Many professional services firms invest heavily in branding but struggle to answer a simple question:
Is our brand actually driving growth?
Unlike consumer brands, professional services firms rarely measure their brand performance systematically. Marketing activity is tracked but the impact of their brand is not. Few B2B organisations are asking: do clients know, trust and respect our brand enough to consider buying our services? Or, to take this one step further – do they value our brand enough to pay a higher fee?
In today’s crowded professional services market, a strong brand influences whether a firm makes a client shortlist of choices. It determines how much trust new prospects place in its advice, how willing clients are to pay premium fees, and whether existing clients will continue to choose your firm and expand the relationship.
For these reasons, firms should be measuring brand with the same discipline as client satisfaction. This article explains how to do so.
What does ‘brand performance’ mean?
Many firms are treating brand as a marketing concept – not relevant to service delivery teams or operations. In reality, brand is a crucial commercial asset that should matter to firm leadership.
Brand impact is reflected in client perceptions that influence buying decisions. Your brand determines how clients report:
- awareness
- consideration
- reputation
- trust
- pricing power
- client preference
Strong brands go beyond generating recognition – they influence client behaviour. A prospect may know the names of dozens of firms, however, when a significant project arises only a handful will make the shortlist. Your brand determines whether your firm is in or out of that list.
Together, these factors determine how likely a prospective client is to choose your firm over a competitor. They provide a useful indication of overall brand health.
“The highest-performing firms understand that brand resilience is built across the entire organisation, not just within marketing,” says Janet Glasper, B2B brand specialist and partner at Beaton.
“They recognise that every client interaction, every recruitment decision, every leadership behaviour and every strategic choice either strengthens or weakens the firm’s brand.”
The highest-performing firms understand that brand resilience is built across the entire organisation, not just within marketing.
Why traditional brand metrics are not enough
It’s not enough for professional services firms to rely on traditional marketing metrics as indicators of brand success. Things like website traffic, social media engagement and email open rates measure activity but they do not reflect impact. These marketing measures are important operational metrics, but they are not necessarily the brand metrics that predict future growth.
What’s the difference? A website may attract thousands of visitors without generating meaningful revenue opportunities. A thought leadership campaign may generate engagement without changing market perceptions. These metrics rarely answer the follow-up questions that leadership teams really care about:
- Are more clients considering choosing us?
- Is our reputation improving?
- Can we command premium pricing?
- Are we winning more of the work we want?
Without answering these questions, firms end up optimising their marketing performance while remaining uncertain about brand impact. At Beaton, we prefer to measure the business outcomes of your brand work, rather than tracking activity metrics.
“Metrics such as campaign reach, website traffic or social engagement are easy to track … but say very little about whether the firm’s market position is becoming stronger and more resilient,” says Glasper.
“The real question isn’t whether people saw your marketing. It’s whether the firm is becoming more trusted, more differentiated and more valuable over time.”
How to measure brand performance in B2B
Effective B2B brand measurement requires firms to look beyond marketing activity and understand how brand influences consideration, trust, client preference and commercial outcomes.
Beaton measures brand performance through two complementary lenses: your market perception data combined with client service data. Market perception reveals what prospective clients think about your firm. Client service data reflects how clients rate your service when they use you.
We gather this data every year by asking tens of thousands of both prospective and current clients of your firm a range of questions about your service and how they view your firm. When it comes to brand, we are most interested in how clients rate two key metrics:
- Consideration – that is, how likely the client is to consider using your firm
- Client service performance – how clients rate your performance after working with you
As we’ve previously explained, both add up to your whole client experience (CX) and are essential to a strong brand. Using these metrics together, we can analyse whether your firm delivers on its brand promises.
“In professional services, a brand is essentially a promise. Client experience is the proof of whether that promise is being delivered,” says Glasper.
“When firms consistently deliver on their promise, they build trust. When trust grows, perceived risk declines. That reduction in perceived risk is what creates pricing power.”
The four brand performance quadrants
A firm with a strong reputation but poor client experience may generate consideration but struggle with retention and advocacy. A firm with excellent service but low market visibility may struggle to attract new opportunities. By combining and comparing consideration with client service performance, firms gain a clearer understanding of how brand is contributing to growth.
Together, these measures create four distinct brand performance profiles outlined below.
1. Sustain and innovate
High consideration, high client service
These firms are market leaders whose brand promise is being met through lived experience. Clients know who they are, understand what they stand for and experience that value firsthand.
These firms should reinforce brand communications on the service areas where they differentiate themselves. Further growth opportunities will come through proactive prospecting, cross-selling and key account management to grow their project base and revenue among clients who are already highly satisfied.
Our data shows many firms in this quadrant have price-setting discretion – meaning they can raise prices without losing clients. Clients are willing to pay premium fees because they perceive clear value, high trust and lower risk. In many ways, pricing power is one of the clearest forms of brand equity measurement. It allows those firms to focus on high-value, premium-priced work with deeper client relationships rather than pursuing volume.
2. Amplify and promote
Low consideration, high client service
These firms are often the market’s “hidden gems”. They have a great brand story to tell; they just need to make sure it is heard.
These firms should focus on increasing their profile through business development and prospecting activities that emphasise their ability to deliver. These activities might include sharing valuable ideas, thought leadership, referral strategies and nurturing existing relationships.
