Branding Accountants

By Martin Crotty | 07.04.10 Chartered Accountants Ireland, News & Events

Does brand matter?

Businesses are aware that there is an almost endless supply of accountants in Ireland—some 1,300 Chartered Accountancy practices alone. All are competing to a greater or lesser degree for a finite amount of work. How can you be assured of getting your share of the action?

Nowadays quality is a norm, not a competitive advantage. Historic points-of-difference—unique selling propositions or USPs in marketing-speak—are now commodities. So promising that you offer something more is not enough to attract new business today.

How clients decide whom to hire

How is a potential client (the buyer) going to decide to select your firm over another? As with all human decisions there is a mixture of the rational and the emotional in the decision-making process.

There are five key steps that all buyers go through in making the decision to purchase, in this case to appoint an accountant as a professional service advisor:

1    Awareness
Has the potential client heard of you? If the buyer has never heard of you clearly you’re out. Even if they know almost nothing about you research shows that decision-makers are more likely to choose a firm that they have heard of over one they have not.

2    Familiarity
Does the buyer know what you do? If he or she is not clear about your service offering you will not go beyond this stage.

3    Evaluation
The buyer knows you and what you offer and you have made it onto his initial list. You will now be subjected to detailed and very rational due diligence examination: do you meet his identified needs?

4    Choice
You meet the buyer’s technical needs, but do you meet them better than your competitors? At this point you have passed the “Can they do the job?” test and you are in the “Which do I like best?” territory. Virtually all decisions, even the most serious business ones, go through this stage. The buyer needs to feel comfortable with the people with whom he is going to have to work closely, perhaps for a long time. This is a very important and mainly emotional decision.

5    Loyalty
Once successfully through stage 4 you have got the first job, but then what happens? This is about whether you live up to your original promise and about whether this client will offer you additional work.
So what has all this got to do with branding, you might ask?

Contrary to popular opinion brand and branding is not all about logos or symbols, though that is part of it. Branding is really about the reputation your firm has with its audiences.

Your brand iceberg

Think of your firm’s brand as being like an iceberg. Only a small part of your brand iceberg (about 10%) is visible above the water. This represents the visible part of your brand: your name, brand mark (logo), web site, promotional material and so on. This is your Brand Expression—what your brand says about itselfit is the claims or promises you make to your customers and potential customers.

The much bigger part (90%) of your brand iceberg lies below the waterline. This is not immediately visible to your audience but it represents everything that happens in your firm: from the quality of the service you offer and the efficiency and accuracy of your processes to the way your people behave, how you answer the telephone and the state of your office. This is your Brand Experience—it is what your clients experience when doing business with your firm.

To form the lasting impression that will enable you to navigate successfully through that decision-making process it is important to ensure that your brand promise is aligned with or matched by your client’s experience of your brand—in other words that you truly deliver what you say you will deliver.
Your expression or promise—the tip of your brand iceberg—will get you through the first three decision-making stages. For stages 4 and 5 you rely on the experience your clients have of you and your firm during and following the selection process.

If the claims you express are substantiated by the client’s experience of working with you then your brand will be credible and powerful. Clients will trust in you, give you repeat business and refer you on to others. Achieving the level of trust that encourages clients to refer you to their friends and colleagues is the holy grail of professional services marketing.

So what about the brand mark or logo?

Your firm’s name and visual identity have a vital role to play in this process. The distinctiveness of your name and identity makes you recognisable and enables potential clients to be aware that you exist (Step 1).

The relevance and clarity of your brand communications makes it possible for the potential client to understand exactly what you offer (Step 2) and provides (or should provide) the detailed information about your service that enables the due diligence evaluation that gets you onto the short list (Step 3).

The impression made by the overall quality your communications materials combines with the impression you make as a person to influence the emotional aspects of the final choice (Step 4).

Finally, the experience clients have of your service either reinforces and confirms their view of you as a professional worthy of their trust or positions you as a charlatan to be replaced with all possible speed (Step 5).

A holistic process

So branding is not just about logos, web sites and brochures. It is a holistic process that permeates through your firm that—done well—builds trust and generates repeat business and lasting client relationships.

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This article was orginally published in Chartered Accountants Ireland News in April 2010.

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Martin Crotty is Managing Director of BFK, a brand communications agency based in Dublin. BFK specialise in brand evaluation, communications strategy and brand identity creation for companies and organisations operating in a business-to-business environment.