front. But even social media requires an investment of time and attention.

Referrals

A close relative of networking, referrals are often seen as the mechanism that turns networking and client satisfaction into new business. You establish a relationship, and that person refers new business to you. Satisfied clients do the same.

Without question, referrals are common, and many firms get most or all of their business from them. But referrals are passive. They rely on your clients and contacts to identify good prospects for your services and make a referral at the right time.

The problem is, referral sources often don’t know the full scope of your services or the range of ways you can help a client. So many referrals are poorly matched to your capabilities. Other well-matched referrals go unmade because your referral source fails to recognize a great prospect when they see one. Finally, many prospects that might be good clients rule out your firm before even talking with you. One study puts that number at over 50%.

Importantly, there are new digital strategies that can accelerate referrals. Making your specific expertise more visible is the key. This allows people to make better referrals and increases your referral base beyond clients and a few business contacts.

Learn More: Referral Marketing Course

Sponsorships and Advertising

Can you develop new business directly by sponsoring events and advertising? It would solve a lot of problems if it works. No more trying to get time from fully utilized billable professionals.

Unfortunately, the results on this front are not very encouraging. Studies have shown that traditional advertising is actually associated with slower growth. Only when advertising is combined with other techniques, such as speaking at an event, do these techniques bear fruit.

The most promising advertising strategy seems to be well-targeted digital advertising. This allows firms to get their messages and offers in front of the right people at a lower cost.

Outbound Telephone and Mail

Professional services firms have been using phone calls and mail to directly target potential clients for decades. Target the right firms and roles with a relevant message and you would expect to find new opportunities that can be developed into clients.

There are a couple of key challenges with these strategies. First they are relatively expensive, so they need to be just right to be effective. Second, if you don’t catch the prospect at the right time, your offer may have no appeal relevance — and consequently, no impact on business development.

The key is to have a very appealing offer delivered to a very qualified and responsive list. It’s not easy to get this combination right.

Download the Business Development Guide

Thought Leadership and Content Marketing

Here, the strategy is to make your expertise visible to potential buyers and referral sources. This is accomplished through writing, speaking or publishing content that demonstrates your expertise and how it can be applied to solve client problems.

Books, articles and speaking engagements have long been staples of professional services business development strategy. Many high visibility experts have built their practices and firms upon this strategy. It often takes a good part of a career to execute this approach.

But changing times and technology have reshaped this strategy. With the onset of digital communication it is now easier and much faster to establish your expertise with a target market. Search engines have leveled the playing field so that relatively unknown individuals and firms can become known even outside their physical region. Webinars have democratized public speaking, and blogs and websites give every firm a 24/7 presence. Add in video and social media and the budding expert can access a vastly expanded marketplace.

But these developments also open firms to much greater competition as well. You may find yourself competing with specialists whom you were never aware of. The impact is to raise the stakes on your business development strategy.

Combined Strategies

It is common to combine different business development strategies. For example, networking and referrals are frequently used together. And on one level, a combined strategy makes perfect sense. The strength of one strategy can shore up the weakness of another.

But there is a hidden danger. For a strategy to perform at its peak, it must be fully implemented. There is a danger that by attempting to execute too many different strategies you will never completely implement any of them.

Good intentions, no matter how ambitious, are of little real business development value. Under-investment, lack of follow through and inconsistent effort are the bane of effective business development.

It is far more effective to fully implement a simple strategy than to dabble in a complex one. Fewer elements, competently implemented, produce better results.

Next, we turn our attention to the tactics used to implement a high-level strategy. But first there is a bit of confusion to clear up.

Business Development Strategy Vs. Tactics

The line between strategy and tactics is not always clear. For example, you can think of networking as an overall business development strategy or as a tactic to enhance the impact of a thought leadership strategy. Confusing to be sure.

From our perspective, the distinction is around focus and intent. If networking is your business development strategy all your focus should be on making the networking more effective and efficient. You will select tactics that are aimed at making networking more powerful or easier. You may try out another marketing technique and drop it if it does not help you implement your networking strategy.

On the other hand, if networking is simply one of many tactics, your decision to use it will depend on whether it supports your larger strategy. Tactics and techniques can be tested and easily changed. Strategy, on the other hand, is a considered choice and does not change from day to day or week to week.

10 Most Effective Business Development Tactics

Which business development tactics are most effective? To find out, we recently conducted a study that looked at 824 professional services firms. The research identified those firms that were growing at greater than a 20% compound annual growth rate over a three-year period.

These High Growth firms were compared to firms in the same industry that did not grow over the same time period. We then examined which business development tactics were employed by each group and which provided the most impact.

The result is a list of the ten most impactful tactics employed by the High Growth firms:

Outbound sales calls from internal teams
Providing assessments and/or consultations
Business development materials
Speaking at targeted conferences or events
Networking at targeted conferences or events
Conducting and publishing <

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High Growth Study 2024: What Drives Exceptional Growth in an Unpredictable Marketplace?

Aaron — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 14:26:04 +0000

For the second year in a row, the Hinge Research Institute’s annual High Growth Study showed that uncertainty is professional services firms’ overriding concern. Uncertainty overshadows the war for talent and worries about increased competition. Conflicts across the globe, mixed economic signals and political instability add smoke to a marketplace that’s undergoing change at breakneck speed.

Yet in spite of these challenges, overall growth rates improved over the prior year. And the best performers, which we call High Growth firms, accelerated their growth compared to their slower-growing counterparts. These high flyers grew 4X faster and enjoyed almost 2X the profits.

How did they do it? What do they do differently from other firms? Questions like these are what we designed this study to answer.

About the Study

This is the ninth edition of the High Growth Study. 824 firms across six professional services industry groups participated in this year’s research. The figure below shows the distribution of these industries in the sample.

Participants represented firms of all sizes, and they conducted business in every region of the globe.

In the study, we grouped the participating firms into three categories: High Growth (see definition in the next section below), No Growth (those that experienced zero or negative growth), and Average Growth (the rest of the sample). Occasionally, you will encounter a group called Low Growth. This group includes both Average Growth and No Growth firms.

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The High Growth Advantage

We define High Growth firms as those firms that achieve at least 20% compound annual growth over a three-year evaluation period. We compare these firms to those that experienced little or no growth over the same time frame. This allows us to identify strategies and practices that are associated with faster growth and higher profits.

This year’s High Growth cohort grew at an average rate of 41%—a significant jump over the previous year. By comparison, average Growth firms grew at 10% per year.

At the same time, High Growth firms are also more profitable than their slower-growing brethren. High Growth firms enjoyed an average profit of 25%—a slight improvement over the previous year’s number. However, all growth categories saw their profitability grow over the previous year. Even the group with negative growth, No Growth firms, achieved an average profit of almost 15%.

Five Key Pathways to Growth

Uncertainty has been a major cloud over the professional services industry for the past several years, and we don’t believe it is going away anytime soon. That means professional services firms need to adapt their marketing strategies to address a fickle, evolving marketplace. And there is no better place to look for inspiration than the High Growth firms that have thrived in it.

We’ve selected five key findings from the study that firms like yours can use to compare against your own marketing strategy as you drive toward sustained growth.

1. High Growth Firms Use Marketing to Support Closing the Sale

Unlike past years, when digital techniques dominated this list, today’s High Growth firms are getting the most bang by using marketing to support sales-oriented, bottom-of-the-funnel activities. In the chart below, you’ll see that the top three most impactful techniques identified by High Growth firms were 1) assessments and consultations, 2) live demos, and 3) business development materials, such as qualifications presentations, pitch materials, and proposals.

Why the change? We’ve noticed that over the past three years, High Growth firms have invested more than their slower growing competitors in digital marketing techniques and digital infrastructure such as CRM, AI, and marketing automation. We think this early investment is now paying dividends. Many tasks that once were manual—or weren’t done at all—are now automated and efficient. As a result, it’s faster and easier to close new business.

Don’t lose sight of #5. High Growth firms have been a perennial leader when it comes to conducting formal research on their target audience. We believe this is an important way they are able to see past any uncertainty and make better informed, more confident decisions.

2. High Growth Firms Prioritize Content Marketing

Producing high-quality content is High Growth firms’ top marketing priority in 2024. Why? Today’s buyer journey often begins long before a company is ready to find a service provider. They are researching answers to their organization’s problems very early in process—often months or years before they are ready to buy. Educational content such as blog posts, executive guides, white paper and ebooks address this need. And when content is optimized for online search, it makes a firm’s expertise accessible to a much wider audience. If a firm can produce valuable content on a regular basis they build a loyal following—people who, when they are ready to buy, think first of the firm that has demonstrated a deep understanding of their issues.

Differentiation, in second place, is a top priority for very good reason. Firms that can stand apart from their competitors tend to be perceived as more valuable. They are also more unique and memorable. This means it’s easier to close business—and command premium fees. What’s not to like about that?

Download the Free Executive Summary

3. High Growth Firms Spend More on Marketing

While marketing budgets across the professional services declined for the second year in a row, High Growth firms’ spend held steady at 10% of revenue. Where slower growing firms may be holding on to their cash in the face of continued market uncertainty, the High Growth contingent is plowing ahead—and reaping the rewards.

