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See You at the Show!
On Wednesday, April 4, I will have the honor of
presenting a session at the Residential Design and
Construction Show.
This interactive discussion,
which will include client representatives from F.H.
Perry Builder, Cutting
Edge Systems and Wilson
Kelsey Design is called “Targeting your Firm’s Market,
Mission and Message.”
Hope you can join us.
Click here
for more details or to register for free admission to the
exhibit hall before March 19, 2007.
"There
is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of
thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed
for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered
into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well
as our success."
- George Burton
Copyright
2007
Chris Joy Marketing Communications.
All
rights reserved. You may reproduce content included in the
Brand Guardian e-newsletter by including this copyright and,
if reproducing it electronically, by including a link to www.chrisjoycomm.com.
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Welcome to the inaugural
issue of “Brand Guardian,” my new e-newsletter for clients and
friends to keep the importance of brand top-of-mind for
service businesses.
Many of you have worked with
me to find the true essence of your brand.
Who are
you? What is the promise you make to those who do business
with you? What makes you different from the other thousand
companies in our market who claim to do what you do?
We’ve dug deep and painstakingly answered those
questions together. But that does not mean our branding work
is done. Your brand lives on in every impression you make –
intentional or not, good or bad, loud or soft.
This
letter is intended to serve as a quick monthly reminder that
your brand is continuing to make impressions every day,
whether you are paying attention or not.
Where
is it? Who is it talking to? Is it making you proud?
Each month, I’ll check in with you through this
newsletter, touching base to help you watch over your brand.
I’ll provide real-life examples of how brands live, even
in small companies. From time to time, I’ll probably get up on
my soapbox and rant about how a well-known company is
endangering its brand image. And at times I will sing the
praises of brands being managed well.
Read the
whole thing or not, but please, at least do this for me.
Use the monthly prompt as a reminder to check in on what
your firm is doing, and think about the impressions you are
making everyday to people who matter to your success.
I hope you find this helpful. Follow this link to
let me know if it is.
All the best,
Chris Joy
Principal
Chris Joy
Marketing Communications
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We Are the Company We Keep
My grandmother was a wonderful, warm, welcoming
woman – never at a loss of opinion.
I’ll never
forget her casual critique of a friend of mine who she never
really cared for. “You are,” she gently reminded me, “the
company you keep.” Not long after, the friend and I parted
ways.
I love it when Nana’s little pearls of wisdom
revisit me in a new context. Recently, it dawned on me that
this little gem speaks volumes for business and the jobs we
decide to take.
As service providers, most of us
can only manage a certain number of significant client
projects per year. By virtue of what we do, we are not
intrinsically scalable so we are forced to be judicious about
the projects we take. Each one makes a statement about who
we are. Does a given project match our resources and
talents? Is the client a good fit for our firm’s personality
and culture? In all ways, big and small, measurable and
immeasurable, will it allow us to do our best work?
In
a tightening economy, it’s a very tough call to walk away from
a project that does not make the grade on every point. But in
a service business, every project you take says something
significant about your brand. That is, there are a certain
number of people – friends, colleagues, and relatives of the
homeowners you’re working for – who may only know of you by
the one project you are doing that they are familiar with. To
those people, and everyone with whom they come into contact
and to whom they spread your good word, your firm will be
known solely for the work you did on that one house, for that
one family.
Is it what you want to be known for?
There are a million little impressions that make up
your brand image in the minds of people you wish to influence,
but few are as important as the projects you take. Among
the first questions prospects ask when evaluating you is “What
kinds of projects have you done?” Naturally, you want those
projects to convey your strengths, and position you favorably.
Yesterday, I was talking with a builder and I asked
what kind of work he did. He replied, “We do some spec
building, some renovations, some small projects, some whole
house work – we’ll do anything.” He was being honest and
trying to appear flexible, I guess. But as someone who takes
branding to heart, I died a little inside. Did he realize in
one fell swoop he was committing brand homicide?
Flexibility is great, but to the extent that it leaves no
valuable impression of what you are inherently well-suited
for, flexibility becomes a brand – and business –
killer.
I think sometimes we ask too much of our
prospects to figure out what we mean when we make such
statements. I don’t think they necessarily make the leaps we
expect they might – that the builder, in this case, excels in
project management and therefore can apply a proven process to
a variety of jobs, with better than average results on each.
Instead, the prospect walks away from that
conversation thinking, “OK, he does construction of some sort.
Three days later, the prospect can’t even remember if it was
residential or commercial. A week later, he or she can’t
remember if the guy was a builder or developer. So, in this
case, did the builder make any impression at all? Not really.
