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Evaluation Consulting Round-Up

Part 4

“New Directions for Evaluation” is one of the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) academic journals, and they publish articles on cutting-edge issues in the evaluation world. Recently, they released a special issue focused on being an independent evaluation consultant. This is a round-up of what we learned.

Check out the other articles in this series:
Part 1 - non-evaluation skills you need to be a good evaluation consultant.
Part 2 - managing your consulting business.
Part 3 - maximizing productivity with business processes.
Part 4 - branding and marketing.

Part 4 in this series is about branding your business, and it's based on the article by Stephanie Evergreen and Nina Sabarre: “Branding for the Independent Consultant: Basic to Advanced.”

As independent evaluation consultants, we might find ourselves working in the “gig economy” – that thrilling and perilous world of odd jobs and short-term contracts (and best of all: freedom). Whether or not you participate in the gig economy, key to success for any consultant is branding: it’s how you tell the world who you are and the unique value you offer. To start thinking about branding, fill in these blanks:

I am known for ______________.

I want to be known for ______________.

Branding is the Uber driver that can get you from where you are to where you want to be. It’s all about getting the world to “see you” the way you want to be seen.

There’s no step-by-step guide to successful branding, but this article will give you some ideas of where to focus your branding at different stages of your business (whether you’re a newbie, a pro, or somewhere in-between).

Newbies

Branding Goal:

Help potential clients find you

If you are just starting out as an evaluation consultant, you will probably focus your efforts on branding basics. That means figuring out what your unique brand is, and making sure it sends the right message about your business. Do you want to be known as dependable? Innovative? Traditional? Exciting? Then you need to make conscious decisions to brand your business accordingly.

Once you figure out the message you’re trying to send, you need to do some brand design. This includes your business name, logo, fonts, colour palettes, and visual elements that will be consistent across all aspects of your business.

Last is brand building: taking all those elements of your brand design and applying them to your website, newsletter, blog, events, presentations, business cards, etc., etc. Pro tip: make sure the website domain you want is available, then buy it before somebody else does.

Depending on the resources you have, you might do all these things yourself, or you might hire some outside help. As a consulting newbie, you might be worried about making all these important decisions about your brand before you’ve really figured out your professional identity. It’s ok! Your brand is allowed to evolve over time, so just do your best with what you know right now.

In-Betweeners

Branding Goal:

Create consistency

If you have a somewhat established business already, and have covered all the branding basics, then it’s time for intermediate branding. The goal here is to create a consistent image for your business so that potential clients know exactly what they are going to get from you. Imagine your potential clients are “window shopping” – this is the stage where you build up what they see when they look through your business’ “window.” Three areas to focus branding on are:

Graphic design styles: Use similar graphical elements across your website, reports, and presentations that all tie into your brand. For example, use a colour from your logo on your business card text to create consistency.

Data visualization styles: Remember that charts and graphs are part of your brand. It’s another opportunity to apply the colours and styles you’ve established in basic branding.

Social media: Use the social media platforms that make sense for your business and the audience you’re trying to reach. For example, Facebook tends to be more personal, Twitter can be casual, and LinkedIn is seen as more corporate (but these aren’t hard rules).

Pros

Branding Goal:

Build lasting relationships

By the time you’ve made a name for yourself (maybe you’re even seen as an expert in your circle), you might think your branding work is done. Nope! There are still things you can do to continue growing and refining your brand. At this point, the goal is less about finding any ol’ clients, and more about finding bigger and better projects by building lasting relationships with clients. Here are four branding ideas for the pros:

Experiential marketing: Think about how you can use real-world or hands-on experiences to build your brand. For example, presentations, trainings, workshops, speaking engagements, and volunteer work (like a pro bono evaluation for a non-profit that aligns with your brand and values).

Swag: Actual physical objects are pretty rare these days, so swag can be effective at making your brand memorable. Again, it’s an opportunity to show your business identity to the world – maybe you give away branded rulers, cookies, post-it notes, candies, lunch kits… the options are endless!

Personal look and voice: Like it or not, potential clients are judging us by the way we conduct ourselves in-person and online. Part of branding is thinking about the image you portray through your clothing, language, and tone (both spoken and written). For example, you might use a signature “voice” in your Tweets and blog posts, or perhaps you have a trademark clothing style.

Process or procedure: By the time you are a branding pro, you might have your own business processes that you follow when conducting evaluations that are uniquely yours. This is the time to put that down on paper and make it part of your brand. For example, Starbucks uses the same process for making drinks every time (they write your name and order on the cup, make your drink, then call out your name), and we come to expect this process as part of their brand.

To summarize, branding is how you show your business off to the world, and when done well, will help attract the right clients. It’s a matter of deciding what message you want to send with your branding, then taking advantage of every opportunity to share it.

Source:

Evergreen, Stephanie, and Nina Sabarre. “Branding for the Independent Consultant: Basic to Advanced.” New Directions for Evaluation 2019, no. 164 (2019): 101–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.20392.