4. Top Performing Firms Outsource Specialized Marketing Skills More Often

Across the board, the High Growth cohort in our study was more likely than No Growth firms to outsource specialized marketing skills. These firms either don’t have the skills in-house or they are looking to specialists to drive better performance. These firms also know that their performance advantage is based at least in part on their ability to build a consistent, highly credible brand and generate more new business more quickly than their competitors. Outsourcing this expertise gives firms access to the best talent and technology without bulking up their overhead.

5. Where Do High Growth Firms Turn First for Recruiting? LinkedIn

High Growth firms are able to attract more skilled talent than their slower-growing competitors. In part, this may be due to factors such as differentiation, culture and the allure of working in a fast-growing business. But that’s not the whole story. They also recruit differently. The chart below shows which channels High Growth firms use to recruit future employees compared to their No Growth brethren.

LinkedIn is their top recruiting tool, which High Growth firms use 33% more often. In second place are social media posts, which they employ 25% more frequently. Notably, the High Growth group uses every technique more often than their No Growth peers. Clearly, recruiting is something they take very seriously.

Download the Free Executive Summary

What’s Your Strategy to Thrive in Uncertain Times?

Uncertainty is going to be with us for a while. This means today’s firms need to adapt to a shifting, murkier environment. When the old marketing tools no longer cut through the fog, you need new strategies and techniques to help you see a little further ahead and avoid the obstacles in your way.

Fortunately, High Growth professional services firms have already blazed a trail for firms like yours. They have learned what works and what is a waste of time in an age of unpredictability and rapid change. So what can you do? Compare the habits of High Growth firms in this post with your own marketing program. Where are you in alignment and where are you off the rails? What adjustments can you make to emulate these high performers? There is a blueprint here to sustained business success—if you choose to follow it.

And don’t forget to download the full executive summary (it’s free!). It contains many other insights to inspire your own marketing program. What changes will you make to propel your business forward?

Free Research Report

High Growth Study 2024: Executive Summary

Learn More

The post High Growth Study 2024: What Drives Exceptional Growth in an Unpredictable Marketplace? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Mergers and Acquisitions as Part of Your Growth Strategy

Lee Frederiksen — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:25:08 +0000

As a growth strategy, mergers and acquisitions have become popular for companies looking to expand into new markets, gain a competitive edge, or acquire new technologies/skillsets.

M&As are especially popular in the professional services space with the growing wave of retiring Baby Boomers and a rapidly changing economy and marketplace.

So what is the impact of all these mergers? More importantly, does an M&A make sense for your firm?

At Hinge, we’ve studied the factors that drive premium valuations and high growth and uncovered some facts that may surprise you.

Strategic M&A: Seeking a solution to a business problem

There are essentially two kinds of mergers and acquisitions: strategic and financial.

A financial merger or acquisition is pursued, as the name implies, for financial reasons—often to pick up some quick cash or as an investment. But I’m not really interested in financial M&As for this particular discussion.

Download the M&A Guide for Professional Services Firms

Strategic mergers and acquisitions offer a solution to a different business problem. Perhaps the acquirer is looking to grab a new product line, add some additional facilities, enter a new market, or gain expertise and intellectual property. For professional services firms, a strategic M&A is often about gaining credibility, adding intellectual firepower, or changing the balance of power in a particular market.

The bottom line is a strategic merger yields value for both the acquired and the acquiring firm. To reluctantly use a hackneyed phrase, it’s a “win-win” for both parties.

So what does a strategic merger look like? Here’s a good example:

A few years back we were researching firms that received unusually high valuations. One caught my attention. It was a smaller firm that specialized in top-secret work and had deep experience and contacts in one of the intelligence agencies. This firm was sold for an eye-popping 10-times revenue.

When we asked the acquiring firm why they were willing to pay such sums, their reasons were perfectly clear.

The target firm offered must-have qualifications and contracts with a must-have client. Not having these capabilities would put the acquiring firm at a significant disadvantage when competing for upcoming work. In short, they believed the long-term value for the acquiring firm was much greater than the inflated purchase price.

That’s a strategic merger.

But when is it advantageous to proceed with an aggressive growth strategy of mergers and acquisitions, rather rely on disciplined organic growth?

When M&A Works as a Growth Strategy

Mergers and acquisitions make perfect sense in a variety of situations. For example, maybe an opportunity presents itself that requires fast, decisive action. Or maybe a competitive threat compels a defensive move to get bigger, faster.

Here are five situations in which mergers and acquisitions have proven useful as a growth strategy:

1. Fills critical gaps in service offerings or client lists

When the marketplace changes in response to external events or new laws and regulations, it can create a gap in a firm’s critical offerings. It is a prime opportunity for a strategic merger.

After 9/11, the national security and defense industry lacked the relevant skills to match rapidly changing federal requirements. Companies quickly realized they would be sidelined without the skills and experience necessary to meet the new security demand. The firms with the requisite experience and relevant client lists suddenly found themselves strategically valuable and highly sought-after acquisition targets.

2. Efficient way to acquire talent and intellectual property

Many industries are seeing an acute shortage of experienced professional staff. Cybersecurity, accounting, and engineering are just a few examples that immediately come to mind.

The reality is, intellectual property (IP) is the new currency of modern business. Once squirreled away and carefully guarded, IP is now actively bought and sold. For many companies, the acquisition of a firm and its IP is the quickest path to market dominance—or at least a roadblock to competitive incursions.

3. Opportunity to leverage synergies

A strategic merger, if done as part of a thoughtful growth strategy, can result in synergies that offer real value for both the acquired and the acquiring.

There are two basic types of M&A-related synergies: cost and revenue.

Cost synergies are all about cutting costs by taking advantage of overlapping operations or resources and consolidating them into one entity. In a strategic M&A, a number of areas are suitable for cost-cutting, such as redundant facilities, workforces, or business units and areas of operation. But cost synergies can also result in an increase in buying and negotiating power thanks to the larger combined budget.

Revenue synergies alter the competitive balance of power and create opportunities to change market dynamics, sell more products, or raise prices. Companies can take advantage of revenue synergies and make more money in many ways, including the following:

Reduce competition
Open new territories
Access new markets (through newly acquired expertise, products, services, or capacity)
Expand the customer base for cross-selling opportunities
Develop sales opportunities by marketing complementary products or services.

4. Add a new business model

Many professional services firms are based on a billable-hours business model, but that is certainly not the only option. Some firms generate revenue as a fixed fee or through performance incentives. Others may employ subscription models (popular in the software industry).

Of course, the value of an effective M&A growth strategy is not just about how you are paid. A merger may also offer a new type of service, such as brokerage, insurance or money management. If you’re considering a new business model, the easiest way to develop and test it out is to acquire a firm that’s already using the model successfully. That way you avoid possible missteps from inexperience.

5. Save time and long learning curves

Much like adding a new business model, a strategic M&A may help you save considerable time and expense in your growth strategy.

Let’s say you’re considering a new service for your business. Your firm is fully capable of developing and delivering that service on its own, but it will take more time, money, and resources than you’re willing to devote. It might be easier and more cost-effective to simply acquire the capability.

Not only is this a practical and smart shortcut to the sought-after service and expertise, you also acquire a built-in customer base and target audience. Bingo!

When M&A Falters as a Growth Strategy

But not everyone succeeds when mergers and acquisitions are part of the overall growth strategy. Sometimes a solid strategy is derailed by problems in implementation or flaws in the logic or reasoning behind the strategy.

Let’s explore how an M&A growth strategy can go wrong:

1. Cultural clash

Different firms have different cultures. No surprise there. But the difference in cultures can be problematic.

You can guard against culture clash by being clear about the culture you want and using all tools at your disposal to ensure you achieve it. For example, education, the right incentives, and a focus on your employee brand is most helpful when looking at a possible merging of corporate cultures.

2. Loss of differentiation

Avoid mergers when the features—and benefits—that make one firm valuable are not relevant to the other brand. Rather than add critical assets, capabilities, or value, the acquired or merged firm dilutes the brand and competitive advantage.

A merger should be the result of a carefully researched brand analysis. It should NOT be an ego-driven trophy deal.

3. A major distraction

Mergers and post-merger integrations are resource-intensive activities that usually involve some of the most senior people in the firm. If they are not prepared for it, they can easily be distracted by other critical, but less urgent activities.

The potential for distraction is greatest—and most profound—after the deal is done and the focus moves to integration. If senior management gets too distracted, you risk having the merger flounder as well as damaging the underlying business.

4. Marketplace confusion

Let’s say Firm A, a highly respected accounting firm that specializes in manufacturing, acquires Firm B, a cybersecurity firm with specializes in helping retailers. The acquisition seems very strategic. Seeing an opportunity, the combined firm, A+B Associates, tries to add retail to their specialization. The result is a confusing marketplace.

Does A+B still specialize in manufacturing? Are they no longer an accounting firm?

The confusion can be even worse if the only rationale for the merger is growth for growth’s sake. The whole confusing mess could be avoided with a solid, research-based plan to position the merged brand and help current and potential customers understand the rationale and benefits of the merger.

5. Loss of brand strength

If the marketplace is confused, the strength of your brand will suffer. After all, brand strength is the product of a simple equation:

Reputation x Visibility = Brand Strength

Where reputation is what you’re known for and visibility is how widely you are known for it. Understanding this equation can help you avoid the perils of diminished brand strength.

