There are some brands that immediately make you think of high class: Tiffany, Jaguar, Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton. When you think of these brands, you think of quality, great reputation, premium service and also a premium price tag.

There are other brands that make you think value, consistency and comfort: Target, Chevrolet, Marriott, Keds.

What comes to mind when people think of your firm? Have you ever considered your market position?

Professional service providers around the world talk about the pressures to compete on price while also finding new ways to grow their firms and increase profits. But statistics show that market leaders earn higher hourly rates, have fewer collections issues and garner higher profits compared to their less visible competitors.

Perception influences behavior. If prospects and clients perceive your firm as the best fit for them — and you have shown that you deliver what they want — they will happily write higher checks regardless of the economy or other influencers. Instead of competing on price, you compete on brilliance.

Once they’ve experienced your firm as THE ONE, anyone and anything else pales in comparison.

To establish your market position, there are several things that must happen within your firm and outside of it. They include: clarifying your story, creating messages around that story, determining target audiences, choosing the vehicles that reach those audiences, developing content around your key messages, monitoring response, refining and expanding the messages.

None of these steps directly relate to billable client hours. This is partly why few firms establish a market position and the higher profits that go with it. It’s an exclusive club whose members actively invest time, money and people to achieve their position. But let’s take a look at what these steps really require, and you’ll realize that more firms could have a market position without spending a fortune or sacrificing client service.

Clarify Your Story

Firms become known for certain things. Although their work and experience evolve, their perceived position in the market may not. An accounting firm may be known for its work in telecommunications. Another is known for its work in affordable housing. Law firms may hold a market perception as just a creditor’s firm or a construction law firm, when in fact they offer a full menu of legal services. Construction and engineering professionals are frustrated by RFPs that want to compare firms by project types (school, fire station, senior housing) rather than their skills and knowledge of construction.

Instead of a brand based on knowledge, strengths or thought leadership (brilliance), professionals often acquire a brand based on the types of clients they serve (billables).

To create your true story, you have to find out why your clients choose you. Create a story around strengths and differentiators rather than client types or service offerings. To do this, you need to really understand the experience of working with you through your clients’ eyes. Mere buzzwords like “Excellence” or “Quality” or even “Exceptional Client Service” will not cut it. You need to invest in the research that helps you create valid and powerful stories and messages.

Create Messages

Once you have feedback on the quality of work and knowledge that you deliver to clients, the next step is creating unique and memorable messages about your firm.

These messages might relate to government relations advocacy on behalf of an industry. They might highlight your in-depth analysis or thought leadership on business challenges. They might include your connections and involvement in an industry.

Your messages should focus on the value you bring to your clients and the experience of working with you, not just the services you offer.

Choose Target Audiences

Once you have your story and messages to share, decide who should hear about them. This includes referral sources as well as targeted clients and prospects.

By understanding who you want to sell to and serve, you pinpoint your market position. Your target audiences create a direction for distribution of your story. It’s not for just anyone.

Get Beyond Just Advertising or PR

How do you get your story out to support your market position? The traditional way has been through media. But as you know, media has changed quite a bit.

When choosing media, you no longer have to rely on traditional public relations, hoping that a reporter, editor or radio host features you. You can still share your story with this media — which we call “pitched” media — but you can also choose “paid” and “proactive” media. Pitched media still provides you with targeted visibility and credibility; however, there are more options to share your message — and more control over the result.

• Pitched Media
  With pitched media, you typically create a relationship with a reporter, editor or host and start sending story ideas — hoping that they show interest, pick up the idea and cover it. The result might be a feature article, a quote in a larger article, an opinion piece, a guest interview, a speaking gig or a case study.
• Paid Media
  Paid media is coverage that you gain by paying a fee or subscription. This might include paid articles, ads, sponsorships, paid radio or TV shows or paid distribution of press releases. You broker these opportunities through the chosen media’s advertising channels.
• Proactive Media
  Proactive media is the newest way to establish a market position. You create your own media vehicles such as blogs, web content, videos, social media pages and networking (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter), e-books, workshops and other content that shares your story. This type of media costs more time than money, and results in building credibility, visibility and better search results for your firm website.

Choosing the vehicles to support your story can be quite complex and costly if you don’t have a strategy.

We recommend creating a 12-month media plan that includes a hand-selected menu of media from all three categories — media that fit your audiences and messages. This way, you’re not just buying ads or experiencing the letdown of traditional media rejection.

Provide Premium Content

To leverage pitched, paid and proactive media, develop content that shares your messages and story. The key is to present your story and messages in ways that educate, inform and inspire your audiences. The best content goes beyond purely self-promotional information and establishes your people as experts on particular topics. The quality of your content will determine your success with attracting new prospects, referral sources and clients.

Your content may include op/ed commentaries on current trends, paid advertorials about experts in your firm, press releases on issues or firm news, thought leadership pieces on where you believe an issue is heading, interview videos, client success stories, how-to and tips articles, Top 10 lists, webinars or newsletters.

This is often the place where our clients begin to resist. They have the impression that developing content will take time away from clients and everything else they already have on their plate. They can’t envision how this process will help them create a market position. They aren’t comfortable with the idea of thought leadership on topics that depend on technological, governmental or economic changes outside their control.

These concerns are absolutely legitimate, but will keep you in the pack of professionals who all look the same from the outside. You will continue to compete on price rather than brilliance.

Monitor Audience Response

These efforts are measurable. You can see over time how your placement and distribution of content in various media plays out — thanks to various measuring and monitoring tools provided by the media and your website host.

For example, you could purchase placement of a thought leadership article on a news page targeted by city, a specific industry and even a specific age group. Once published, your article can be measured by views, click-throughs from the article to your website and article comments or feedback.

Refine your Strategy

As with any marketing effort, developing a market position happens over time. What I am describing here is just part of an overall strategic marketing plan that includes tactics such as networking and building a sales pipeline and coaching your team beyond technical skills. You will learn what works well and what doesn’t fit. You’ll learn which efforts are bringing in the most business and attention from the audiences you prefer.

You will start to see initial results within six months, but a full picture should emerge after 12 months. You will notice that clients and your competition are viewing you a bit differently. You will experience less resistance to fees and advice. You will notice higher quality candidates and prospects connecting with you. You will have more space financially and mentally to choose business opportunities with confidence.

To consciously choose your market position is not an easy path, but membership in this club does have its privileges.

Want people to read your website, blog, brochure or articles? These principles come from studies of sticky ideas, ways to attract attention, and persuade readers. Use a few in your next writing project to create engagement with your audience.

Blend logic and emotion.

Prospects use both sides of their brains when looking for a new firm. They want quality services, but they also want to enjoy working with you. Use emotionally positive words, describe your firm culture and let prospects connect to your people through bios and stories.

Use core concepts.

Professional services are very complex fields. Boil your message down to its core to help busy prospects digest it.

Surprise the reader.

Human brains are designed to tune out the expected and capture the unusual: you forget your drive to work but remember one partner’s outrageous behavior at the office party a year ago. Pleasant surprises stick with us as well as unpleasant, so use unexpected language and unusual examples to make your content memorable.

Tell stories.

Consider fables and legends—stories that are inherently memorable and have survived for thousands of years. Use a few well-chosen stories that illustrate the benefits your firm delivers to clients.