Evangelising the Professional Service Firm
The term, brand evangelist, is often used within consumer marketing circles, and less often in professional services marketing. (A brand evangelist may be known by different names; decision-making influencer, sources of referral, centre of influence etc.)
Consumer brand evangelists will talk about their favourite products or services without prompting or instigation. They may even go as far as making a YouTube video about the brand, collect the brand’s packaging over the years and visit all its stores – all at their own expense.
It is also helpful to also look at those who influence the closure of business deals in professional service firms (PSFs) as brand evangelists whom we can cultivate. Anyone can be a brand evangelist; former and current staff, industry bloggers, clients, media, industry analysts, trade association members etc.
Can you spot them?
Here’s how you can spot a brand evangelist:
Respected voice
Their opinions and referrals are held in relatively high regard. They don’t always have all the information, facts, figures and statistics about your firm, but they know enough about the quality (or lack of) of your work.
Neutral
They are (most often) not financially incentivised and are seen to be unbiased in their views of your firm.
Personal relationship
A large majority of brand evangelists will comprise of people who already personally know someone inside the firm, but this is not necessary.
It must be stressed that brand evangelists are put off by ‘propaganda’ and must be cultivated and impressed. And their trust in your firm must be protected and nurtured.
Cultivating your brand evangelist
Consider how you can cultivate your firm’s brand evangelists. There are many ways to do so. Here are just three of them:
1. Showcase value upfront
Avoid propaganda at all cost. Consider how you can demonstrate thought leadership with tantalising facts and ideas for business or even corporate social responsibility initiatives. Make these deep and insightful; you won’t want to be insulting the intelligence of your brand evangelist! Where possible, make these available to your select group of brand evangelists before it is available to the general public.
A few companies do a great job at standing out with showcasing their intellectual property. These include PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) and McKinsey (www.mckinsey.com). It is worth noting that with all the freely available information from PSFs these days, it is hard to make your views heard. For tips on creating thought leadership that your brand evangelist would love to receive, read our other post on writing thought leadership articles.
2. Use as much ‘face-to-face’ dialogue as possible
Is it surprising that there has been a rising trend in the number of private workshops, seminars and webinars held by PSFs? These are good opportunities to welcome brand evangelists to private and exclusive events and address them directly.
3. Customise your communications
There has been a trend in CEOs setting up their own blogs and companies issuing newsletters. While this is all a good effort, it is important that communications are tailored and not released en mass. It will take a bit more time to slice your database of brand evangelists according to their specific interests, networks, past interactions with your firm etc. but the capability to tailor your messages to them will be worth the return.
For more information, please contact Manifesto.
Image courtesy of BBC.