Professional Services Firms & Advertising. An Intervention

by Cliff Watson

Rule number one in advertising: people have to notice you before they can pay attention to your message. How do they notice you? You’re different. You stand out. Your message rises above the din.

If you’re like many professional service companies, advertising is a line item in your annual budget. Every year, you dedicate a percentage of your budget to advertising. Sound familiar? Then let me ask you a question.

Why?

Why do you advertise? Can you measure your advertising’s effectiveness? Do you know how many potential new clients contact you every year because of your advertising? I’m guessing you don’t. So why do you advertise? Probably because you always have. At some point in your company’s history, someone convinced you that you had to advertise. Once that line item was on the budget, it stayed there. So now you run ads in your local paper or on the radio. You may even have an ad in this issue of Ingram’s. But you have no idea what it does for you. So, let me ask another question.

If you were spending company money on anything else that wasn’t proving a return on investment, what would you do? You’d stop. Heck, you might even fire the person who’d made the suggestion. But you’re still running those ads. For you, advertising has become an addiction.

Consider This an Intervention

Now, I’m not telling you to quit advertising. And it’s not just because that’s how I feed my kids. Advertising can make an appreciable difference in your business when it’s done well. But that’s the point: very few local service companies do it well. Putting a picture of your employees into an ad with a headline that talks about the “quality” and “value” of your services does not count as good advertising. Why? Because that’s what the majority of service companies do. Those messages are merely wallpaper in today’s advertising climate. And that leads us to the first stage of breaking the addiction of burning your ad budget.

Differentiate Yourself From Competition

In this case, the competition isn’t just other companies in your industry, either. It’s anyone in the publication or on the channel where you have ads. Rule number one in advertising: people have to notice you before they can pay attention to your message. How do they notice you? You’re different. You stand out. Your message rises above the din.

That’s not to say you should try to shock people just to get their attention. You’re a law firm or an accounting firm or a financial services company. You’re not Bud Light. So stay away from crotch-biting dogs or flatulent Clydesdales. Or don’t. If you’re a personal injury attorney and want to differentiate yourself, maybe a lock-jawed Rottweiler is precisely what you need. The point is: be true to your company’s voice. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Be yourself, but make sure the way you introduce yourself makes your audience pay attention. Differentiate yourself visually and intelligently.

Okay, so you have your audience’s attention. Now what? Tell them your story. Again, don’t talk about “quality” and “excellence.” And don’t structure your story in a familiar way. Don’t tell them that your company is “real accounting for real people.” What does that mean? Is there an accounting firm out there dedicated to reconciling the books of zombies? And besides, every category has someone telling their prospects that they’re the “real” service for “real people.” But that’s good for you. You get to differentiate your message as well as your introduction.

How you go about telling your story is up to you. Just make sure that it’s engaging, gets to the core of your business proposition, and connects with your audience. And that brings me to the final point. The creation of advertising that provides a discernible ROI is not easy. It takes a lot of thought. And it’s not something that you can accomplish by hiring a low-salary graphic designer fresh from college, sticking them in a cubicle, and telling them to create great ads.

I don’t represent myself in court or do my own taxes, and I wouldn’t advise you to attempt creating memorable, relationship-building advertising by yourself. Find an agency you trust, sit down and admit your addiction, and let them guide you into recovery. Not to mention a measurable difference in your bottom line.

Cliff Watson, Cliff Watson is the Partner in Charge Creative for Bozell & Jacobs. He can be reached at 402.965.4300 or at cwatson@bozelljacobs.com. For information about Bozell & Jacobs, go to www.bozelljacobs.com.