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Add You - How to Put Law & Order into Marketing Your Legal Practice
Managing for Best PerformanceIn it’s simplest form, performance management is a common sense set of discussions that make sure people are clear about what they need to do, have the support to do it and get open and honest feedback on their performance.Any performance management process should answer 4 important questions for your employees:· Direction: What do I need to do and how well? · Feedback: How am I doing? · Rewards: What happens when I do well? · Support/Development: What happens when I need/want help?Lets look more closely at each of these:DirectionEmployees are not mind readers. Just because it is clear to the manager exactly what is expected, doesn’t mean the employee has the same understanding. Having a detailed discussion a
Orderly Conduct
This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing h
If you are in one of the following businesses you must read this article as the competition in your industry is getting fierce: you will lose the competitive edge; see a decrease in profits; and work harder to make just as much money in 2007. 1. Banks 2. Accountants 3. Dentists 4. Chiropractors 5. Fitness Industry This is your warning and a wake call that cannot be ignored any longer. You can’t keep doing business the same way or your profit margins will continue to decline.What Is The Most Effective Yet Most Overlooked Marketing Strategy in Your Respective Industries?If you do not know the answer to this question and you are in one of these industries, your business is heading for serious trouble within the next 360 days. Maybe even sooner..... Why?
Regardless of your law firm’s focus – criminal, civil, corporate, family, business, etc. – the greatest challenge most small to mid-size firms face is the lack of a strategic and disciplined approach to business development. Relying on referrals does not a strategy make! And waiting to get serious about marketing until that major case is wrapped up is way too late.
Whether you’re frustrated with past marketing efforts that have been expensive, time-consuming, and haven’t paid off…or you think you can’t afford to take a sophisticated, results-driven approach to business development like the big firms do, guess again. While your firm may not have its own in-house marketing expert on staff or the generous marketing budgets that the larger firms enjoy, you can systematically and affordably attract more clients than you ever thought possible. It just takes a thoughtful strategy that leverages the laws of marketing, and an ordered approach to stay on track.
Laws of Marketing
First and foremost, marketing is NOT about brochures, websites, advertising or cold calls. These things may or may not be tools that make sense for your firm, once you’ve leveraged the laws of marketing.
There are two basic laws of marketing1 that must be mastered by professional service providers who want to stop wasting time and money on ineffective marketing efforts. They are:
1. Build your base (carefully craft your message)
2. Reach out to your market (build and nurture relationships)
Here’s a quick look at what each of these laws requires…
Build Your Base. This law means spending thoughtful time defining your firm’s niche, developing language that grabs your prospects’ attention, articulating what makes your firm stand out from other firms offering the same services, demonstrating your value, and illustrating your firm’s authority to deliver better than all other choices.
Unfortunately, 90% of professional service firms ignore the law of “build your base” and rush to communicate about their firm without a carefully articulated message. This leaves your target audience unconvinced or, at best, confused about how your firm can serve them better than all others vying for their attention. Invest a little time in building your firm’s base, and you’ll be ahead of most of your competitors.
Reach Out to Your Market. This law involves developing and implementing a system of strategies to build and sustain relationships with your target market and current clients. They are executed both offline and online. They are done systematically and repeatedly. They work in synergy to create an unstoppable buzz and attraction to your firm that takes on a desirable life of its own, once you’ve put them in place. These strategies include things like networking, direct outreach (personal or mass mail), PR, articles and speaking, keep-in-touch systems, using technology to attract, develop, and retain relationships; tapping centers of influence, developing joint ventures, launching a client relationship strategy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.
Orderly Conduct
This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing ha
Many of the most memorable ad campaigns around tend to be funny. Advertisers use this strategy to attract customers to their product. Audiences like to be entertained, but not pitched. People will pay more attention to a humorous commercial than a factual or serious one, opening themselves up to be influenced. The key to funny advertising is assuring the humor is appropriate to both product and customer. The balance between funny and obnoxious can often be delicate; and a marketer must be certain the positive effects outweigh the negative before an advertisement can be introduced.The best products to sell using humor tend to be those that consumers have to think the least about. Products that are relatively inexpensive, and often consumable, can be represented without providing a lot of facts, and that
Laws of Marketing
First and foremost, marketing is NOT about brochures, websites, advertising or cold calls. These things may or may not be tools that make sense for your firm, once you’ve leveraged the laws of marketing.