An ill-timed merger can quickly diminish the strength of both the acquiring and acquired brands. Here’s an all-too-typical example:

Brand M, which has considerable visibility in the Midwest, wants to expand into the Southeast. To accomplish this, Brand M acquires Brand S, a southeastern-based firm. But there is a problem. The Midwestern brand is unknown in the southeast, so its overall brand strength is actually diminished by the acquisition. And, when the southeastern firm adopts the brand identity of Brand M, its brand strength is also diminished. Everybody loses.

So how do you overcome this problem? Sometimes a gradual transition to a new brand is the right answer. Other times a concerted focus on building the visibility of the new brand in the market where it’s less known is the key.

Watch out for situations where you must change both the focus of the reputation and increase visibility. These are the most challenging mergers.

Free Resource

The M&A Guide for Professional Services Firms

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Developing Your High Growth Strategy

Achieving high growth starts with a true understanding of the marketplace as it really exists and how your firm is actually perceived (not as you’d like it to be perceived). Do your research and understand fully what each firm—the acquired as well as the acquiring—bring to the equation.

In the end, a successful high-growth strategy will include the following elements:

It is forward-looking—A good strategy is not just a response to what has been. It’s about what can be achieved. Where do you really want your firm to go? How will you get there? What needs to happen to do it?

It doesn’t require complete consensus—If absolutely everyone thinks it’s a great plan, then you’re not taking appropriate risks.

It does require buy-in—Senior management must be on board and embrace what needs to be done. Without management buy-in, any strategy is doomed to failure. But don’t forget your employees. Workers at all levels should be enthusiastic about what the firm is gaining and where it’s heading.

It focuses on implementation—High growth requires careful implementation of every aspect of a business strategy and plan. Follow through with implementation.

If M&A is a part of your growth strategy, focus on the emerging culture and brand and carefully shape the new firm. And consider carefully how the merged firm will generate organic growth.

The post Mergers and Acquisitions as Part of Your Growth Strategy appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

How to Improve 93% of Your Communication

Phil Ebiner — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 20:14:04 +0000

Brand Positioning Strategy for the Professional Services Industry

Lee Frederiksen — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 13:30:44 +0000

Way back in 1969, a very perceptive marketer named Jack Trout introduced the concept of brand positioning to the world. He was the first to put a word to a very powerful marketing effect. A few years later, he and Al Ries wrote the seminal book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, and the rest is history.

Now, more than half a century later, the concept of positioning is just as relevant to businesses — and probably more so. If anything, today’s professional services marketplace is much larger and more crowded. Buyers have a bewildering array of firms to choose from, and with the rise of the Internet, local firms are contending with companies across the nation, if not the world.

Download the Rebranding Guide

What’s a firm to do? How do you compete when there’s barely room to breathe?

That’s where brand positioning comes in. It elegantly explains how people see the marketplace and prescribes a way firms can carve out a place in the minds of their buyers.

Brand Positioning Defined

At its simplest, brand positioning is the process of setting your business apart from your competitors in a way that builds preference for you among your target audience. Its goal is to associate your firm with an idea or category in the minds of people who might buy your services.

Let’s consider a couple of examples.

What do you think of when you read the words, “soft drink” or “pop”? Did Coke or Pepsi come to mind? These two products are positioned to dominate the soft drink category.

Now let’s try a service. What company does “overnight shipping” make you think of? Even though other companies offer overnight delivery, FedEx owns that category — it has built its entire identity and operations around doing it better than anyone else.

In theory, any professional services firm can build a strong association between their brand and an idea. But to be successful, your positioning must be 1) different (it’s tough to take over a leadership position already held by another business — remember, Avis has been #2 since 1953.); and 2) visible (if nobody has heard of your firm, your positioning can’t take root).

Typically, your brand positioning is articulated in your brand positioning statement. But I’ll have a lot more to say about that a bit later.

Why Brand Positioning Is Important

When you have a well-defined brand position, your firm has many advantages. Positioning can provide a conceptual template for your brand, your marketing messages, the services you offer and even the way you structure your pricing.

Here are a few of the key benefits of brand positioning:

It focuses you on a specific target market. When you provide a limited set of services to a limited audience, your marketing becomes more powerful and effective. You are perceived as a high-value expert.
It clarifies how you are different from competitors. You’ll finally know exactly what sets you apart and be able to talk about your firm in a way that gets prospects excited.
It shows how to win new clients. Positioning arms your business development team with critical arguments they can use in the nurturing and closing processes.
It drives creative decisions. When you understand the core message you need to communicate to prospects, you can make informed decisions throughout the creative process. Your positioning becomes the DNA of your visual brand.
It drives service development and pricing decisions. Knowing how you compare to your competitors helps you decide what new services to offer, and when. Are you positioned as a source of innovative services? A low-cost provider? A specialist or a generalist? The answers to these questions can affect what services you offer and how to price them.

5 Types of Brand Positioning Strategy

Positioning strategies can take many forms, but not all are appropriate for professional services firms. Below are five strategies that are most relevant to positioning a firm like yours:

Cost-driven positioning. “We offer everything those other firms do, but we cost less.” This is a very challenging strategy unless you have an inherent cost advantage. Technology can be your best friend if you are using it more effectively than your competitors or your worst enemy if you are behind others in a cost-driven strategy.
Niche service specialization. In this strategy, you focus on offering a service that is not widely available through competitors. You offer specialized expertise that, presumably, a generalist would not have. This approach can work well unless the service begins to generate strong demand and new competitors emerge to dilute your “specialness.”
Industry specialization. This is a popular and often effective way to position a professional services firm. It is another form of specialized expertise, and it allows you to tightly focus your marketing and evolve your services as your market changes. The implication of industry specialization is that your firm has deep experience working with similar businesses. This approach comes with risks, however. If your industry experiences an economic decline, your fortunes may follow. It is also easy for new competitors to enter the fray and disrupt your positioning.
Role-focused specialization. “We help CEOs succeed” is an example of role-focused positioning — targeting a particular function in the organization. Instead of specializing in a particular industry or service, you target a cohort of people. These buyers will perceive you as more tuned in to their needs and expectations that you offer specific knowledge or expertise that will make their job easier.
Quality of service positioning. This is one of the most common strategies used by professional services firms, and (with rare exceptions) it is one of the least effective. “Nobody’s more committed to quality,” “we deliver the best service” and similar messages are so ubiquitous in the marketplace that they utterly fail to impress buyers. Of course, buyers do want quality and customer service — but these traits are table stakes and they are rarely criteria used to select a firm.

Brand Positioning Examples

What does a well-positioned firm look like? Below we include a few examples of how some of our own clients have positioned themselves in the marketplace. These examples represent the purest distillation of their brand positioning—simple ideas that anyone in the marketplace can understand but which are difficult for competitors to copy.

Vault Consulting

“The nation’s leading accounting and research firm for nonprofits and associations.”

Why it works: Vault’s unusual combination of accounting and research services, in conjunction with their industry focus, allows them to claim leadership status.

Sellers Dorsey

“The nation’s leading Medicaid consultancy to health care providers, payors and state governments.”

Why it works: They do just one thing: Medicaid consulting. And they have built a market leadership position around that specialization.

20-20 Services

“We focus on just one thing: equipping today’s accounting professionals with all the skills, knowledge and leadership training they need to thrive and grow.”

Why it works: They focus on a powerful need in the CPA industry: keeping accounting professionals fully trained and equipped to build their business.

What Is a Brand Positioning Statement?

A brand positioning statement is a succinct, easy-to-understand paragraph that describes your firm’s positioning in the marketplace. It should address three questions: 1) What do you do? 2) Who do you serve? 3) How are you different from similar firms in the marketplace? It may also include other key reasons clients prefer your firm over others. A brand positioning statement is primarily an internal document that a firm’s marketing and business development teams can use to craft differentiated marketing language—though some of its language may be used verbatim in public-facing messaging. In Step 4 below, we explain how to write your own positioning statement.

The Brand Positioning Process

Ready to develop a brand positioning strategy for your own firm? The steps below will give you a solid roadmap to get there. I’ve also included links to other resources that will help fill in some of the details. Let’s get started!

Step 1. Start with your overall business imperatives. What are you trying to accomplish as a firm? Your positioning is a fundamental pillar of business strategy, and it affects how you drive growth and attract the talent you need to sustain your expansion. If you don’t have your business goals written down already, sit down with your management team and make sure everyone has a clear set of priorities. That way, when you begin formulating your positioning statement you will a clear destination in mind.

Step 2. Research your target clients and competitors. According to a study of professional services marketing, firms that have a strong understanding of their audiences and competition are more than twice as likely to be high-growth businesses (those that grow at least 20% year over year). This type of investigation is often called brand research, and it is typically conducted by an independent entity to ensure its confidentiality and encourage more honest feedback from participants. It usually involves interviews with current clients, prospects, and referral sources. It also includes an analysis of your competitors — what they are saying about themselves and how your audience perceives them.

Brand research can also identify strengths and weaknesses you weren’t able to see before. In addition, you’ll learn what factors potential clients value most during the selection process.

And brand research is critical to the success of the next step.

Step 3. Identify your differentiators. This is where your business goals and brand research turn into marketing gold. Drawing on the insights of your team, external perceptions of your firm and a new understanding of your competitors’ positioning, you will pick out characteristics that both set you apart from your competition and are valuable to prospective clients at the time they select a firm.

