This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of The Barnett Group, a local Memphis company that provides benefit solutions for employers, as well as wealth and asset management services for both businesses and individuals. Started by Ed Barnett in 1987, The Barnett Group has grown its team to 14 employees and facilitates coverage for more than 75,000 individuals.

Recently, we sat down with Chirag Chauhan, partner and director of financial services at TBG, to talk about the company’s ongoing efforts to build brand awareness over the last three decades, and he shares his insight in this guest post.

Our biggest challenge has definitely been brand awareness and telling our story, as far as everything we do. We provide a very broad scope of services, yet clients often only perceive us as one way or the other. We’ve always seen this as an opportunity to continuously educate our clients about all of the solutions we can provide for them – from tailored employee benefit packages to wealth protection, asset management, and financial and estate strategies.

While we’ve done a good job with the placement of our messaging through advertising and direct and digital marketing efforts, so much of our success in communicating our story has stemmed from face-to-face interactions with clients and prospects. We’ve remained committed to staying in close contact with our clients and providing personal service so that they like doing business with us. And, it has paid off in a client retention rate of more than 98 percent.

Another element of brand management that we’ve really zeroed in on, especially in the last five to seven years, is consistency of our brand – from the design and use of our logo to the consistency of our message across all of our marketing channels. This has really helped solidify the brand, and we’ve become much more recognizable in the marketplace than, say, five to seven years ago.

As mentioned earlier, we believe we’ve been successful with our advertising efforts and have really secured our name in the Memphis medical market, which is our strongest niche market. However, with the help of Obsidian, we’ve also begun strategically exploring other industries in which to distribute our messages, and we expect to see new business opportunities open up through these efforts.

For us, brand awareness will continue to be an ongoing focus. It’s amazing to see where we’ve come in the last 30 years, but we are committed to remaining ahead of it and continuing to push a consistent message so that one day, everyone who sees our logo will automatically know what The Barnett Group is.