SEO Guides, Tips & More!

Today’s marketplace is beyond saturated with firms offering services to the individuals and business owners. It can leave an Accounting Marketing professional wondering how their firm can make an impression and a difference. It can also leave one wondering if their firm’s brand is even taken seriously.

If you are plagued with these questions, the first place to look for a solution to the problem is at your firm’s brand. If you want your firm to be taken seriously, you need to take a serious look at your brand. It’s critical to stand out from others in order to attract your ideal client. Just being a different color in a sea of sameness isn’t good enough. You must strive to be different and memorable, offering something others don’t.

However, to stand out and be memorable requires having a strong brand identity that reflects the personality, promise, culture and purpose of your business.

The value of a brand

Along with the name of your firm, a quality brand communicates value and creates credibility for your business, and when used consistently across digital and print platforms, a well designed brand:

• Makes a good first impression
• Entices people to find out more
• Creates a perception of quality, professionalism and trust

Firms have a brand even if they do not have a logo or creative image. Your brand is created and defined by your actions and triggers feelings about your company, which has an emotional impact on your clients. This emotional impact will determine whether someone wants to do business with you, or not.

To find out what your brand is, survey your current clients and ask them what comes to mind when your business is mentioned. If they consistently respond with an emotion or feeling that is in sync with your business purpose, then your brand has been developed. When responses are inconsistent, ambiguous or refer to non-image attributes such as cost, you’ve got work to do.

Why you may need to update your brand

The message your brand image sends must align with what your ideal client is looking for from your business. Does your brand project the experience that appeals to your ideal client? If not, then branding is an obvious candidate for an update. Your brand needs an update if it is:

• Associated with a negative feeling
• Weak, poor quality or non-existent
• Out of sync with your identity or culture
• Showing signs of age or looks dated
• Not differentiating your business from the competition

Change or evolve your brand

Although your business may have an established brand, your brand needs should also evolve with your business. As your business matures, so should your brand. If you need to evolve your brand, review the attributes and graphic elements of your brand to identify what appeals to your ideal client, then plan to keep those and work on enhancing the others.

If you have had the same logo for several years, talk with a designer to see if you can update its look without changing the overall image it projects. If you don’t have a true logo or brand mark, consider having one developed.

Does your brand need to be refreshed?

Your firm’s brand is an important asset of your business and time should be spent creating one that can carry your business not only today, but into the future as well. Having your brand done correctly from the beginning is the best option, but if your brand is not making the emotional connections with your customers, then it is time for a change. Giving it a subtle facelift can get people to notice that something is different which may energize their interest in what you have to offer.

Changing your brand is not a decision to make lightly and the majority of the time you should probably resist the urge to completely change your brand. Like all things in marketing, just because you’ve gotten bored with your look or message, doesn’t mean your customer or prospect has. However, if your brand is hurting your business, it just may be time to consider removing the elements that make it look dated or simplify its look to keep your brand relevant to your customer.

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If you are struggling with your firm’s brand, talk to us. We can help.