Strong differentiators must also meet three other criteria: they must be 1) true, 2) provable and 3) relevant to your target audience. If a differentiator isn’t true, clients will often sense it and approach your firm with skepticism. That’s why you should be able to support each differentiator with evidence. Often you will uncover proof in your brand research (for example, a finding that “9 out 10 clients refer us to others” is a nice statistic to reinforce a variety of differentiators).

Some differentiators may be characteristics that you discover in your research (“clients find us to be highly flexible”), while others may be a specialization that you have already cultivated (“we provide network security services exclusively to accounting firms”). If you find your existing differentiators lacking, you may decide to pursue a new area of focus or concentrate on a particular area of strength. While this approach will be aspirational at first, it can work so long as you truly commit your firm to it and can prove you are doing it going forward. If you are struggling to think of possible differentiators, consult this list of 21 professional service differentiators for ideas. Or, take a look at this list of the 12 worst differentiators for professional services firms to make sure your existing differentiators aren’t included.

To learn more about uncovering your differentiators, check out our free Differentiation Guide for Professional Services Firms. Also, I suggest you read this blog post on competitive differentiation.

Step 4. Craft your brand positioning statement. Now it’s time to translate your differentiators into a story that clearly communicates your competitive advantage. A positioning statement distills your key buying propositions into a short paragraph. It’s an internal document — because it is compact it’s not intended to be used verbatim on your website or in your marketing materials. Instead, think of it as a source you can return to again and again when you need the inspiration to describe your firm or persuade people to buy from you.

A brand positioning statement can take two different forms: a crafted paragraph or a prompted statement. Developing a crafted paragraph takes more skill and time, but some firms find that it translates more easily into marketing messages. A prompted statement is quicker and simpler to assemble — your team fills in the blanks with the appropriate information.

Here’s an example of a positioning statement in paragraph form:

Newco is the nation’s leading IT consultancy that specializes in law firms and legal departments. Our team of attorneys, engineers, CIOs, executive directors, and project managers is uniquely positioned to make your practice more productive and profitable. We’re familiar with the hundreds of software applications used by the legal community, and we’ve developed a suite of tools that makes migrating and configuring systems faster and more efficient. We also have a reputation for doing a job once and doing it right — that’s why 4 out of 5 clients put us on a long-term contract. When you need the best legal IT advice and support, Newco is the easy choice.

And here’s what a prompted statement template, ready to be filled out, looks like:

If Newco had used the prompted statement, this is how it might read:

Whichever format you choose, your brand positioning statement should include the following elements:

Your firm name
What you do
Who you serve
Why clients choose you
Proof that supports your claims

Okay, let’s break down the Newco example and make sure we’re covered.

What’s their name? Newco. (Check!)

What services do they provide? IT consulting services.

Who is their target audience? Law firms and legal departments.

Why do clients choose them over other firms? They work exclusively with legal practices, so they are industry specialists. This gives them an advantage when pursuing business with law firms and legal departments over generalis

Personal Branding Strategy: A Roadmap for Professionals, Experts and Executives

Elizabeth Harr — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 13:30:15 +0000

Have you ever wondered why certain individuals in your field rise out of nowhere to national prominence? These experts get all the media attention, deliver keynotes at top conferences and attract the best clients. Are these men and women just smarter than the rest of us? Or are they privy to some magical personal branding strategy that the rest of us don’t know about?

A few years ago, Hinge embarked on a research project to learn all we could about these industry stars (we call them Visible Experts®) and their personal branding strategies. Our researchers interviewed over 1,000 Visible Experts and buyers of their services to figure out what was going on and exactly what they did to develop and market their personal brands. We published our findings in a groundbreaking book, The Visible Expert Revolution.

Today, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: most of these Visible Experts aren’t much different from the rest of us. In fact, many of them admit that they aren’t the smartest or most knowledgeable people in their fields. They weren’t born writers. They weren’t born orators. And most weren’t born with exceptional charisma.

Instead, they developed their personal branding strategies the hard way, through trial and error. That means each one of them followed a different path, trying and discarding a host of tools and techniques along the way.

By the end of this article, you will have a powerful advantage that these experts didn’t: a concise summary of the research-based personal branding strategies that are proven to increase your reputation and visibility as an expert. So you won’t have to experiment. Even better, I’m going to give you a detailed roadmap that you can follow, step-by-step, to greater visibility and reputation.

Before we jump in, however, I want you to know there is one vital characteristic you will need to take your personal brand and career to the next level — the determination to see it through. Take it from me, there will be bumps and obstacles along the way, and you may need to make occasional course corrections to get back on track. But that’s okay. A little adversity comes with the territory, and you need to be prepared to push through the inevitable head winds.

Now, the last thing I want to do is discourage you. Building a successful personal brand—one that propels you to prominence in your field is actually easier than it looks.

Remember, from the bottom of the mountain the summit always looks unattainable. But if you focus on the process of getting there—taking one small step at a time—you’ll find yourself looking down with amazement at the world you left behind. It’s a journey well worth taking!

Get our book, The Visible Expert Revolution today!

Who This Article Is For

I’ve developed this roadmap for any service professional, expert or executive who wants to build a personal brand but doesn’t know where to start. It’s also for marketing directors at professional services firms who are tasked with making their organization and people more visible.

Whether you are a solopreneur or work at a Fortune 100 firm, the process I lay out is the same. I have one caveat, however. Whatever your role, there is one fundamental I can’t teach you — you have to have bona fide expertise in your field. There’s no faking expert knowledge.

What is Personal Branding?

A personal brand is the combination of an individual’s visibility and reputation among their customers and peers. Personal branding is a program of activities designed to elevate a person’s visibility and improve their reputation. As they become better known and respected, these individuals grow in eminence and earning power.

Personal Branding Examples

To bring this concept of personal branding to life let’s consider a few examples. For an expert working in the professional services industry, examples of personal branding are focused on building their visibility and credibility as an expert. Consider an experienced architect who specializes in modern bridge design. They might address both their visibility and reputation by speaking at industry conferences where they can showcase their expertise and describe some of the innovations they’ve implemented in their work.

If this architect were to work with a public relations specialist they might further build their visibility and reputation by connecting with journalists and other influencers in the architecture industry. A PR professional might book appearances on a few podcasts and perhaps arrange an interview in a prestigious magazine.

Another way this expert could build their personal brand is by writing regular thought leadership pieces on their firm’s blog. They could then share this content with their connections on LinkedIn. And if they optimize their blog posts for search engines, they can be found by a whole new audience—one that will only grow over time.

So with this definition and examples in mind, what does a personal branding strategy look like?

What Is a Personal Branding Strategy?

A personal branding strategy is a plan to take your reputation and career from relative obscurity to high visibility. It describes where you stand today and what level of visibility you want to achieve in the future. Then it lays out in detail the tactics, tools and skills you will need to attain your goal, including the daily content calendar that will guide your daily journey. A carefully planned strategy takes the uncertainty out of your quest for Visible Expertise so that you can concentrate on carrying it out.

A modern personal branding strategy is strongly rooted in content marketing. In fact, most of the skills and tools described in this roadmap are components of content marketing — but as they apply to building your personal brand. If you are new to content marketing, or if you just want a refresher, I suggest you read over our free Content Marketing Guide for Professional Services.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar, Welcome to the Revolution: How Ordinary Experts Become Industry Leaders

The Five Levels of Visibility

In our book, The Visible Expert Revolution, we identify five progressively more visible levels of expertise:

Level 1: Resident Experts. These experts are well respected within their firms and by their clients, but they have little visibility outside of those audiences. Most Visible Experts start their journey here.

Level 2: Local Heroes. These individuals are beginning to become known outside of their firms. They are more active in their local business communities, often speaking at business functions and blogging. They may even bring a little new business to their firm.

Level 3: Rising Stars. These experts have developed a regional reputation. They are fairly well known among peers in their area, and they speak and write frequently on their area of expertise. Rising Stars tend to bring in higher-quality business and charge higher fees.

Level 4: Industry Rock Stars. These names are well known across the nation for their niche areas of expertise. They attract premium clients and fees. As a result, they become significant assets to their firms.

Level 5: Global Superstars. The world’s elite experts, Global Superstars have broken out of their niches and become recognized more broadly in their industries. They command the highest fees, and firms around the world want to be associated with them.

Your first job is to figure out which of these levels describes you today. Then you need to decide what level of expertise you would like to achieve.

Before you jump immediately to Global Superstar, keep in mind that each successive step requires more effort and time than the step below it. For instance, it’s generally easier to move from Resident Expert to Local Hero than from Industry Rock Star to Global Superstar. To become a global household name, you will probably need to invest much of your free time. Are you obsessive and dedicated enough to pull it off? Only you can answer that.

The Benefits of a Strong Personal Brand

Apart from pumping up your ego, what tangible benefits can a powerful personal brand deliver? For starters, Visible Experts make more money. Often, a lot more. The chart below shows the relative billing rates for each Visible Expert level.

As you can see, buyers are willing to pay much more for highly visible experts than an average professional. But even Level 1 experts hold a significant advantage over their undistinguished brethren.

