How does brand affect a professional service business' ability to grow? Indeed, does brand have any affect at all?
In the just released research What's Working In Lead Generation, we asked more than 700 leaders in professional service businesses about their lead generation practices and found that the respondent companies with the well-known company reputations were significantly more likely than their "best kept secret" counterparts to say they were "Good" or "Excellent" at generating leads for their services.
In total, the 30% of companies that considered themselves "very well-known" in their target market benefited from the impact of reputation reach while the 70% of companies that thought of themselves as "not very well-known" didn't.
Takeaway: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
One argument seems to never go away. On the one side you have people who say, “We need to increase our brand recognition in order to truly succeed with marketing and lead generation.” The other side typically maintains, “Just get out there and sell. Name recognition doesn’t matter.”
Recognition and reputation do matter when it comes to lead generation. 65% of well known companies report being good or excellent at lead generation whereas only 44% of the not well known companies report being good or excellent. If you are well known, whatever lead generation tactics you employ are likely to work better.
In How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Sales from the Client Perspective, we asked 200 buyers of professional services how they find and learn more about potential service providers. After referrals, “I already knew about the service provider” (a.k.a. reputation or brand reach) was the top approach cited along with, “learning about the service provider by hearing them speak.”
In What’s Working In Lead Generation, only 30% of companies claimed the power of name-recognition in their market. That spells opportunity for the other 70% of firms. The more well known you are, the better your lead generation efforts will work. Of course, this begs the question, “which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” or in this case “the brand recognition or the lead generation success?” In our opinion, they work together.
Caveat: Don't take these results and use them to make your case for getting more money in your advertising budget.
While brand perception can have a tremendous impact on a buyer’s attitude toward a company, and disposition toward purchasing services, the traditional laws of branding do not apply to professional services firms.
Of 33 lead generation outreach tactics, traditional advertising media scored very low in terms of effectiveness:
- Advertising on TV: 33rd out of 33
- Advertising on the radio: 31st out of 33
- Advertising in print media: 29th out of 33
- Advertising in ad-supported websites & online publications: 28th out of 33
Advertising is a way to "get your name out there" as many service business leaders want to do, but it's not necessarily the best approach or use of marketing budget. Build your service brand through your lead generation efforts. If you infuse value in marketing, and sustain your marketing over an extended period of time, you build awareness and esteem for your firm’s services at the same time you generate leads.