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Brand is what people think, feel and say about you. It’s simple. Identifying, articulating and communicating your brand – that’s not so simple. Begin by pinpointing what drives and shapes your own personal story. Then highlight those characteristics that distinguish you and your work from other practices. These are the building blocks of brand.
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Establishing and championing your brand
Developing and delivering your brand is entirely your responsibility. If you don’t step up to the plate, your marketplace will. Imagine your clients and their influencers, together with your competitors and suppliers, all combining to create and control your brand. That’s exactly what happens when architects and designers fail to articulate their own brands.
In the absence of any intervention from you, your brand is conceived by accident – not by design. Instead, take control from the get-go. Asserting your brand, loud and clear, is the only way to assure the look and feel of your practice attracts your ideal clients.
Brand is the total emotional experience invoked by each and every action you and your team undertake. Remember, brand communicates value, and value is what attracts clients to your practice.
Looking to secure a new client? Remember this two-step strategy for sales success:
- Emotional responses propel the consumer to purchase
- Evidence justifies the consumer’s decision to purchase
How do you identify your brand?
Start by looking inward. Consider any or all of the following:
- Personality traits
- Family background
- Educational history
- Geographic influences
- Values that shape you
- Key motivators
To ensure your brand looks and feels authentic, tell your story and tell it in a way that highlights your strengths, virtues and values.
DO |
DON'T |
Be confident in how you present yourself and your practice |
Mimic the look and feel of other practices |
Choose a style and language that’s all your own |
Settle for a brand that doesn’t feel 100% true to you |
Be consistent with your brand messaging across all touchpoints |
Confuse a brand with a logo – it’s much, much more than a motif |
What are your competitive strengths?
These are the tangible traits that show the market why your practice should be prioritised over all others. The most powerful brands leverage these strengths to elevate their position in the marketplace. And you can too.
Architects who sell on brand are more likely to compete on design not on price.
Competitive strengths will vary, practice to practice, but may include:
- Track Record (eg your tried and tested experience within a specific sector)
- Scale (eg being equipped to deliver projects of varying size and
- complexity)
- Service (eg your personal approach and style of interaction)
- Commercial acumen (eg your ability to balance corporate and creative drivers)
- Holistic approach (eg your experience with wide-ranging and/or end-to-end responsibilities)
- Trusted networks (eg good relationships you have built with local authorities)
What is your point of difference?
Take a moment to reflect on the one, stand-out capability that distinguishes you from your competition. That point of difference enables you to overtake other practices simply by virtue of you being you.
What is your desired marketplace?
Before you begin strategising ways to retain clients or to attract more of them, ensure you know exactly who it is you wish to target.
Project size and scope, freedom to be creative and proximity of sites may all come into consideration when determining the marketplace in which you aspire to work.
Naturally, your target market may change over time. Why? For starters, the skill set of your team might expand. Or, perhaps your personal circumstances have changed and impacted your professional goals. Whatever the trigger, understanding your market must be prioritised ahead of going to market.
How do you want clients to feel about your practice?
The way clients feel about your practice may be very different from the way you’d like them to perceive you. But how do you know what clients are thinking and feeling?
You’ll only uncover this type of intel by going direct to the source. Consider engaging a neutral, third party to interview a sample of your clients – aim for at least 12, that way you’ll be able to identify any common threads or trends. Resist the temptation to merely ‘survey’ clients with a templated questionnaire. This type of cold and clinical process disrespects your clients by suggesting they’re not worthy of a more personalised approach.
For some, the results of your enquiries may crystalise your true value. For others, it could serve as a timely wake-up call to turn the dial on how you do business. In an ideal scenario, how would your client’s experience look and feel from their first point of contact, right through to a project’s completion?
Now’s the time to make a wish list of the qualities you want your practice to be known for espousing – and delivering.
How does brand work?
The best use of brand is to leverage it to persuade clients and prospects to do more business with you. But how? To sell on brand, everything you do and say should be designed to elicit a positive emotional response from your audience.
The aim is to encourage clients to feel:
- respected and valued
- heard and understood
- confident in your practice
- engaged and empowered.
Successful architecture and design brands imbue a sense of positivity, right from the outset. It’s contagious – clients become incredibly loyal and proud to work with those brands.
How is brand communicated?
Be mindful that your brand will be communicated across a multitude of touch points. These include publicity and marketing activities, social media, one-on-one interactions and so much more. At each and every point of contact, your clients and prospects need to get a sense of you and your story. To this end, ensure the name of your practice, and the design of your logo, are consistent with the key attributes that make up your brand.
Lindy Johnson, marketing specialist for architects and designers, kindly prepared the content of this note.
Disclaimer
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