The reason Visible Experts can charge more is that many buyers are willing to pay a premium for experts they believe in. They are willing to shell out extra for the confidence that a Visible Expert will bring more knowledge and experience to their problem, solving it more quickly, and with greater precision. Higher billing rates aren’t the only benefit. Here are a few others:

Highly visible experts attract more media attention. When a reporter needs an authoritative quote, they reach out to the experts most closely associated with the issue at hand.
Well-branded experts also are able to secure valuable partnerships more easily, and with more desirable organizations.
And as I mentioned earlier, they attract better quality clients, too. In many cases, clients will seek out an expert — cutting out the competitive proposal process entirely. That’s when you know it’s working!
Experts with strong personal brands also benefit their firms. As a result of the halo effect, an expert’s reputation often spills over to the organization he or she works for. This relationship can have very real effects on a firm’s brand and business development prospects. According to our research, about two-thirds of Visible Experts on average have this remarkable effect on their firms.

What about buyers? What benefits do they get by working with Visible Experts? In the following chart from our research on Visible Experts and their buyers, we learn that there are many ways that businesses benefit from working with Visible Experts.

As you can see from the data, Visible Experts not only solve problems more quickly, they make their clients better, too. They teach clients new things, bring new ideas to the problem at hand, and increase the credibility of the teams they work with.

The 7 Critical Tools for Personal Branding

One of the most important things we learned from our research was which marketing tools have the greatest impact on an individual’s personal brand. Without this data, we’d have to select our tools based on unreliable anecdotal evidence, trial and error and intuition. But you’ve got a better option: hard data from scores of real-world experts.

Here are the most impactful marketing techniques Visible Expert use to raise their visibility and build their reputations in the marketplace:

What can we learn from this data? Here are my takeaways:

Public speaking is the most impactful marketing technique Visible Experts can use to build their personal brand. Not only do experts benefit from the various conferences and speaking opportunities they attend, they can use their history of speaking to build their credibility over the long term. They can place a list—and even video clips—of their previous speaking engagements on their bio page. This record makes it easier to get more speaking activities in the future.
Writing a book is an effective way to demonstrate your expertise and build visibility—this has been true ever since we began studyings Visible Experts over a decade ago. And if you look around at the highest profile experts in your field, chances are most of them have written one or more books.
Every expert needs a platform to publish written articles, videos and other expert materials. That be a personal website or their firm’s website. What’s important is that there is a centralized place where all this great content is organized and accessible.

So let’s boil down what we’ve learned. Here are the seven critical tools you will need to include in your personal branding strategy:

1. A book. Whether you do it yourself or enlist a ghostwriter, you will need to produce a book that addresses your area of expertise. A book is a critical credibility builder. Your book can be traditionally published or self-published. Traditionally published book can deliver instant credibility, but self-published books (for which you can set the price or give away for free) offer more flexibility. Either way, you will also need to promote it, since even name-brand publishers rely on their authors to do most of the marketing. A book can be a heavy lift, so don’t feel like you have to tackle it right away. But set a firm goal to produce one in the next couple of years, if not sooner.

2. Speaking engagements. Public spe

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Proven Rebranding Strategies for Your Professional Services Firm

Lee Frederiksen — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 13:00:00 +0000

What does it take to deliver a successful rebranding strategy? What can you expect from the process? And what do the final results look like?

If you are thinking about bringing new life to your professional services firm brand, this article can help you answer questions like these and lay a path to a smooth and successful outcome. While every firm is different, there are a set of rebranding strategies that are proven to work for any firm, whatever its size or industry.

In this article we explore common reasons firms undergo a rebrand. Next, we take you through a proven seven-step rebranding strategy that will deliver strong differentiators and positioning, clear messaging, and a fresh visual identity. Finally, we examine two real-world examples of firms that have undergone a rebrand.

Let’s begin by answering an essential question: why?

Purpose of Rebranding

There are many reasons why a professional services firm might consider rebranding. Here are four of the most common:

Refresh a tired brand. The marketplace is continually evolving. After a few years of neglect, a brand can lose its relevancy, look and sound dated, and become a drag on a firm’s success.
Address a merger or acquisition. A merger or major acquisition can create a major shift in target audience or business strategy. It may even require a new name.
Overcome a public relations crisis. Rebranding can be an effective way to change negative public perceptions and begin the process of rebuilding a firm’s reputation.
Reposition the firm. Most professional services firms lack strong differentiators or a compelling reason for buyers to choose them over competitors. Rebranding can uncover your differentiators and tell a powerful story.

These four reasons have one thing in common: firms need to connect at an emotional level with their audiences. Rebranding equips firms with the messaging, visuals, and credibility to stand apart—and stand for something. In a crowded and confusing marketplace, a strong brand gives buyers a reason to notice you. And to care.

If you have read this far in this article, you are probably at least thinking about a rebrand. Whatever specific reason is driving your interest, you have to consider one more thing: how do you rebrand your firm in a way that yields the business result you desire?

That’s what we’re going to cover next. What is the right strategy to rebrand your professional services firm? Let’s find out! (For more in-depth coverage, check out our Rebranding Guide.)

A 7-Step Rebranding Campaign

If you go into it without a plan, rebranding your firm can take many wrong turns and waste a lot of time and money. But if you approach it methodically and lay a solid foundation, the process should be smooth and exciting. The rebranding strategy below is based on two decades of experience with professional services firms of all stripes. It works because it builds on each piece that comes before.

1. Start With the Business Reason

Any rebranding strategy should start with a thorough understanding of the business reason behind the rebranding. Is it driven by a need to accelerate growth? Does your firm need to compete with larger, more established competitors?

Free Resource

The Rebranding Guide for Professional Services Firms

Learn More

Some of these business cases are very easy to make, such as a merger of two firms. Others are more subtle, such as outgrowing your image. If you are not clear about the business reason driving the effort, you run the risk of wasting a tremendous amount of resources. Some of the other top reasons to rebrand your professional services firm includes:

You need to compete at a higher level or in a new market.
Your brand no longer reflects who you are.
Your firm is spun off from an existing brand.
You have a legal reason compelling you to change.
You need to simplify and focus your message.
You have a new marketing team.
You are launching a new service line.

2. Research Your Firm and Your Target Clients

When you are clear on the business case for a rebranding, the next step is to conduct independent research on your firm and your clients. If you are attempting to move into a new market, that research should include your new target clients as well. The goal is to have an objective understanding of your current brand perception and competencies.

Without this research, you will be operating from an internal perspective only. Our own research on professional services buyers and sellers shows that virtually all firms have blind spots and distort how the marketplace sees them. After all, we are all human. Without objective research, you will build a brand on false assumptions.

3. Use Positioning and Messaging to Capture Your Brand Strategy

As you develop your firm’s market positioning and messaging architecture, you will uncover the essence of your brand strategy. Your market positioning is a brief description of where you fit into the market space. Are you an innovative leader or a low cost provider?

This positioning will drive many of your subsequent decisions. But you can’t just make something up. It needs to balance who you are as a firm and who you want to become. You must be able to support your positioning or your brand will be hollow.

Your messaging architecture articulates your messages to each of your main audiences. These messages must be consistent with your overall brand and supportable. This is not marketing copy. It is the skeleton upon which marketing copy is built.

Download the Rebranding Guide

4. Build Your Brand Identity

This is the part of the rebranding strategy where you develop the visual elements that will communicate your brand. Think firm name (if needed), logo, tagline, colors, business card design, stationary, and the like. These elements are often described in a brand style guidelines document, which provides a set of parameters to ensure your brand is implemented consistently across all of your marketing materials.

Many folks confuse these elements with your brand. Your brand is your reputation and your visibility, not your firm’s name or its logo. Your brand identity is a sort of visual shorthand for your brand.

5. Build Your Website and Online Presence

Your website is your single most important communication and business development tool. It is the place where you can tell a compelling story to each of your audiences. It is the first place a prospective client or employee will turn to learn more about your firm.

It is no exaggeration to say that a website and your online presence are the heart of a modern professional services firm. All rebranding strategies eventually involve your website. In a very real way, a website is built on the framework of your messaging architecture. Together with your remaining online presence (think social media, for example), it is the full expression of your positioning.

6. Marketing Collateral

At this point in your rebranding strategy, you will develop all of the marketing materials that you need to communicate your brand and services messages. Think pitch decks, proposal templates, brochures, one-sheet fliers and trade show booths.

These are the tools that you will use to communicate your message. They should be firmly anchored in your brand strategy.

Download the Rebranding Guide

7. Brand Building Plan

The final element of your rebranding strategy is to develop a plan to promote and strengthen your new brand. How will you launch it internally? In professional services, it is essential that your employees embrace the new brand. After all, they are your product.

It’s also important that you build the brand in a way that communicates your firm’s reputation and expertise, as well as its name. It must communicate your market positioning. Brand building is different for professional services.

Some rebranding strategies fail because they try to shortcut the process. Others fail because they picked the wrong partners to work with. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Start with a sound rebranding strategy. Find an experienced partner. Give rebranding the attention it deserves and the rewards will follow. A well-positioned firm that clearly communicates its brand is a formidable competitor indeed.

Rebranding Strategy Examples

To help you understand how a strategy like this plays out in the real world, we’d like to share two examples from our own practice at Hinge. In this way, you can see with your own eyes how and why rebranding works.

Example 1: Jones CPA Group

Strickland & Jones was a 3-office accounting firm in the Tidewater region of Virginia. One of two founding partners had just left the firm, and the remaining owner—Stephen Jones—wanted to reconceive the firm and position it for growth.

