A Business Case for Credibility Branding

Several communications executives have contributed articles about credibility branding practices applied, these will be published weekly for as long as I receive contributions (I will accept more so send them my way!). The following is from Dusty Rhodes Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for PlatformOne, a leading HR outsourcing services provider.

The focus of his article is “customer as influencer;” this is a key marketing strategy; to treat your customers as potential word-of-mouth marketers. Thanks Dusty for the unique insights.

Article by: By Dusty Rhodes, PlatformOne

Still today, marketing just might be the most misunderstood profession around. When you try once again to explain what you do to your family or friends over dinner, you get pleasant yet blank expressions. You learn to live with that. But then you deal with a lot of the same misunderstanding on the job too. Comes with the territory, you surmise.

So, to put a stake in the ground, let’s first define marketing. According to the late Professor Theodore Levitt, legendary Marketing Scholar and former Harvard Business Review Editor, marketing is "All the exhilarating big things and all the troublesome little things that must be done in every nook and cranny of the entire corporate organization in order to achieve the purpose of attracting and holding a customer."

That pretty much sums it up. Our challenge at PlatformOne was just that – attracting and holding our initial customers, while competing against a few of the most financially strong, customer rich and market dominant companies of the 20th century. And we were a startup, three short years ago.

Today, according to independent industry analyst Nelson Hall, PlatformOne is one of the top providers of HRO technology and services to the mid-market, companies with from 500 to 15,000 employees. We deliver HR outsourcing administrative services, such as payroll processing and benefits administration, through HR professionals who utilize the best technology available in the market. Our staff consists of HR professionals whom have all made the shift from working for companies in industry to working for PlatformOne, an HR outsourcing services provider.

Three years ago we had one client, a management team in transition and a half-baked marketing strategy for an emerging market space called HR-BPO (business process outsourcing). The distinguishing difference between HR-BPO and the more traditional piecemeal outsourcing services like payroll processing provided by the national firms is that with HR-BPO the provider takes full responsibility for the success of the process.

The good news then was there was no dominating company that had identified and targeted the HR-BPO market like we had, yet. The bad news was that we knew of at least two powerful, nationally recognized companies in similar yet different HR outsourcing businesses that would be capable of duplicating our approach and making our market their own, virtually overnight. To make matters worse, there were 30 or so nationally recognized firms who were competing for HR outsourcing clients among the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, and their marketing efforts were muddying the waters and slowing decisions in our mid-market space. To make matters doubly worse, dozens of HR outsourcers who traditionally serviced the low-end market (companies with 50 employees and fewer) were announcing intensions or ill-conceived solutions for HR-BPO into our market as well.

Simply put, our number one challenge was marketing. We needed to figure out the “what” and the “how” of marketing, and we needed to execute fast. We knew the “who” (the mid-market space and some other specific trade secrets we won’t mention here) and we knew the “when” (yesterday). The “why” is always obvious in business (gain market share and the resulting profits).

With numerous players in and around our target market, the “what” became pretty obvious fairly quick too. We had to specifically differentiate PlatformOne and our solution from all the rest. We remembered one of Levitt’s key marketing themes - “Differentiation is the essence of everything; everything can be and is differentiable.”

Thankfully we really did have some key differentiators. Unlike those other two national firms that were both potentially major competitors then (and are today), PlatformOne utilized a fully integrated HR information system as a technology platform upon which we delivered all our administrative services. All our HR professionals were well trained on the inner workings of our HR system, and they utilized the technology platform to deliver better, more personalized service to our clients. We assigned dedicated implementation and services teams to each client, resulting in better service. Those dedicated teams also answered calls from their assigned client’s employees through “branded”, client specific 800 numbers routed directly to them in PlatformOne service centers, resulting again in better service. While the national providers charged “extra” for each additional service, such as a new report, PlatformOne services were all included in one competitive fee.   

So, the “what” was the strength of our differentiation (superior technology, personalized service, and the best value in the marketplace). That was the relatively easy part of the marketing strategy to determine.

The “how” of the marketing strategy was the real challenge. How was a startup with no marketing budget going to get its differentiating message to a massive, emerging market (with over 50 other marketing messages competing for the same mindshare), and do so quickly and effectively and impact positively our near-term sales results? 

