Womble Bond Dickinson is currently running three brand-building advertising campaigns. Dale Gorley explains why.
When it comes to marketing in professional services, the significance of brand building is often overlooked. There is pressure for an immediate return on investment, which inevitably pushes many marketers to prioritise performance marketing efforts over brand building to appease leadership and finance teams in the short-term. However, according to a McKinsey & Company study, there is real value to be had by building your brand with strong B2B brands outperforming their competitors by up to 20%.
The power of brand awareness
One thing that ultimately gets lost with the focus on performance marketing, is the power of brand awareness and the need for proper brand advertising. Several years ago, Professor John Dawes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute made a notable observation regarding B2B marketing: at any moment in time, only 5% of your target market is considering making a purchase and is deemed to be in-market. This ultimately means you can’t persuade the 95% who aren’t in-market to buy because the need simply doesn’t exist, well, not yet anyway.
The 95/5 rule
Given that only 5% are in-market, the common choice would be to target those and ignore the 95% who aren’t. That would be the wrong move though. As marketers, we have an important job to do and ensure that when a customer comes into the market, they recall your brand. This is proven by research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute and Bain (2024) that confirms 81% of B2B buyers buy the brand that comes to mind on day one.
The rise of brand advertising
And that’s where brand advertising comes in. According to Dentsu’s Superpowers Index, brand building has jumped from being the fifth priority in 2023 to the number one priority in 2024. Why might that be? In my opinion, it’s because more and more marketers understand that investment in brand advertising ensures long-term growth. This happens because you tap into memory structures, ensuring you drive a level of preference and ultimately bias for future decision-making.
The need for differentiation
I work for a mid-market law firm in a highly competitive professional services environment. The need to differentiate, stand out and build recall and memory structures with our target audience couldn’t be more important. After all, 71% of B2B marketers believe they have a unique selling point, yet 68% of buyers say that all B2B brands sound the same (WARC). It’s our priority to address this through our marketing and this is where building brand and investment in brand advertising really helps.
Emotional connection and high-value channels
The reason we invest heavily in brand is two-fold: it enables us to tap into emotion, and it opens up a number of channels and tactics we perceive to be high value and poorly populated with our competitors.
Emotion is vital and is often an underappreciated motivator when it comes to B2B buyers. The LinkedIn B2B Institute has previously commissioned work which found 70% of B2B decision-makers are led by emotion. Combine that with further insight from the Institute and System1 which found that 75% of adverts score poorly when it comes to this.
Strategic focus and brand tracking
All that being said, we feel there’s a huge opportunity for us to drive impact and growth through our brand, and that has been reflected in our marketing strategy and investment decisions at Womble Bond Dickinson.
This all started just under three years ago when we commissioned our first-ever piece of brand-tracking research. This was an important first step for us as, rather than relying on opinions, we were able to go into the market and gain a number of valuable insights into areas such as brand health, positioning, market perceptions and category drivers. It also provided a number of useful benchmarks and comparisons versus our competitor set.
Campaigns and creative execution
That insight, combined with the firm’s strategic focus, enabled us to prioritise our efforts and really concentrate spend on a number of meaningful brand-led campaigns.
We have three campaigns in the market at the moment, all with primary brand-led objectives and either targeted at our whole market or specific segments. We are working with great agency partners to deliver against solid briefs built upon insight from our brand tracking research.
All of our campaigns are independent of each other but complementary. They’re all creatively led with a focus on driving awareness, recall and building emotional connections. We’ve really pushed the campaigns, encouraging the creative to move us out of our comfort zone. We’re utilising channels and activations that are brand new, not just to us but to our competitor set too. That’s all really exciting and the team are really enthusiastic about the potential impact.
Early-stage feedback has been incredibly strong and there’s a level of real excitement about the scale of impact. We’re investing in this approach to deliver long-term growth and success, while closely monitoring our quarterly KPIs across all marketing and business development reports. The results are trending well, with an increase in new clients won, matters opened, and leads generated into the CRM.
I’m strongly of the view that investing in brand positioning advertising is crucial in professional services and particularly law firms.
It not only builds trust and credibility but also differentiates firms in a competitive market, ensuring they stand out to potential clients.
By focusing on building brand awareness and emotional connections, firms can create lasting impressions that drive long-term success. Strategic brand positioning enhances visibility, fosters loyalty and provides a competitive edge, ultimately leading to sustained growth over the long-term.
By investing in top-of-funnel brand advertising and aligning it with short-term performance activations, firms can effectively balance the pressure for immediate returns with long-term brand building, ensuring they are well-prepared for prospective clients when they eventually come to market.
Dale Gorley is the Head of Marketing at Womble Bond Dickinson. He leads a national team of over 20 marketing professionals, overseeing all aspects of marketing including communications, campaigns, brand, PR, events, design and digital.
Members only: if you want to add this reading to your CPD, please log in and complete the evaluation
Log in
