Your Professional Services Brand Promise Defined

Without a doubt, branding your professional services will help you succeed in your business.

Reflecting your unique combination of skills and attributes, it distinguishes you from everyone else, which in turn will help you stand out from the crowd.

Included in this combination is the revelation of who you are as a person and what stand for as a service professional.

That’s what makes your branding authentic: your true and best self is an essential element of the public face of your service.

Knowing Your Why

Knowing your why is an important first step in creating your brand positioning statement. When you know your why, you will you find the courage to take the risks needed to get ahead, stay motivated when the chips are down.

In practice, your why is both familiar and comfortable. Strategically, knowing your why serves much the same purpose as a mission statement.

It communicates the purpose of your service business, focusing your energy, actions, behaviors and decisions towards the things that are most important.

The Connection Between Knowing Your Why And Marketing

Certainly, knowing your why can play a critical role in continuing to undertake and effectively complete those many actions necessary to generate more new business.

But what about our marketing communications, specifically branding?

Our personal brands define who we are as individuals and as professionals.

Including your why in your brand statement can enhance and support those elements that differentiate you from the competition.

This helps make your marketing more authentic, differentiating it from the blatant lies and outright lies favored by copycat marketers and shameless self-promoters alike.

What Is Your POV?

The term POV stands for point of view.?A point of view reflects a particular attitude or way of considering a matter.

Our point of view or POV helps us find like-minded people as friends and acquaintances.?It also helps attract potentially ideal clients and referral sources, while discouraging others whose point of view is different from, perhaps even directly opposite to ours.

By extension, a brand perspective is in effect the POV for your brand.?

As a component of what your brand stands for, your brand perspective reflects your particular attitude or way of considering a matter.

By way of example, as a marketing coach, my point of view … or attitude … towards serving clients was facilitative. (Because this coaching service has been discontinued, I am using the past tense. As a result, I am sharing my experience as a learning tool, not as promotional content.)?

In practice, this meant that instead of directly telling clients what they should do, I tried to make it easier for them to find their own solutions.?

After all, that is what facilitation is about.

My role was to ask the questions that clients may not have thought about to help them access their own information and experience base.

In effect, a brand positioning statement brings together your why and your brand point of view.

The 4 Elements of a Brand Positioning Statement

Your Target Market

This element identifies your target market: the potentially ideal clients whom you would like to attract.

Continuing my marketing coach example, my potentially ideal clients were (and still are) self-employed individuals who provide either or both of personal and professional services.?

For my purposes, I consider these people to be service professionals.

The Problem That Your Service(s) Solves

What is the main problem that your ideal clients face … and how and do you help solve this problem?

For example, my ideal clients want and deserve more new business…but often lack the interest, skills and know-how to generate this new business.

My role as a marketing coach was to help them learn and do what they need to do in order to generate more new business.

Benefit/Point of Difference

How does your why and your point of view distinguish you from the competition?

Instead of applying marketing practices and theories based on selling commodities and consumer products, I help clients learn how to market their services authentically, aligned with their true selves.

Reason to Believe

Social proof?in the form of client testimonials or third-party endorsements deliver convincing support that you and your services deliver what your brand promises.

If you are not including social proof in your marketing communications, you are handicapping your ultimate success.

Your Brand Promise

A refined version of your brand positioning statement, your brand promise can generate new business and referrals from past clients.

By consistently providing quality service, you promise that clients will continue to receive the same quality.

This promise of quality is reassuring to your clients and contacts.

It increases their comfort in continuing to deal with you and also to recommend potentially ideal clients to you.

Successful brands articulate and clarify what they do for each and every client.

Think of the biggest brands.

They are very consistent in the service they deliver.

A Big Mac always tastes the same, wherever or whenever you have one.

What Some Big Brands Promise

Nike?–?Although famous for its tagline, “Just do it.” Nike’s brand promise is: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.”

Perhaps more of a mission statement than a brand promise, the effectiveness of this description dramatically increased by the explaining that if you have a body, you’re an athlete.

Starbucks?–?More than a chain of coffee shops, Starbucks sees itself as a lifestyle brand with its promise to consumers: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

Coca-Cola?-?Who doesn’t know what this company produces? With no reference to product or service, it’s brand promise strives for an emotional connection:?“To refresh the world… To inspire moments of optimism and uplift… To create value and make a difference.”

Note how each of these promises incorporate the individual company’s why and point of view.

The High Five of an Effective Brand Promise

1.?????Simple

·????????no longer than a simple sentence or two. A brand promise is not the same thing as a mission statement, which can often get convoluted with rambling sentences.

·????????combines the catchiness of a tagline with the essence of your why.

2. Credible

·????????aligned with the benefits that clients enjoy from your help

·????????can be confirmed by third party endorsements and testimonials

3. Different

·????????based upon your own unique combination of personal attributes and professional expertise

·????????distinguish you and your services from the competition, helps you stand out from the crowd

4. Memorable

·????????impacts every decision make and action you take

·????????enduring, like unforgettable experiences

5. Inspiring

·????????Creates and emotional connection to you and your services

·????????Exceed expectations—deliver more than promised

How To Apply Your Brand Positioning Statement

Your brand positioning statement is more than just another form of an elevator speech.

Think of it as an explanation you that you would give when a friend whom you haven’t seen in many years asks what you do.

Or perhaps it could be your answer to the question from a well-connected and helpful friend who asks: “what kinds of clients do you serve and how do you help them?”

Instead of mindlessly reciting your statement as a memorized mantra or sales pitch, answer the questions conversationally.

In the place of industry jargon and buzz words, explain your statement in language that a reasonably intelligent person can easily understand.

Your statement can also serve as an alignment test for all of your marketing messaging.

The closer an individual message aligns with your statement, the more effective the message will be.?

On the other hand, messages that are misaligned with a brand positioning statement are little than wasted communication opportunities.

What Do Your Do ... And For Whom

Given the importance of a brand promise to generating new business, there is a very real risk of overthinking it.

A better approach would be to keep it simple: address the question of what do you do … and for whom?

These easy steps will help you clarify your promise.

1.?????Clarify what you think you do … and for whom

2.?????Ask your inner circle of contacts and a few ideal clients what they think you do … and for whom?

3.?????Consolidate the responses to steps 1 and 2 into a clear, concise statement that accurately and authentically reflects your best personal and professional stuff.

Your Turn

Once you have clarified what you do and for whom you do it, share your thoughts about the

The first 10 people who share their responses, will receive a free copy of New Beginnings & New Opportunities.

I prepared this short eBook to help people like you help your business survive the pandemic and do more once it passes. ?The content is as relevant today as it was in the early stages of the pandemic.

Thanks for reading this article and thanks in advance for sharing your response.

To learn more about branding your services see STOP: Being Ignored! START: Standing Out?From the Crowd!

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