Many professional services marketers struggle to set their firm apart from other firms. You all do audits. You all handle estate planning. You all provide the same services using similar methodologies. Professional services branding becomes an exercise in copying others and shouting louder because you don’t have a clear view of what makes your firm different.
This belief is wrong. Your firm is remarkable. The problem is you haven’t discovered what makes it so.
Why Every Firm Is Inherently Remarkable
Before we talk about organizations, we need to start with a definition. Remarkable means “worthy of being remarked or noticed; noticeable; conspicuous; uncommon; extraordinary.”
We live in a sea of sensory stimulation. Your nervous system filters out most signals (things on the periphery of your vision, continuous background noises like ventilation, electronics and, some nights, your spouse’s snoring). You ignore the common and non-threatening because your brain would collapse under the weight of all that information. You’re designed to notice the unusual, the exceptional, and the extraordinary. These things signal either threat or value. When something triggers your attention, you remark on it. You remember it. You act on it.
So when we say something is remarkable, we mean it stood out from background noise and captured attention.
Now let’s apply this to your firm. Every person working at your organization is remarkable. Not because they’re perfect or famous or brilliant, but because each person brings unique experience, perspective, and capability that cannot be duplicated. When you put remarkable people together around a shared purpose, you create something that is also inherently remarkable.
The problem is most firms don’t act like it. You get out there and do marketing that’s uninteresting, forgettable and, worst of all, inauthentic. You blend into the background instead of standing out.
Is That Your Remarkableness Showing?
Imagine trying to make friends when you have no interests, no history that matters to you, and no beliefs worth mentioning. Someone asks what you like to do. You shrug. They ask where you’re from. You don’t care. They look for any connection point. You give them nothing.
You won’t make genuine friends this way. People need a shared something to connect with.
The same principle applies to your firm’s brand. When you know who you are and what you want, you can connect with the right people. When you’re vague or generic, you repel everyone.
Sam Pagel, our Chief Creative Officer, owned a video production company before joining Resound. He did videos, websites, and whatever else clients requested. His marketing message was basically “we do things for people.” His website got zero traction. After the Resound team helped him go through a branding process that defined what made his company remarkable, what services they actually wanted to deliver, and who they were built to serve, the response changed completely. The right clients started reaching out. They wanted exactly what he offered.
That’s the power of knowing what makes you remarkable and saying it clearly.
People Can Tell When You Don’t Know
Most professional services firms suffer from what I call organizational impostor syndrome. In our book You Are Remarkable: How To Unlock Your Authentic Brand To Attract Loyal Customers, we explain it this way: “For individuals, imposter syndrome is an eerie feeling of inadequacy around your equally successful peers, as your own success must rest on some mistake, stroke of luck, or fraud. Imposter syndrome leads to constant self doubt, downplaying your accomplishments, and trying to hide your differences in order to avoid being revealed as a fake. Organizations can suffer from the same difficulty.” (Chapter 5, p. 47)
You look around at successful competitors and assume they have something you don’t. You try to copy their approach. You talk like they talk. You “borrow” their cosmetics and mimic their messaging because following the leader is what you do when you don’t know who you are.
This creates superficial branding that defines your company based on the impression you want to create outwardly rather than anything true about you inwardly. It’s the “fake it until you make it” approach.
The problem is people spot this immediately. They sense the confusion and the desperation we radiate when we act like something we know we are not. Your potential clients can tell you’re not being authentic. Your existing clients wonder who you really are. Your employees feel the disconnect between what you say publicly and what they experience internally.
One marketing leader told me about working at a company where the question each morning was literally “So what are we selling today?” The organization had so little understanding of its own identity that direction changed constantly. Employees couldn’t trust leadership. Clients couldn’t understand the firm’s value. The whole operation suffered because no one knew what made them remarkable.
How to Discover Your Remarkableness
The solution is not creating a remarkable brand. It’s discovering the remarkable brand that already exists. This brand strategy starts with understanding your firm’s core identity.