Ideally, we’d like every project we take to be a
shining example of our best work. Wouldn’t it be nice if the
clients on every job were salt-of-the-earth lottery winners
with no particular time constraints, who have the perfect job
that challenges our best abilities, and who value everything
we are and do? Sure. But not likely.
But since your
brand is based largely on the work you’ve done, it’s important
to have standards. What do you want to be known for? If
it’s historic preservation, don’t spend time and resources on
renovating a 1985 development house – even if it happens to be
next door. If it’s residential interior design, don’t do
one-off commercial buildings, even if the client is willing to
pay through the nose. If it’s working on complicated millwork,
don’t take generic projects. All of these jobs confuse your
brand, which will make it harder to convince prospects you are
the best firm for that truly perfect job when it does come
along.
The next time a prospective project falls
from the sky, ask yourself if it’s really worth catching.
If it isn’t something you’d want to be known for, muster
the strength to take a pass. Spend that energy finding
projects that fit, and building your brand around the work
that’s suits you best. In a few years, your portfolio will
reflect exactly who you want to be, and your brand will speak
for itself.
Nana would be so proud.
Have you thought about jobs in this light
before? Would you pass up a job that was not really what you
wanted to be known for? |
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Follow this link to weigh in with your two
cents. |
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Brand Champion of the Month
"You Had
Me at Your Home Page"
This section will
highlight a specific project that we think has elements worth
emulating. It will be one brief snapshot of an overall brand
campaign, with the intention of providing a good example of
how to treat a brand right.
This past fall, residential
interior design client, Wilson
Kelsey Design of Salem, MA launched a new website. After
six months of rebranding work, it was developed as the firm’s
primary communications tool to promote the firm’s scope of
work, but with the equally important objective of giving
prospects an immediate sense of what it would be like to work
with the dynamic duo of Sally Wilson and John Kelsey.
In our branding work, several things emerged as
natural strengths for the firm. The first was their unique
approach to meeting the emotional needs of different clients.
Wilson Kelsey’s clients don't seek elaborate window
treatments per se, so much as they do the drama and energy
they add to a living room. They don't seek a muted color
palette in a master bath, but rather the sense of peacefulness
that palette evokes.
The second primary
differentiator was their unusually high standard of discipline
in client service delivery, honed from years of working in
a commercial setting.
These two points, along with many
others culled from our extensive discovery work, make Wilson
Kelsey an ideal fit for some prospects, and not others. Our
goal with the website—and every other contact point the
company makes - was then to resonate distinctly with those
ideal prospects, while not trying to be everything to
everyone.
We illustrated the firm’s approach of
uncovering the emotional goals of the client through walking
through several diverse types of homes that the firm had made
over, for which the homeowners had very different goals and
expectations. What remained constant was the firm’s dedication
to exceeding their client’s expectations through their natural
discipline and work process that had been developed over
time.
How did this strategy work?
Just
weeks after posting the different case studies, a husband and
wife team of Boston-based doctors (who had previously never
heard of Wilson Kelsey Design) were surfing the Net for design
services. Upon seeing Wilson Kelsey's portfolio, the busy
doctors immediately sensed they had found a match - in both
work product and work style - and called for a proposal.
The couple said that they had previously interviewed a
number of designers but none seemed to understand the sort of
"classic, antique, European feel” they wanted. However,
they immediately sensed from the website alone that Wilson
Kelsey not only could master the look and feel they craved,
but that their buttoned-up work style was well aligned with
the analytical decision-making processes the doctors were
naturally comfortable with.
To view one particular
case study that sold the doctors on the firm, follow
this link. In the next year, we look forward to adding the
doctors' renovated home to the firm's online portfolio. Check
back later!
How well does your website
illustrate the natural strengths of your firm?
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Quick Tip
Sign up for
Success
Last Tuesday, a client asked about the
importance of job site signs. He wasn’t using them
consistently on all the projects the firm was doing because he
didn’t have enough signs, for one, and secondly, didn't really
want to ask the homeowners for permission, and third, thought
some that were older were not in the best shape. As a result,
several projects were being done without any job site signs at
all.
For my money, there is no better bang for your
buck than having your branded site sign in a neighborhood in
which you want to do more work.
Yes, it should
look professional, but so long as it has a current logo,
company name, phone number and website address, any sign is
better than no sign at all. Hope to see yours around town
soon.
Do you use site signs consistently? If so, what effect
do they have on your lead generation efforts?
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