Successful brands don’t just happen by accident—they’re carefully cultivated. No matter your industry or firm size, data is the secret weapon for honing in on brand messaging that aligns with your goals and mission. When assessing the strength and authenticity of your brand, making sure you can answer these basic questions is a good place to start.

What are we REALLY good at?

If you have six or eight or 10 service areas, which ones are the strongest? Are there niches in which your firm excels? Maybe you’re especially adept at helping not-for-profits stretch their budgets, or you’re the go-to firm for companies in crisis. Put another way—what are the things that make you proudest about your brand?

Why would someone choose us over our competitors?

In other words, what space do we occupy in the market? Where do we fit into the current landscape? What are we better at than our competitors? What are we doing or offering that our competitors aren’t—and what are our competitors doing or offering that we aren’t?

What’s it like to be our client?

If you don’t know how your clients experience your firm, you can't know how to appeal to your potential future clients. Do clients have a consistent experience every time they interact with your brand? How would they describe what it’s like to be your client? What keeps them coming back?

What’s our culture, and what are our values?

People often think about company culture as a set of values that determines what it’s like to work for a company, but your culture is also part of your brand identity. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors. What are your core values? If someone was going to use five words to describe your brand, what would you hope they’d say?

Who is our ideal client?

Not every client is a good fit for your firm. What are the  characteristics of a client that make them a good match for you?  This list could include industry, service needs, size, geography, growth rate, abilities of key employees, personalities of the owners, etc.  If you could create the ideal target client on paper, who would that be?

So how do you get at the answers to these questions? With two kinds of data: internal and external.

Internal data is easy to gather. If you ask your firm’s leaders and staff to weigh in on these questions, you could come up with answers in an afternoon. The feedback will probably be thoughtful and useful. You might hear some interesting perspectives that make you think about things in new ways. Various team members have different interactions with clients, which provides a variety of insights. Plus, they bring their own life experiences to the table, and surveying people from different backgrounds is critical if you’re going to eliminate any biases from your brand messaging.  

Because it’s fast and easy to gather internal data about your brand messaging, firms (and the vast majority of marketing consultants) stop there. Leaders assume that their own team members are the authorities on their services and the client experience. What they don’t realize is that just because someone works 40+ hours a week for a firm doesn’t give them the full picture of the firm’s brand.

External data is harder to collect but ultimately much more useful. Your clients and referral sources have perspective about your brand and the experience of working with you that no one on the “inside” can have.  They’re also representative of the target audience that you want to reach—so what they think about your brand is ultimately the more valuable type of feedback.  

Your brand is nothing without your clients. Finding out what they think about its strengths and weaknesses gives you truly actionable feedback that lets you tailor your brand message to align with your vision for the future. Your clients and referral sources aren’t as personally invested in your firm’s success as your employees are, so they’re free to be blunt and expansive in a way that no one on your payroll is.

 By all means, gather your team to discuss these questions. There’s no substitution for their perspective. But if you don’t ask your clients and referral sources what they think about your brand too, you’re only getting half the picture. I urge you to take into account both internal and external data during the process of honing your brand message.

It’s important to note that eliciting client feedback for a brand study is NOT the same as a client satisfaction survey.  Both have their place, but they cannot be combined or act in place of the other.

EVERY SINGLE TIME we do a Beyond Brand project, we hear client feedback that surprises the firm’s leaders and ultimately elevates the firm’s brand message.  Keep in mind that asking clients and referral sources about your firm and their experience with your brand isn’t something that firm employees can do.  Being an objective third party puts clients at ease that they can speak freely.  Also, it takes training to ask the right questions, the right follow-up questions, and to stay objective regardless of what gets said.  

Firms choose to undertake brand processes for different reasons.  Some firms find themselves at a crossroad, like when they’re considering M&A.  Knowing your brand values will help you determine if another firm matches with yours and will lead to further success.  Other firms let areas of their practice get stagnant and find marketing or sales painful as they get pushed into a commodity role because it’s hard to differentiate or command premium pricing.  Some firms are proactive and undertake a brand study before doing a major project like a new website.  Whatever your reason, if you’re considering a brand project for your firm, please reach out!  I love this kind of work and would delight in learning about your firm!