Marketing Lowdown: Marketing the Firm
October 07, 2008
By Robert Grede
This column is dedicated to attorneys—that often maligned brunt-of-a-thousand-jokes group of pinstriped sharpsters. They need marketing advice, too.
Marketing strategies for attorneys can be split into five basic categories:
1. Community Support. This includes local charitable donations and volunteer work. The 4-H Club, Boys & Girls Club, American Cancer Society, UPAF or the YMCA offer opportunities for relationship building. Your time and effort donated to a worthy cause gets noticed.
2. Memberships in Service Organizations. These allow you to mingle with prospective clients or referrals. Individual attorney memberships, such as your college alumni association, Kiwanis or Rotary, are really marketing activities.
3. Directory Listings. Examples include Martindale Hubbel or Best Directory of Recommended Insurance Attorneys. They offer exposure through respected listing services.
4. Advertising. Includes everything from direct mailings to magazine or newspaper ads, but may also include ad specialties—for example, golf balls with the firm's name and logo—and your firm's presentation folder. All constitute forms of advertising.
5. Trade Shows. Any gathering related to your areas of practice are extremely helpful in creating awareness and credibility among prospects. Attendance at shows, such as your state’s academy of trial lawyers or your state bar association, are a means of marketing yourself to other attorneys for referrals.
Start With a Plan
Before committing to a slew of uncoordinated marketing and publicity tactics, you should draw up a plan. Ask each of the lawyers in your firm to submit a personal marketing plan, a simple outline of the methods he or she will use to meet his or her billing goals for the year. These should then be reviewed and incorporated into an overall marketing plan for the firm.
Typically, every lawyer has a specialty—copyright or litigation, family matters or estate planning, etc. Determine the areas where you want to grow based upon the expertise of your partners and associates. These dictate your marketing strategies. For example, if estate planning is an area of expertise, your strategy may be to target upper-income homeowners ages 55 and older.
Build Awareness, Cultivate Relationships
Impersonal marketing approaches—such as brochures, newsletters, or advertisements—may be useful for creating awareness for your firm. But a client doesn't hire a firm; he hires an attorney.
Most attorneys agree that the key to building new business is to build trusted relationships. The best rainmakers use a variety of techniques to build and enhance those relationships. Who you know will always be your best form of marketing. Yet even with the best of intentions, there is only so much flesh you can press, only so many lunches you can eat and only so many relationships you can nurture at any one time. Despite its shortcomings, advertising may be the best way to introduce your services to some market segments.
The successful marketing plan will position your firm as a team of skilled professionals responding to the broader public need. For instance, sponsor a public television show that focuses on an area of your practice—such as health care, historical preservation, or the environment. (Better yet, sponsor one about each.) Or serve as a sponsor for a charitable fund drive—a walk for Muscular Dystrophy or the Susan B. Komen Foundation. Your name becomes associated with a good cause and is featured on all of the charity's advertisements and mailings.
The Most Important Marketing Technique
Research conducted by The Grede Company indicates that the number one reason lawyers are terminated is because they don't return client phone calls.
You may be working on dozens of cases at a time. But to your client, his case is the only one that matters. Returning phone calls may seem like a little thing, but it isn’t to your clients. Be sure to keep them informed.
Whether building awareness and credibility for your firm through advertising, or building your network by nurturing relationships, the best marketing technique of all is providing a quality legal product. The success of any marketing program starts with the delivery of sound legal advice and ends only when the client is completely satisfied.
S&MM online columnist Robert Grede, best-selling author, teacher and consultant, speaks on marketing and strategic planning at universities and corporate venues. www.TheGredeCompany.com.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
|
|
RSS