Hinge took the firm through the rebranding process, including interviewing 43 clients, influencers and staff members and renaming the firm Jones CPA Group. During the research phase, we discovered that what clients valued most from the firm was their accessible, friendly, approachable style. We decided to position them as great communicators. While communication may not be a unique trait among CPA firms, none of their competitors were talking about it, much less building their brand upon it. And Jones was prepared to go all-in.

To bring this concept to the fore, we did two things: we developed the tagline, “Let’s talk success,” and we created a logo that incorporated a speech bubble element. Together, they delivered a clear message that anyone could understand.

We also created a suite of stationery and collateral they could use to carry their message to the marketplace.

Read the full Jones CPA Case Story

Example 2: S&ME

S&ME was a top-100 civil engineering firm that had grown through acquisitions—and it showed. With more than 30 offices across the eastern United States, they had no unified message or brand. It was time to look, sound, and act like the leader they were.

Hinge conducted research that provided the insights upon which we could construct a new, unified brand. We learned that perhaps their greatest asset was their versatility, so we built their positioning around that concept. To communicate that positioning to the marketplace, we developed a tagline: “Built for versatility.”

Next, we redesigned the firm’s logo to anchor their new visual identity and give them a modern look unlike any of their competitors. The new mark features the letters S, M, and E configured out of just two basic shapes—a literal expression of versatility!

We developed a new color palette, dominated by a vivid green, and built out the rest of their identity and collateral. Finally, we designed and launched a powerful new high-performance website, featuring the new positioning and equipping the firm to grow with confidence.

Read the full S&ME Case Story

Take a Bold Step Forward

If you are ready to embark on a rebranding journey, use the roadmap we outline above to get the most out of your investment. Change is never easy, but it can be a lot of fun if you approach it with the right strategy and mindset. In fact, rebranding can—and should—be one of the most exciting and rewarding initiatives your firm will undertake. You’ll uncover opportunities you never knew existed. And you will give your team, your clients, and your prospects a whole new reason to believe again.

Free Resource

The Rebranding Guide for Professional Services Firms

Learn More

The post Proven Rebranding Strategies for Your Professional Services Firm appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

The Branding Process for Professional Services Firms

Lee Frederiksen — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 13:00:04 +0000

The branding process is a systematic approach to creating and promoting a firm’s brand. It is essential to the success of any marketing and business development program. Brand building consists of five interrelated phases, each building upon the last:

The brand building process can be applied to either the development of a new brand or the rebranding of an existing firm. In this article we’ll review the context in which the process is used, what happens during each phase, and what success looks like. This process is adapted from the one we use at Hinge — a program based on a decade of research into thousands of high-growth firms.

Let’s start by clarifying what some of the key concepts mean.

What is a brand?

There are many ways to define a brand. Some emphasize creating an emotional attachment with consumers while others focus on the totality of the customer experience. While academically interesting, these abstract concepts are often impractical, especially in the professional services.

In the context of a professional services firm, we have found that reputation best captures the essence of a brand. This reputation can be either very general (e.g., “they’re a good firm”) or associated with specific areas of high visibility expertise (e.g., “they’re the leading experts in cross-border mergers”).

The latter, more specific reputation around visible expertise has been correlated with receiving more referrals. Why? The strength of a firm’s reputation is directly related to the visibility of that brand within its target market. The greater the visibility of a reputable firm, the stronger its brand. This relationship is captured in this simple equation:

Brand Strength = Reputation X Visibility

It just makes sense: well-known firms with strong reputations — the best brands in an industry — are easy to refer.

Okay, you now understand what we mean by “brand.” But what about the “branding “process”?

What is the branding process?

The branding process is the systematic approach used to create, communicate and strengthen a firm’s brand. It consists of a number of sequential steps. These steps may vary depending on who is implementing the process and the specific outcomes the firm is trying to achieve.

For example, a design-oriented firm may focus on the design of a logo and other materials used to communicate the brand (brand identity). A promotion-oriented firm, on the other hand, may emphasize increasing the visibility of the brand (brand building).

Usually, the best results are achieved by taking a balanced approach that devotes sufficient attention to each phase of the process.

When the branding process is applied to an existing firm it is often referred to as rebranding. Brand development is another term sometimes used to describe the branding process.

Download the Rebranding Guide

When do you need the branding process?

Not all brand-related marketing efforts require a full branding process. For example, when a firm updates the look of its marketing materials — without changing its market positioning — that is unlikely to require a full branding treatment. Since only the visual aspect of the brand will be revised, the firm doesn’t necessarily need to revisit the foundational strategy behind its brand.

Common situations that do require the full branding process include:

Repositioning a firm to compete with a new set of competitors
The merger of two firms with different brands
The launch of a new firm
A major change in strategy or direction
The emergence of a new competitive advantage
The addition or loss of a high visibility expert
The launch of a significant new service line
The “commoditization” of existing services

The 5 phases of the branding process

The branding process can be broken into five phases. In this section we’ll explore each phase and explore some common variations and important success factors.

Phase 1. Brand Strategy

Behind every successful brand is a thoughtful strategy. Getting this phase right is critical to the overall success of your brand,

Conduct an Internal Review

Begin by considering your firm’s overall business strategy. Start by gathering your management team to conduct a discovery session. Capture your team’s goals, market strategies and individual perspectives. Don’t be surprised if you discover a variety of points of view, and even fundamental disagreement. It’s common and part of the process.

This is good time to pull out your business plan, if you have one, and any other guiding documents. Think about how your company changed since those documents were drafted and what adjustments you might need to make to your marketing.

Now, a lot of firms stop here. That’s a mistake. There are other perspectives you need to consider before you can formulate an effective strategy.

Identify Your Target Audiences

Next you should identify all of your key audiences. You can approach audiences in different ways, so you will have to decide which angle makes the most sense for your firm:

By industry served (what industries are your clients in?)
By service provided (who is buying each of your services?)
By role (what people at your clients’ companies are involved in buying your services)

Don’t forget non-client audiences, too, if they are important to your business success. These might include partners, influencers, referral sources and prospective employees.

Research Your Audiences

Identifying your target audiences is important. Why? Because your next step is to conduct research into them to attain an objective view into their needs, challenges and motivations. Here are some specific issues you’ll want to cover:

Their priorities
How they perceive your firm
Who they consider your competitors
How strong they consider your reputation
How visible they believe you are in the marketplace
What they see as your firm’s strengths
What weaknesses or vulnerabilities they see in your firm
If they are a client, why they selected you

Many of these questions could be sensitive, so we highly recommend you engage an impartial third party to carry out the interviews. You will get far more honest and useful information than if you carry out the research yourself.

Identify Your Differentiators

With this body of data you can begin identifying differentiators — characteristics that distinguish your firm from similar competitors. Most firms can uncover 2 to 5 true differentiators. Your differentiators must meet three criteria:

It must be true
It must be relevant to your target audience
It must be provable

Be careful that you select actual differentiators, however. It’s easy to fall into a trap and choose characteristics that simply describe what you do rather than set you apart. And it’s just as easy to choose characteristics that are so common in the marketplace that they have little power. Examples include: “we have the best people,” “we have a proprietary process,” and “we offer the best client service.” While these could be real differentiators, you will need to present a great deal of evidence to convince a jaded marketplace.

If you need help working through your differentiators, we’ve put together a helpful guide.

Write Your Positioning Statement

Now you are ready to draft a positioning statement. A positioning statement is a compact, carefully worded expression of your brand. The best ones are both honest — accurately describing who you are today — and a little bit aspirational —speaking to the firm you want to become.

Many people confuse a positioning statement with a mission statement or a vision statement. It is neither of those things. Instead, it is a paragraph, usually 4 to 6 sentences long, that lays the foundation for your firm’s messaging. It is a well you can return to again and again as you write headlines, develop your elevator pitch or need to understand how you fit into the marketplace. It is a practical resource that distills the essence of your brand into an easy-to-digest package.

Here’s an example of a positioning statement for an accounting firm:

At Newco, we help retail franchise owners grow their businesses faster and more effectively. How? We combine the expertise and reliability of a CPA firm with automated, real-time reporting — all tailored to the franchise business model. Our experience and technology give clients strategic insight beyond their finances, giving franchisors the tools they need to achieve higher profits and greater growth. When you’re looking to expand your operations or increase the profitability of your retail chain, Newco gives franchisors the power to feed their bottom line.

Notice how it describes the firm’s unique characteristics (specializing in franchise owners and offering automated, real-time reporting) and expresses these as tangible benefit to their clients (higher profits, greater growth).

Tailor Your Message to Different Audiences

At this point, you may want to take the next logical step and apply your differentiators and positioning to each of your audiences. For instance, you may need to say different things to different industries. Or a CEO may need to hear one set of messages, while an HR Director needs to hear another. This type of document is sometimes referred to as messaging architecture.

A good way to approach your messaging architecture is to break out each audience and develop a list of messages each may need to hear during the sales process. These lists may include some or all of your differentiators, as well as more commonplace messages — the basic things an audience needs to hear to be reassured that your firm delivers the services and experience they want.

You may find during this exercise that several of your audiences don’t require different messages. In this situation, to keep things simple, you can simply group those audiences together.

You can take these messages to another level of sophistication by developing a set of objections for each audience, then drafting responses to each, drawing on your audience messages for inspiration. Whenever possible, support your points with specific examples or evidence. By supplying proof, your arguments become more persuasive.

At the end of the process, you will have a document your business development team can use to overcome common objections in the marketplace. And your marketing team can mine it for talking points on your website or in marketing collateral.

