How to Increase Brand Visibility and Awareness

Brand. It’s a word that is thrown around a lot, but what is it really? How can you measure it to quantify its impact? And how do you increase your brand visibility?

A professional service firm brand consists of two component parts:

1. Reputation
2. Visibility

Your reputation is the experience people have with your firm. If the experience, on average, is overwhelmingly positive, your reputation will be high, and clients will be more likely to refer you to others. If the experience is poor, your reputation will suffer.

But reputation alone is not enough to build a strong brand. You also need to be seen and known in the marketplace. The broader your reach—into regional, national or international markets, for instance—the greater your visibility. We discuss strategies to build visibility below.

Strategies to Improve Your Reputation

Professional services brands can be a little different from consumer goods, as you are generally creating a brand around your expertise, rather than a product. You want your brand to portray your firm as capable and trustworthy—and ideally, the best in the industry for the service you provide.

The first step in creating your professional brand is to figure out where your expertise fills the gap in the marketplace. Conducting marketplace research will help you uncover where the gaps are. Ask questions—find out from your target clients what they are looking for in a service provider.

By talking to your target clients, and even asking potential clients who chose not to hire your firm, you can uncover a wealth of information. You’ll find the answers to what type of services they need, what they look for when hiring, deal breakers, why they went with a certain firm, etc. This information will help you refine your brand, messaging and service offerings.

Once you learn what clients want and need, you can look at your competitors to see where they are falling short. Then you can position your brand to fill an un- or under-served gap.

Once you’ve identified the gaps and isolated the opportunities, you can build your brand around these attributes and become known for exactly what the potential clients need.

Remember, all touch points with your brand build your reputation. Everything from an online ad to your website to client interactions to your actual work quality will affect how the marketplace views your brand.

Building a strong, successful brand takes a lot of work and time. Once you’ve identified what makes your brand different and what you want your brand to represent, it’s time to build your brand awareness and brand visibility.

How to Increase Brand Visibility

There are a many ways to achieve brand awareness and visibility in the marketplace. Here are a few of our favorites:

1. 1. • Build a team of Visible Experts^®. Visible Experts are those well-known experts in your field—the kind that the media seek out for quotes and that others in your industry look to for insights and leadership. Most firms have, if any, one Visible Expert. But the most successful firms often have several. Prospects often seek out these high-profile individuals, making building new relationships and closing business faster and easier. Visible Experts also often command higher fees and elevate their firm’s reputation.
      • Write blog posts. Write thoughtful, original, educational blog posts on topics that your buyers are interested in. Optimize them for search engines and AI search. Publish new posts on a regular basis. In this way, you will create a steady flow of high-quality content ready to be discovered by interested readers anywhere in the world. You can also publish blog posts on other websites, which gives you further exposure to new audiences and may allow you link back to your website, building important backlinks that strengthens your site’s authority.
      • Optimize your website for keywords. Keywords are an important way people searching the internet or using AI search find your content. By using keywords in the copy and headlines of your web content, you help search engines and AI bots understand the focus of your blog posts and web pages.
      • Advertise online. Targeted online ads can be a powerful tool to help a professional services brand gain visibility. Ads are available on social sites such as LinkedIn, as well as search engines such as Google and Bing. Modern ad platforms give you great control over who will see your ads and how much you spend. They also have robust analytics you can use to assess the success of your investment. Be sure to incorporate A/B testing to determine what messages deliver the best performance.
      • Be active on social media. Your firm should, at a minimum, have a LinkedIn profile that you can use to share content and promote upcoming events. Many firms also use X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. Determine which platforms your potential clients use (by asking them) and make sure your firm is represented on those channels. You can gain brand awareness and visibility by frequently posting content that is useful to the target client.

Achieving brand awareness and brand visibility is an investment. It takes time and resources to build a brand that people recognize and associate with an area of expertise. But the benefits are well worth the time, effort and investment you will make. In fact, your firm’s success depends on it.

Free Resource

The Rebranding Guide for Professional Services Firms

Learn More