What promise do you make to your customers? Is it true? Does it matter to your clients? What is your "X Factor" that gives you a competitive edge? In January, as Mulkey Engineers & Consultants began celebration of its 15 year anniversary, we were excited to take a close look at the firm we have become. One key goal in doing this was to develop succinct messaging that clearly communicates how we are different in our industry and why it matters most to our clients.
| MULKEY ENGINEERS & CONSULTANTS Headquarters: Raleigh, N.C. Number of offices: 6 Total number of employees: 200 Year firm was established: 1993 Total billings for last fiscal year: $19.3 million |
Whether or not you are aware of it, your company has a brand, a collection of attributes that conveys the essence of your company. In the end, your brand is defined by your clients. It is how you are perceived in their minds, not necessarily what you may think it is as a business leader. While we cannot control what people think and perceive, we can certainly influence it by communicating with our clients and prospective clients in terms that are meaningful to them, specifically communicating our distinction.
Currently, economic challenges grip our industry. However, in a time of cutbacks, marketing to and communicating with our clients should not be one of our sacrifices. Targeted, smart marketing communication is what drives growth.
At the onset of 2008, we sought to develop a strong positioning platform that accurately communicated our unique strengths based on facts and client research. We already had a unique visual identity that represented our key attributes and we hoped to unearth the verbal articulation of those assets as well. Our goal was to formulate key message statements that represented our work and processes so our employees would have the tools to inform potential and current clients about Mulkey. In addition, we desired consistent messaging in our marketing and public relations initiatives, and other communications.
We enlisted the help of award-winning brand marketing communications firm Kelly MarCom, which facilitated this discovery process for us.
Kelly MarCom reviewed key market research and led our leadership team through a series of brand evaluation activities, including a brand discovery survey with our leadership team, a competitive analysis, and client interviews. The results of this research identified the key values of our target market, which would become the foundation for success with all our future marketing messages.
Kelly MarCom also helped us discover our unique characteristics through the brand discovery process, which involved answering a series of questions—like none I’d ever been asked before! The process was fun and it was extremely enlightening for our leadership team to create a "brand personality portrait" of ourselves. We gained incredible insight from our clients about their decision-making processes when partnering with an engineering firm—identifying their needs, emotions, and impressions. Through this process, we also achieved an understanding of our reputation and brand perceptions in our industry and among our competitors.
An analysis of this data confirmed that our reputation mirrored our internal priorities, which doesn’t always happen, according to Kelly MarCom. We felt great about that. Yet, the key to developing our brand positioning statement was to focus on the external perspective by defining terms that connect to the heart of our client.
Here’s what we created:
The Positioning: "You can count on Mulkey to deliver exceptional performances time and again because we do more than just listen, we also engage with you, our client, at every level and at every stage of your project. It’s this dialog, this close alignment, between you and a carefully selected team that fosters originality and inventiveness."
The Tagline: "Helping you transform everyday challenges into everyday achievements."
When Kelly MarCom presented our new tagline to the leadership team, it was amazing how we all connected with it immediately. It just felt like us. And it connects with our clients on a personal level.
I share this story of brand discovery and re-emergence to encourage other firms to take an introspective look at your company and how you are connecting with your clients. We all can take a look in the mirror to ask, "Who are we and what is that X Factor?" and "Why does it matter to our clients?" At 15 years, Mulkey is proud to remain focused on our key attributes and relationships with our clients.
Jill Wells Heath is president and CEO of Mulkey Engineers & Consultants, a full-service civil engineering and consulting firm with offices in Raleigh, Cary, and Charlotte, N.C.; Columbia, S.C.; Atlanta, Ga.; and Jacksonville, Fla. She can be contacted at jheath@mulkeyinc.com. Kelly MarCom is owned by Shelley Kelly, president and CEO, who can be reached at shelleyk@kellymarcom.com.