Address Any Confusing or Complex Brand Situations

As professional services brands evolve they sometimes produce new business divisions, spin offs, stand-alone products or sister brands that may or may not have an obvious connection to the parent brand. If this applies to you, you should take time during the branding process to clearly establish the hierarchy and relationship between these brands. It helps buyers and clients make sense of your business and varied offerings — any time you can eliminate confusion, it makes the buying process easier. This discipline is called brand architecture. We’ve written another post that explores the issues around brand architecture in detail.

Download the Rebranding Guide

Phase 2. Brand Identity

In this phase, you turn your brand into something tangible. Your brand identity includes many of the most visible elements of a brand, including:

Your name
Your logo
Tagline
Color palette
Imagery
Writing style (voice)
Business cards
Stationery suite
Business collateral

As part of a branding process, you are likely to develop (or in the case of a rebranding program, refresh) some or all of these elements. Your brand identity is an opportunity to take the spirit of your positioning and turn it into something that people can see and experience — including a distinctive personality and voice. It is a chance to add a point of differentiation to your brand and set your firm apart visually from your competitors.

Unfortunately, most firms are content to play it safe and embrace what’s familiar. That’s why the color blue (especially dark blue) is so prevalent in every industry. That’s why you see cookie-cutter imagery on so many websites. And that’s one reason most professional services brands are so forgettable. Your brand identity is a rare opportunity to make a bold statement and pop out from a bland, homogenous crowd. For those firms with the courage to stand out, their brand identity can make a real difference.

Brand Style and Voice Guidelines

Keeping a brand identity intact and consistent over time can be challenging. To combat these problems, many firms create brand style guidelines that define how the brand is put together and explain what’s allowed and what isn’t. These guidelines can be comprehensive — dictating how the brand is applied in every situation — or they can be kept simple, with room for variety and exploration.

In the same vein, some firms develop a separate set of guidelines that describe their “voice” — the way the words they use express a personality or attitude. Firms use brand voice guidelines to ensure that their written materials read as if they came from the same person. They might, for instance, recommend against using overly technical language. These guidelines might also discuss sentence structure, as well as what type of vocabulary a writer should use. Is humor allowed? If so, voice guidelines should describe when and how.

Some firms go even further and produce detailed usage guidelines for writers that address subjective points of grammar, spelling, punctuation and more.

The Creative Brief

Before you dive into your brand identity you would do well to write up a creative brief that spells out some of your assumptions and preferences. If your brand was intended to express personality, for example, try to describe what that means. How do convey your brand in color, imagery, typography?

You should develop the creative brief only after discussing your brand identity internally. It should represent a consensus view. If you are working with an agency, they may lead the discussion and develop the brief for you.

The creative brief should address each piece of your brand identity (alternatively, you can develop a separate brief for each). If you are developing a new name, for example, the brief should capture your firm’s expectations and any parameters that the naming team needs to know to avoid taking wrong turns and wandering into blind alleys.

Phase 3. Brand Tools

These are the tools you will need to promote your new brand. Building on your brand strategy, these tools equip you to increase the visibility of your brand and expertise. Exactly which tools you need will depend on how you plan to promote the visibility of your brand (for more on this, see Phase 5). At the very least, you’ll want to pay attention to these two categories of tools:

Your Website

Whether you build a new website from scratch or retrofit your existing site to be more engaging, you’ll want to make sure it reflects your new brand positioning and communicates the right messages to each of your target audiences. Of course, it should reflect your new brand identity, too. In fact, you should put a great deal of thought and care into your website. It is the most visible and important component of your brand and marketing program.

Your Business Development Toolkit

One of the most important ways to leverage your new brand is to apply all that shiny new positioning and messaging to your business development toolkit. What’s a business development toolkit? It’s a collection of tools you use to describe your firm and put your strategy into play. Here are just a few examples:

Descriptions of your firm
Service descriptions
Video overview of your firm
Signage
Tradeshow booth

For more ideas on ways to put your brand strategy into practice, check out this blog post on the top 10 branding tools.

Phase 4. Inside the Buyer’s Brain, found that most buyers who are trying to select a firm rely heavily on a firm’s relevant experience and expertise. These factors are represented by two of the top three bars in the chart below. This makes intuitive sense—if buyers know you are an expert in your service area, they are more likely to buy from you.

Like any personal relationship, business relationships require ongoing maintenance. Establishing a mutual benefit and channels of communication are important ingredients to success. In the long run, having close and trusting contacts will give you an edge, especially when other marketing tactics aren’t working.

Below are 5 keys to building and maintaining business relationships:

1. Routinely Reach Out to Important Contacts

Frequent and personalized outreach to every contact in your CRM is not only unrealistic, it rarely delivers the ROI expected. In other words, there is a time and place for broad-reaching (yet always informative and educational) email outreach. However, there is a strong case to be made for routinely reaching out to those contacts who are tightly aligned with the type of business you want to sell more of. Do your homework prior to reaching out—is there an opportunity to congratulate them on an addition to their service line, a new website, a new team member? Even if you are reaching out just to make them aware of a specific service or offering, craft your messaging in a way that is uniquely focused on them. Making your outreach first about them before it’s about you will enhance their experience and the overall relationship. And try to do this kind of outreach regularly. If you let too much time go by, your eventual contact will seem less genuine.

Finally, don’t ignore the power of LinkedIn. When executed properly, your social media strategy becomes the digital sister to in-person networking—and it can be a fast and efficient way to stay in touch. And try to engage with content that your contact creates or shares. It’s a great way to build goodwill and establish a professional relationship.

Download the Visible Firm Guide

2. Offer Help Before You Ask for Help

Building business relationships doesn’t mean tapping into your resources whenever you need something. If the only time you ever contact a former client is when you have a new service offering, your gesture won’t seem authentic. Similarly, if you call a vendor only when you are looking for a good deal, don’t expect to get one.

Spend time figuring out how you can help your important business contacts. What value can you offer to spark the conversation?

3. Ask for Feedback

Instead of assuming your clients and vendors are happy, ask! Open communication is a basic component of any relationship.

When you ask your contacts how they feel, you promote a two-way conversation that can uncover areas for improvement. Some firms conduct client satisfaction surveys to gather feedback. But usually it’s best to pick up the phone and talk to your closest contact at a firm. If this is your top client, you want to make sure they are content.

This practice can also be an excellent business development tool. A peer of mine once told me a story. They asked for feedback and the end of a project, and the client replied “the overall project was great, but what I’m looking for now is XYZ. I wish your firm did that!”. As it turns out, they DID provide that service, it’s just that the client was unaware. A frustrating but all-too-frequent scenario in the world of professional services. Asking for feedback can go a long way toward avoiding situations like these.

4. Find Ways to Connect with Contacts in your Outer Circle

As new contacts enter your world, focus on building trust over time by using techniques such as an email newsletter. This practice helps keep your contacts apprised of the latest news and resources related to your business. Because you can’t personally interact with everyone in your email address book on a weekly basis, leveraging technology to do some of the work for you is a great option.

Email marketing is a powerful way to build trust and relationships. But if done wrong, it can easily have the opposite effect. Do not blast your list with untargeted emails or bottom-of-the-funnel hard offers. Instead, focus on sending educational, informative content that your audience will find relevant and practical. There are two types of mass or automated emails that fit in this category:

Educational emails provide content that is meant to be informative. These emails give something of value to the reader without asking for anything in return. Because educational emails are highly valued by your audience, they should make up about 80% of the emails that you send out.

Offer emails encourage the recipient to take a specific next step, such as downloading a guide, or connecting with you for a free consultation or demo. Offer emails help move your contacts to a deeper level of engagement. Although offer emails should account for the other 20% of your overall mix of emails, you wouldn’t want to send these until you’ve first created value for your audience. Offer emails should only go to folks who have already downloaded several pieces of your content. Unless they specifically requested it, you should never send an offer email to someone you just met at a networking event.

Download the Business Development Guide

Here are a few tips we’ve discovered for highly effective email marketing:

Make sure the look and feel of your email reflects your brand at every touchpoint.

Ensure your email template is mobile friendly.

Segment your distribution list so you can be strategic about which emails go to which list.

Remember the 80/20 rule. No matter how many or how few emails you send out, the balance of them (80%) should be educational, while the remainder (20%) can be relevant offers.

Make sure you have a way for people to unsubscribe.

Consider the subject line carefully. To encourage high open rates, aim for 40 characters or less, and be very clear. Subject lines aren’t the place to be clever or leave too much up to the reader’s imagination. Just say what the email is about.

Be aware of certain trigger words that can send your email straight into a recipient’s spam or junk folder. Words like “cheap” or “sale,” and sometimes even “free,” when placed in the subject line can signal the email is spam and it won’t get through the filter.

5. Educate and Relate, Don’t Tell and Sell.

If building relationships requires trust and credibility, then educating on a topic of relevance to your audience—as opposed to telling and selling and making it all about you—is a powerful way to build professional services relationships.

The most effective way to educate your audience is to produce a consistent flow of thought leadership. By definition, thought leadership marketing makes your expertise highly visible to the public. Regardless of whether your experts are publishing on your blog, in other publications, on social media, or elsewhere, their association with your firm makes you more visible to potential leads.

The depth of content required to build your profile as a high visibility expert means that potential buyers have the opportunity to learn a lot about your firm before making initial contact.