Your firm has an identity that persists even when people come and go, offices relocate, and services change. That identity comes from your purpose. Not the corporate mission statement hanging in your lobby. Your actual purpose … the reason you exist beyond making money.
Here’s how to find it:
- Start with your people. Every person at your firm is remarkable. What unique experiences, perspectives, and capabilities do they bring? What connects them to this particular work? When team members talk about why they stay at your firm instead of going elsewhere, what do they say?
- Look at your history. What problems were you originally founded to solve? What values guided early decisions? When have you made choices that cost you money but aligned with who you are? Your past reveals patterns that define your identity.
- Examine your best client relationships. Which clients do you serve exceptionally well? What makes those relationships work? What do these clients have in common? Your remarkableness shows up most clearly in relationships where you deliver real value.
- Identify your edges. Where do you naturally say no? What work do you turn down even when you could do it? What trade-offs do you consistently make? Your boundaries reveal your identity as much as your capabilities do.
- Name what you believe. Every firm has beliefs that guide decisions, even if you’ve never articulated them. What principles shape how you hire, how you price, how you deliver service? These beliefs are part of what makes you remarkable.
This discovery process takes time. It requires honest conversation with partners, staff, and long-term clients. It means looking at evidence rather than wishes. You’re not inventing an identity. You’re uncovering the identity that already exists.
How to Express Your Remarkableness
Once you know what makes you remarkable, your brand strategy shifts to telling that story clearly and consistently.
- Be specific. Common statements like “we provide excellent service” are pretty meaningless. Specific details like “we respond to client emails within two hours during business days” communicate concrete value. Specificity proves you know who you are.
- Stay consistent. Changing your message every year confuses people. If you’ve genuinely discovered your remarkableness, it should remain stable over time. Your expression might evolve. Your core identity shouldn’t change.
- Choose authentic branding over trendy gimmicks. Don’t jump on bandwagons because everyone else is doing it. If Taylor Swift genuinely connects to your firm’s identity and history, great. The market will smell (and, likely, ridicule) your attention-seeking behavior immediately.
- Make it about your customers, not your firm. Your remarkableness matters only insofar as it helps you serve clients better. Frame your unique identity in terms of the specific value it creates for the people you’re trying to reach.
- Let it inform all your decisions. Your brand should guide your social media, your proposals, and your hiring. When you consistently express who you are across all touchpoints, people begin to understand and remember you.
The Ripple Effects of Remarkableness
When you understand and express what makes you remarkable, several things happen:
✓ Your marketing becomes easier. You know exactly what to say and who to say it to. You stop wasting resources on messages that don’t resonate.
✓ Your clients stick around longer. They chose you for specific reasons that align with your actual identity. That foundation creates loyalty.
✓ Your referrals improve. People can easily explain who you are and who you serve. They make better connections.
✓ Your hiring gets better. People who share your values and purpose want to work with you. They see themselves in your story.
✓ Your team feels more engaged. They understand how their work connects to something meaningful. They’re not just executing tasks. They’re participating in a purpose that matters.
Start With Belief
The first step is simply believing your firm is remarkable. Not aspirationally remarkable. Not remarkable if you just tried harder. Remarkable right now.
Every person at your organization brings something unique. Together, you’ve created something that cannot be duplicated. Your particular combination of people, experience, relationships, and purpose makes you extraordinary.
You just need to discover it and tell that story clearly.
Most professional services firms never take this step. They keep marketing as if their firm is a commodity. They copy trends. They copy competitors. They settle for being forgettable. Their professional services branding never rises above generic noise.
You don’t have to.
Your firm is already remarkable. The question is whether you’ll invest the time and thought to discover what makes you so. Once you do, everything about your marketing becomes clearer, and your authentic branding becomes more effective.
If you believe your firm is just another accounting practice or law office or consulting group, we should talk. There’s something remarkable in there. I can help you find it and express it.