Not all marketing strategies, onto themselves, are equally effective. The most effective marketing strategy has to fit hand-and-glove with the specific marketing challenge. Just throwing money at marketing campaigns and advertising our differentiators wasn’t smart. It was also counter to our management’s philosophy of “spend after you earn” and wasn’t within our current financial capabilities anyway. This was a bigger challenge than we could execute on our own. We needed help.

If we couldn’t do this ourselves, whom could we turn to for assistance? Then it hit us.

The “how” was to establish a TRUST factor in the marketplace, which some call The Credibility Factor.

We had to embark on the "credibility branding" of PlatformOne.

Simply put, Credibility Branding is a proven communication technique and marketing process that best convinces the key decision makers in your target market to objectively consider the value of your products and services. But unlike most marketing campaigns these days, the convincing of the businessperson / decision makers is not done by a super salesperson, a catchy advertising slogan, a technically slick website or a self-proclaimed image of superiority through a power point presentation.  Credibility Branding gains favor with key decision makers not through what you say about yourself, but what others say about you, your company and your business value to them. In our case at PlatformOne, the “others” are those third parties that we strive to develop as key influencers on our behalf. First are the publications, analysts, and other experts that cover our market space. Second, are our partners – companies with whom we co-market that can influence the same decision makers we seek to win over, because they have favor and pre-existing relationships with those decision makers. Third, and most importantly, are our customers.

Today, we exploit "credibility branding” techniques in virtually 100% of our company’s efforts. These third party influencers are the basis for all we do to promote our company and its products and services. We use every technique available to us, from our industry’s associations, media, pundits, consultants, publications, and the like to customer testimonials, case studies, white papers, strategic partnerships, and word-of-mouth campaigns. In the end, what your customers and other relevant influencers say about you and your services is the single most important factor in any sales success.

PlatformOne promotes this philosophy in all that we do. We demand near perfect performance from our implementations and services teams. We believe strongly in customer testimonials published through relevant yet independent media periodicals. Everyday we seek out freelance writers who are working on assignments in our market space. We coordinate customer and freelance writer interviews so our customers are telling their own stories about the success of HR outsourcing (and gaining them press for their businesses as they do). We gain credibility by helping third party writers complete assignments (and then quote us and our customers) on the important articles around HR outsourcing. Then we re-publish the coverage we get on our own website, on the home page. Also we publish our own press releases, not about our successes, but about our clients’ successes, in the form of "successful launches" and "benefits achieved testimonials".

Sure, we want each prospect of our services to come see our operations and meet our HR services team professionals. But, more than that, we want them to talk one-on-one to our customers. We gain a prospect’s trust when they hear directly from a client how PlatformOne helped a national retailer launch their new HR department following business-restructuring decisions relating to the 911 terrorist attacks. Or how PlatformOne systems, procedures and staffing support helped a professional services firm save their business from losing their customers in a mass exodus. Or how PlatformOne helped another services firm move nearly 40,000 employee records from 4 disparate HR systems to one integrated HR technology platform from which they could run their business more efficiently and profitably. These are the testimonials that bring the "credibility branding" campaign all together.

And, as a result, PlatformOne has grown our business, in a relatively new market since 2002 or so, to one of the top HR-BPO providers in the mid-market space. Thanks to credibility earned with our customers and credibility gained from our customers.

About PlatformOne: PlatformOne is a leading HR outsourcing services provider to the mid-market, specializing in integrated technology and administrative services for the HR functions, including payroll, benefits and numerous other human resources functions. For more information, visit www.platformone.com.

About the author: Dusty Rhodes is the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for PlatformOne. He joined PlatformOne in 2003 to launch the market strategies and partnership development initiatives of the company’s HR-BPO practice.

Mr. Rhodes has over 25 years of experience creating the strategies and managing the execution of various revenue generation functions for technology companies. He is often credited with identifying market trends at early stages. His career includes roles at consulting services and application software industry leaders such as Accenture, MSA, and Manhattan Associates. He holds a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Computer Science and a Masters degree in Accounting from the University of Georgia.