Telling Your Brand Story: a Guide for Small Consultancies

Key Takeaways

• Brand Storytelling: Essential for differentiating your firm by highlighting your fundamental reason for being.
• Defining Your Why: Consistent, honest culture and values build trust and loyalty.
• Strategic Branding: Strong brands are built on hard work and innovation, not just image.
• Rebranding: Effective when aligned with strategy and involves comprehensive messaging and positioning.
• Crafting a Brand Story: Narrates your firm’s inception and mission, emotionally connects with clients, and provides clear solutions to their problems.
• Client Connection: Emotional engagement influences client loyalty and choice, often more than price.
• Honesty and Passion: Key to building trust and respect, setting your consultancy apart.

Brand storytelling is how you interact with your future clients for the first time. It goes beyond your services and products to your fundamental reason for being – your WHY. The guide below will detail how to tell your brand story and define your business so that you can stand out.

What is Your Firm’s Why?

In a great firm, the culture, values, proposition, strategy and brand will be coherent, consistent, honest, and unique. Honesty is crucial as both clients and employees will not be loyal if they feel they cannot trust your message.

There is no point saying you have a culture which values work-life balance if your high-leverage business model means that juniors are hammered or saying that ethics is fundamental to the company if you do PR for the coal industry.

A great brand represents, reinforces and brings together your firm’s WHY. The ‘Why?’ are the emotions: Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why should anyone care? Why would an employee work for you? Why would I give you my trust?

It is much deeper than what you do – it’s about what you believe and how you make people feel. This is crucial for small firms because they don’t have a brand name that is going to inspire loyalty from employees or clients. This needs to be won through hard work.

Branding as Strategic Positioning

Branding specialists like to tell us that 80% of the value of a company is in its brand (well, they would, wouldn’t they?). These experts often forget that a strong brand is usually built on years of hard work, innovation, and strong leadership.

This is why companies decline when they rely solely on their brand, failing to invest in innovation and quality.^[1] More traditional partners (especially in the UK, and oddly especially ex-Big 4) have also sometimes raised an eyebrow when I’ve suggested they invest in their brand.

For some, branding is seen as a bit gimmicky – something for the cheap-suited salesy types that inhabit less professional domains.

Although it is important to be realistic about the power of branding it does play an important role in visualising and communicating what you are to employees, clients and buyers. It cannot cover up your weaknesses, hide shoddy work, poor hires or a weak strategy, but it can help amplify your strengths.

[1] This is often, although not always, marked by the shift from a private firm to a listed firm. Sadly, in most forms of shareholder capitalism, shareholders want short term returns and high dividends which often results in low investment, training and innovation. Consultancy founders who sell to a listed company should not under-estimate the shift that will occur. If you think branding causes profitability rather than vice versa, then what happened to the Enron or Arthur Andersen brands to cause their collapse?

Rebranding

A rebrand can be prompted by a shift in strategy or more commonly, newly available funds which don’t force you to rely on a logo designer from Fiverr. Rebranding can be costly but is worth it when integrated with a strategic review. Angrez Saran, CEO of 8Works told me:

We bought in a branding person who’d been recommended. It was a very tough experience being told that the way we positioned ourselves and the way we brand ourselves was wrong. We spent all of our time talking about the ‘How?’ rather than the ‘Why?’. She repositioned the language and everything else and rebranded us in a way which had a phenomenal impact on our business and our revenues. And it was very simple, but very, very tough to do.

Rebranding can be expensive (typically 5% of revenues) but this will depend on your size and how much you want from it. At a minimum, you should be looking at doing market research, re-positioning, re-crafting your messaging, and finding a new tagline (if not logo).

At the most, you might include a website redesign and rewriting, a new marketing strategy and plan, messaging and brand style guidelines. The balance between DIY and professional third-party support is one each firm needs to work out, but I would suggest the latter is worth the investment. The dividends can be significant.

What is a Brand Story?

A brand story provides a narrative to how and why your unique firm exists. It recounts the series of events that sparked your company’s inception and expresses how that story still drives your mission today.

As in dating, people are looking to connect with others who share the same interests and values. You want to make your brand align with your audience.

In survey after survey, clients put ‘chemistry’, ‘consultant relationships’ or simply ‘fit’ at the top of the reasons they chose to work with their chosen consultancies. As this always tops ‘price’, the benefits of getting your brand story right are immeasurable.

Why Do You Need a Brand Story?

A brand story sets you apart from your competition by identifying with your customer on an emotional level. When customers feel connected to brands, 57% will increase their spending, and 76% will buy from them over a competitor.

Three things your brand story should include:

A Defined Brand Vision

As the famous saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. Your business needs a clearly defined mission that displays your purpose and values. How do you want your business to come across? Luxury? Friendly? Unique? Innovation?

These are questions that have to be answered. This will allow you to create a brand story that is marketed towards your specific audience. You’ll want to know who your client is and explain how you mimic their values and aspirations. Like any story you craft, a brand story will reflect a specific genre to keep the reader on the hook.

If you’re stuck on this, you can always look to others in the same field and see how they frame their stories and which ones appeal to you most.

Make It Personal

A good brand story connects with the client at an emotional level. Stories exist because they engage us at the most human level: overcoming challenges, moments of insight, making new connections, and expressing deep feelings make your brand more relatable and engaging.

What these things have in common is that they create and overcome tension – think of the plot of any childhood story as an example: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk. They all create tension and overcome it.

They create a journey of emotion for the reader. The ‘end’ of your story is your unique value proposition: why great clients buy from you. The brand story is the journey to that end: what insights, obstacles, coincidences, tensions or failures did you encounter that led you to that outcome?

How did it make you feel? How did it make your clients feel? How did you find your WHY?

Be the Solution

Identify how your business can help solve whatever problem you specialize in. This is the time to bring up real successes you’re proud of. Let the reader know that this story has captured others who followed their instincts and chose your business. This isn’t meant to be a highlight reel but more of a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Conclusion

Ultimately, your consultancy will be chosen because your clients trust and respect you, which happens through a true passion for your work. Honesty will always capture the right attention. A great brand story is just one of the ways you can set yourself apart.

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