Branding and campaigns for professional services companies
Established players, a steady stream of new entrants, and perceived like-for-like offerings – the professional services space is a battlefield in which standing out and being remembered is a constant challenge.
The good news is that if you’re looking to develop sustainable competitive advantage, we can help.
As a leading branding agency for ambitious and forward-thinking professional services firms, we’ve been recognised twice as Marketing Partner of the Year at the prestigious British Bank Awards, as B2B Marketing Agency of the Year at the Drum Recommends Awards and shortlisted in multiple other categories.
For 29 years we’ve been building meaningful brands, crafting distinctive identities, and delivering strategic campaigns that drive measurable returns for our clients.
Whether you’re a dynamic start-up, an organisation looking to scale quickly, or already well established, we’d relish the prospect of doing the same for you.
Good Stories, Better Told
In the fight for attention, salience and loyalty, when it comes to financial services branding, the right strategic foundation is what separates the leaders from the “thanks-for-comings”.
First, we’ll help you define a compelling positioning and an authentic narrative. One that goes beyond what you do and the pursuit of profit. Then we’ll create the verbal and visual assets that cut through the market noise and bring your story to life.
And that’s just the beginning. Every brand touchpoint, every experience, is an opportunity to reinforce and amplify what you stand for and why anyone should care.
We’ll craft insight-led campaigns and communications that make use of that opportunity, ensuring they contribute to building the value of your brand every time.
Brand definition
Work with us and you can be confident your professional services brand is built on the most robust strategic bedrock.
It all starts with defining your brand; bringing absolute clarity to what you stand for and why it matters.
Our proven methodology, honed over time, will guide and challenge you toward a focused and compelling brand position. And this will be the foundation for a brand story that’s both easy to understand and easy to articulate.
Brand discovery
A rigorous exercise in building understanding and gaining insight. Customer, competition, company, context – we leave no stone unturned.
Brand positioning
What do you want your customers to think when they think of you? The goal here is to bring absolute clarity to how you want your professional services brand to be seen.
Brand articulation
With your positioning defined and your story clear, the challenge is to tell it well – so well, others will want to tell it too.
This requires crafting your brand identity. The image your professional services brand presents to the world. The verbal, visual, and behavioural expression of who you are and what you stand for.
As an agency that’s been creating brand identities for ambitious consultancies, law firms, accountants, architects and other professional services firms for years, we’re well placed to help you build a story with transformative potential.
Verbal identity
What you say and how you say it is a huge and often overlooked opportunity to drive brand distinctiveness and build salience. We work with our clients to create brand languages that play as great a role in helping brands stand out as visual identity.
Visual identity
In conjunction with verbal identity, we’ll ensure your visual branding reflects and reinforces your brand positioning, communicating through distinctive assets (or brand ‘codes’) who you are and what you stand for.
Brand amplification
From integrated external campaigns to one-off internal communications, all present an opportunity to build salience, trust and brand equity.
And yet few organisations truly recognise this – fewer still in professional services, where a short-term tactical mindset is typically the norm. The key is balance.
We’ll make sure any customer experience fulfils not only its immediate marketing purpose, but also contributes to building long-term brand value.
Campaign strategy & creative
Dramatising the solution to your customers’ problem in the most engaging and compelling way.
Integrated marketing communications
Insight-driven, joined-up activity, where a multi-channel approach has impact.
Employer branding
Attracting the best employees and making sure they want to stay.
Internal communications
Realising the full potential of all your people pulling in the same direction.
Brilliant result. A wonderful tone, it typifies how we see ourselves in Corporate Treasury. Head and shoulders above what we have seen so far in capturing who we are – bravo!
Corporate Treasury Manager, Aldermore
mark-making* are great fun to work with but most importantly they have a depth of experience and creativity that is a great asset to any business they work with. They managed to achieve what I thought might have been impossible – developing a cohesive brand positioning to bring together two completely different brands with very diverse target audiences. They are genuinely invested in their clients’ businesses and committed to doing the right thing.
The Marketing Centre
Having worked with them in different organisations, Ali and the mark-making* team are able to work with both small and large businesses and the relevant internal governance structures. They are a pleasure to work with and really do spend the time to understand your business in order to deliver on their brief first time. Quite simply the best agency I have worked with.
Recognise Bank
mark-making* go the extra mile to truly understand what matters to their clients, producing high quality output that delivers to the brief with excellent communication and engagement from start-to-finish.
Travelers
Got questions? Here are a few we’re most frequently asked.
What kind of professional services clients do you work with?
All shapes and sizes, law firms, accountants, architects, planning consultancies, wealth managers and more. What unites them is a clear sense of purpose and focus on long-term, sustainable growth. If that sounds like you, then we’ll be a great fit.
What sort of budget will I need to see a return?
No two situations are the same. Our approach to brand building is based on a proven and robust methodology. Whilst the process is consistent, the inputs and deliverables may be flexed as necessary to meet different needs and objectives. Whatever stage your venture is at we can support you and we’re always happy to have an initial chat. And if we don’t think we can help, we’ll be sure to recommend alternatives.
How do I convince others in my organisation that we need to invest in brand?
That’s a common challenge. It’s still pretty rare for brand and marketing to have a seat at the top table, particularly in the early stages of the business lifecycle. But every category leader knows the value of consistently investing in brand building from day one. If you’re having trouble being heard internally, you’ll need to pull together a compelling business case. Our case studies are a great place to start and we’re always happy to help directly too. We often find the support of an external voice is enough to pique leadership interest and create an appetite for brand development.
How is mark-making* different from other agencies?
Our clients tell us that what makes us different as a professional services branding and creative agency is a combination of our expertise and our culture. We’re the best at what we do and our goal is always to add value. We also recognise the day-to-day stresses our clients are often under, so our focus isn’t just on producing effective work – making our clients’ lives easy is something we’re proud to be known for too. Simply listening more than talking, and caring deeply about what we deliver, goes a surprisingly long way. And probably explains the exceptional longevity we have in our client relationships, some now spanning over 25 years.