This level of visibility and expertise increases the trust and credibility of your firm. Think of it this way: there’s a reason that name brands at a grocery store sell better than store brands, despite their higher price tag. People trust what they know.

How Will You Improve the Way You Build Business Relationships?

Building business relationships is a two-way street. Too often people in the business environment treat everything as transactional. But like relationships outside of the workplace, strong business relationships are built over time as the two parties come to know, trust, and be helpful to one another.

But no two relationships are alike. That’s why it is essential in the modern work environment that you utilize different kinds of technology that can help you maintain relationships. Social media platforms like LinkedIn are great for engaging with the content others in your network are sharing. And on your end, digital newsletters and email marketing tools can help track your relationships and automate some of the process.

Of course, always consider your own experience. What business relationship-building techniques have worked for you?

We hope this article has stimulated some new ideas as you pursue new and stronger business relationships!

The post 5 Keys to Building Business Relationships appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Three Steps to Writing a Personal Brand Statement

Katy Pultz — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 13:00:54 +0000

Have you ever watched a keynote speaker at a conference or read the latest viral social post from an influential expert in your industry and asked yourself, “How did this person reach this milestone of visibility?”

The truth is that it wasn’t an accident. This high-profile expert is likely someone who has dedicated considerable time to building their personal brand.

What is a personal brand, you ask? A personal brand is an individual’s unique reputation and style of communicating their expertise in their field. At Hinge, we call professionals with a strong personal brand Visible Experts^®.

Visible Experts are professionals who have attained high levels of visibility and expertise in their industry, establishing a personal brand that is widely recognized. And just as a firm can have an overall brand positioning statement, so can a Visible Expert. We call this language a personal brand statement or an expert positioning statement.

In this article, I describe how you can write a personal brand statement in three easy steps—one that will differentiate you from other thought leaders in your field and help people associate you with the value you deliver.

What is a Personal Brand Statement?

Much like the way firms craft positioning statements and unique selling propositions, individual experts who aspire to grow their visibility should write their own personal brand statement.

A personal brand statement is a carefully articulated paragraph, usually 4–6 sentences in length, that describes your expertise, who you serve, and most importantly, how your approach is different from that of other experts in your field. It may also specify key issues you believe in.

Your personal brand statement is not intended to be used verbatim in marketing collateral. Instead, think of it as a compass to guide you forward on your path to increased prominence. Use it to inform how you talk about yourself and how to describe your unique place in the universe of experts in your field

Read the Visible Expert Revolution

How to Write a Personal Brand Statement

Writing a succinct personal brand statement that captures your unique positioning doesn’t have to be hard. To help you get started, begin by outlining the fundamentals of your expertise.

Try to answer the following three questions:

What are you an expert in?

What do you specialize in (if anything)?

What other factors make you different from your competitors?

The answers will provide the ingredients you need to draft your statement.

Whether you choose to write in the first person or the third person is up to you, as long as you keep the tone conversational (to make your expertise sound approachable) and to-the-point (so that your themes are easy to grasp). Your personal branding statement will speak to a wide variety of audiences, so try to avoid technical language and industry jargon.

Let’s dive in!

See also: Why Your Personal Branding Efforts Shouldn’t Scare Your Employer

Three Steps to Writing Your Personal Brand Statement

Step 1: Identify your specialized area of expertise and describe it.

In one sentence, describe what you are an expert in. This can also be an ideal place to describe who you serve. Use the phrasing, “I am an expert in ________________.” The more niche your expertise, the easier it will be for you to differentiate from other industry experts. .

Here’s how one expert might write their first sentence:

“I am an expert in providing accurate valuations for startup, consumer-facing technology companies that are seeking their first round of funding.”

Notice that this expert has focused on a specific target industry—and then narrowed it further by specifying a particular business need. This narrow specialization will help the expert stand out from the many generalists in the industry.

Step 2: Build out the middle.

Your personal brand statement is an opportunity to tell your story—how you’re different, what problems you solve, or where you stand on issues. And don’t forget who you serve if you didn’t address that in the first sentence. Who buys your services? Do you serve a particular industry? How do you want people to perceive you? Two to four sentences should be all you need here to explain why your expertise is important to your target audience.

Let’s see how our expert tackled the middle section:

“Many startups find the process of valuation and outside funding intimidating. I make it easy by explaining exactly how the valuation process works and what funders are looking for in a startup business. I also have key relationships with a variety of strategy, finance and operational experts I can tap if a client needs to address problems with their business or pitch.”

Step 3: Write a concluding sentence.

Wrap up the personal brand statement by reinforcing the most compelling differentiators that matter to your audience—and if you can, make your conclusion the most impactful part of the statement.

Here’s the full example of our valuation expert’s personal brand statement:

“I am an expert in providing accurate valuations for startup, consumer-facing technology companies that are seeking their first round of funding. Many startups find the process of valuation and outside funding intimidating. I make it easy by explaining exactly how the valuation process works and what funders are looking for in a startup business. I also have key relationships with a variety of strategy, finance and operational experts I can tap if a client needs to address problems with their business or pitch. When new B2C technology companies need to fund their growth, I deliver the defensible valuations and expert advice they need to make the strongest possible impression.”

In this example, it is clear from the beginning what the expert does and who they do it for. The rest of the personal brand statement goes on to establish what makes them different in this space.

Are you ready to follow this example and write your own personal brand statement? Go for it!

A Couple More Tips

A little aspiration can be a wonderful thing

As you go through the process and ask yourself questions, you may notice some areas or skills that you need to work on. In fact, you may find yourself speaking about a version of yourself that isn’t fully-baked yet. Don’t get discouraged. As long as it’s attainable, use your aspirational brand statement to set some personal goals.

Focus on issues where you can shine

No matter where you are in your personal branding journey, an expert positioning statement will help get you there by focusing your expertise in ways you hadn’t before.

A piece of advice? Choose issues that don’t have easy solutions and aren’t likely to go away any time soon. If you are struggling to think of relevant issues, try answering these questions:

Where do your interests lie?

Where do your clients struggle most?

Where can you deliver the greatest value?

Download the Visible Expert Study: Research Summary

Now what?

Take some time to apply your new positioning to the personal bios and profiles on your website and social media accounts. While you are at it, ask yourself a couple of questions: Do they present you as a highly credible professional? Do they convey a consistent message?

If done correctly, your personal brand statement will help take your career to a new level of visibility, respect and value. And every time you prepare a new promotional piece or sit down to write educational content, you can dip into your personal branding statement for welcome inspiration.

The post Three Steps to Writing a Personal Brand Statement appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

How to Develop Issues and Topics for Your Content Marketing Calendar

Kelly MicKey — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 14:05:00 +0000

Having great content is imperative to having a successful marketing plan. Content drives leads and can expand a firm’s reach into untapped markets. But how should you go about choosing what you write about?

This process starts with developing Issues and Topics. And even before you can do that, you should start with research. What challenges are your clients facing that keep them up at night? Is there a trend in the marketplace that you’re an expert in?

Identifying your issues

Think about issues as an area of expertise for which you want to become known. If a reporter is interested in getting a quote on a particular issue, you would want to come to the top of their mind. If a potential client is looking for a solution to a key challenge, you want to be the first name they think of.

Brainstorm three to four issues that you want to “own”. Select issues in which you are an expert and know a great deal about off the top of your head. Write down general issues in which you already are, or could become, a trusted expert. Consider your existing audience and those who you aspire to reach with your content when determining issues.

Once you have determined your issues, think about how each issue might break down into smaller pieces. Any of these subjects can become topics — and the themes for everything you write and speak about.

Identifying your topics

Many topics are evergreen and can be set ahead of time. Others may be “hot” trends with a short shelf life. No matter what, good topics will address common challenges faced by your target audience.

There is no limit to the number of topics you can include, and as such, you should continue to revisit your list of topics to add and edit them.

Now what?

Once you have gone through the process of identifying the issues and topics that will drive your thought leadership content, turn those topics into actual titles of blog posts, webinars, guides, etc. Take some time to do keyword research for each of your issues and topics and develop a list of good keyword opportunities that are relevant to your audiences. Having a bank of keywords that you can keep in your back pocket is helpful when it comes time to do any content planning.

See also: How to find the best keywords for optimizing your website content

After you’ve identified a good bunch of keyword opportunities, turn them into interesting, engaging titles for your blogs and other content. Then, take these titles and use them to build out your content marketing calendar. Use this tool to create a timeline for what day you’re publishing which title, which format, where it will be published, and any other important information related to publishing it, like keywords, images, hashtags, or other promotional consideration. You may find that understanding other key factors will help dictate when to publish a particular topic. Mapping out a content marketing calendar will give you a ready-to-go blueprint.

You can even take it one step farther and build out all of your social media posts into a calendar or even integrate this content into a central content calendar. Writing everything down and keeping it in one place help to keep your team apprised of your content plans and also accountable for meeting any deadlines they need to know.

See also: Why You Need a Content Marketing Calendar

Now, gather your team and start coming up with great issues and topics!

The post How to Develop Issues and Topics for Your Content Marketing Calendar appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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“PSM went from profits to loss in 2008-09, by 2015 it had ZERO production yet given bailouts; let alone revival of PSM, not even salaries were paid on time. Our govt is only leasing out a faction of PSM, making us owners&policy-makers instead of owners

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