Importantly, they should identify the elements of their service experience that clients value most and make those strengths more visible in their messaging. Clever use of testimonials, referrals and awards recognition can amplify the firm’s strengths to the market. After all, clients cannot choose a firm – no matter how good its service is – without knowing it exists.
3. Refine and align
High consideration, low client service
These firms have built strong market awareness and effective positioning through their branding strategy. However, the client service does not consistently support the promises being made. The challenge is improving their brand strategy effectiveness by ensuring delivery matches the promise.
Research published by Forbes shows 83 per cent of customers would switch brands or companies because of a bad customer service experience. The same principle applies in professional services.
These firms should carefully review their messaging to ensure that they do not make claims that cannot be met. Client feedback becomes especially important or firms in this quadrant. Understanding where service failures occur allows firms to close the gap between promise and delivery.
4. Define and build
Low consideration, low client service
These firms face the greatest challenge. They risk getting stuck in a vicious cycle where poor performance drives poor reputation, which then turns away valuable prospective clients. It’s a cycle that makes it very difficult to attract quality opportunities.
For these firms, the first priority is to focus. Define their core: who are their key clients, what are the primary types of work they want to do, and how they want to do this work. At the same time they should be ring-fencing and nurturing their most important client relationships.
Client feedback can help identify where service performance needs improvement. At the same time, clearer positioning can help build stronger market recognition over time.
Unlike in B2C industries, clients of B2B organisations look far beyond traditional marketing to choose the brands they trust.
Why consideration is the most underrated brand metric
While measuring brand awareness in B2B remains important, awareness alone does not guarantee growth. The critical question is whether potential clients would consider your firm when an opportunity arises. To get a realistic answer, you must ask those people who are genuinely in the market for your services.
Professional services clients rarely evaluate every possible provider. Instead, they develop shortlists that determine which firms receive invitations to pitch, who participates in procurement processes and who has the opportunity to build relationships. This makes consideration one of the most valuable indicators of future growth.
“Clients are now less likely to pay premium fees because of a logo or marketing. They pay premium fees because they believe the firm will help them achieve better outcomes with greater certainty and they trust this will happen,” says Glasper.
Consideration reflects opportunities that may convert into revenue in the future. And that makes it one of the most strategically important brand measures available. Our research consistently finds firms with stronger consideration levels are better positioned to win future opportunities.
How often should firms measure their brand performance?
Measuring brand performance should not be a one-off exercise. Markets change, competitors evolve and client expectations regularly shift. For most firms, an effective brand performance measurement program includes three components.
Market benchmarking
Benchmarking provides the critical context for how prospective clients view your firm, comparing their perceptions to how they view other similar firms in your market. It helps you understand brand health indictors and not only how your firm is performing, but how you are performing relative to competitors.
The largest benchmarking study of client feedback in professional services is Beaton Benchmarks – which has been collecting and comparing client feedback on firm brands for more than 20 years. Participating firms can combine market perception and client experience data to gain a clearer picture of brand strength, competitive position and growth opportunities.
Read this case study for one example of how an accounting firm uses Beaton Benchmarks to determine its brand performance and make improvements.
The firms with the strongest brands are not necessarily the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They're the ones where leaders are clear about who they are, what they stand for and the experience they want clients and employees to have.
Performance tracking
This should provide a long-term view of how your firm’s awareness, consideration, reputation and market positioning is changing over time. With the modern market constantly moving and improving, firms need to keep close track of how their brand may be changing in clients’ eyes. Benchmarking your progress every year is a useful way to keep tabs on any changes, as well as measure the result of improvement efforts.
Additionally, regular NPS tracking through a software system like Beaton Debrief can help by automating many of the processes required to understand current clients’ perceptions. NPS is a measure of loyalty and referrals among current clients. It will not tell you how prospective clients view your brand. But it will help you proactively improve your service experience to match the brand promises your firm is making.
“The goal is not simply to understand where the brand is today, but to understand whether its future strength is improving or deteriorating and then figuring out what needs to be managed,” says Glasper.
“Frequency of measurement will differ from firm to firm but brand resilience preferably should be monitored continuously, with formal reviews at least quarterly and a deeper assessment annually.”
Ongoing client feedback
In the same way NPS tracking will provide feedback from clients already working with your firm, regular client listening helps firms understand whether experience is reinforcing the brand promise.
Feedback opportunities are everywhere and can include post-matter reviews, relationship assessments, client interviews and NPS tracking (for example, using Debrief). Reviewing feedback should be a priority for leadership and the data should help guide business strategy to fuel smarter decision making. Many firms find overcoming challenges to feedback programs the hardest part. Success requires a firmwide cultural shift but can be so valuable for your brand in the long term.
Conclusion
The most valuable question for modern professional services firms isn’t whether clients know your brand. It’s whether your brand is building consideration, supporting your pricing or positioning, and being validated by client experience.
“The firms with the strongest brands are not necessarily the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They’re the ones where leaders are clear about who they are, what they stand for and the experience they want clients and employees to have,” says Glasper.
The firms that measure both market perception and client performance gain a much clearer understanding of where growth opportunities exist.
Stop judging your brand based solely on marketing activity. Start measuring brand performance by the commercial outcomes it creates.
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