There are two basic laws of marketing1 that must be mastered by professional service providers who want to stop wasting time and money on ineffective marketing efforts. They are:
1. Build your base (carefully craft your message)
2. Reach out to your market (build and nurture relationships)
Here’s a quick look at what each of these laws requires…
Build Your Base. This law means spending thoughtful time defining your firm’s niche, developing language that grabs your prospects’ attention, articulating what makes your firm stand out from other firms offering the same services, demonstrating your value, and illustrating your firm’s authority to deliver better than all other choices.
Unfortunately, 90% of professional service firms ignore the law of “build your base” and rush to communicate about their firm without a carefully articulated message. This leaves your target audience unconvinced or, at best, confused about how your firm can serve them better than all others vying for their attention. Invest a little time in building your firm’s base, and you’ll be ahead of most of your competitors.
Reach Out to Your Market. This law involves developing and implementing a system of strategies to build and sustain relationships with your target market and current clients. They are executed both offline and online. They are done systematically and repeatedly. They work in synergy to create an unstoppable buzz and attraction to your firm that takes on a desirable life of its own, once you’ve put them in place. These strategies include things like networking, direct outreach (personal or mass mail), PR, articles and speaking, keep-in-touch systems, using technology to attract, develop, and retain relationships; tapping centers of influence, developing joint ventures, launching a client relationship strategy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.
Orderly Conduct
This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing h
Although both Six Sigma and Lean Flow have their roots in manufacturing, it works just as effectively in service industries. Much of the U.S. economy is now based on services rather than manufacturing and many service organization managers are wondering how they can achieve the tremendous process improvement benefits of Lean Six Sigma to their service organization. Many service organizations have already begun to blend the higher quality of Six Sigma with the efficiency of Lean into Lean Six Sigma. The effects have been significant and long-lasting.Service organizations have different root causes of problems and a unique set of processes and metrics. As a result, the tools and methodology required to achieve the improvements of Lean Six Sigma are significantly different. While problems in the manufactu
1. Build your base (carefully craft your message)
2. Reach out to your market (build and nurture relationships)
Here’s a quick look at what each of these laws requires…
Build Your Base. This law means spending thoughtful time defining your firm’s niche, developing language that grabs your prospects’ attention, articulating what makes your firm stand out from other firms offering the same services, demonstrating your value, and illustrating your firm’s authority to deliver better than all other choices.
Unfortunately, 90% of professional service firms ignore the law of “build your base” and rush to communicate about their firm without a carefully articulated message. This leaves your target audience unconvinced or, at best, confused about how your firm can serve them better than all others vying for their attention. Invest a little time in building your firm’s base, and you’ll be ahead of most of your competitors.
Reach Out to Your Market. This law involves developing and implementing a system of strategies to build and sustain relationships with your target market and current clients. They are executed both offline and online. They are done systematically and repeatedly. They work in synergy to create an unstoppable buzz and attraction to your firm that takes on a desirable life of its own, once you’ve put them in place. These strategies include things like networking, direct outreach (personal or mass mail), PR, articles and speaking, keep-in-touch systems, using technology to attract, develop, and retain relationships; tapping centers of influence, developing joint ventures, launching a client relationship strategy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.
Orderly Conduct
This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing h
I will buy from you again and again and again:If your "in-stock" claim is reciprocated by a prompt deliveryIf there are no hidden costs involved: if a product is priced at $10 on your product catalog page I should NOT be made to pay $18 for all the "add-ons" by the time I place the actual orderIf you promptly respond to my queriesIf my complaints and other issues are resolved without unwarranted delayIf your customer service department delivers exactly what is promisedIf you can clearly show me how your product functions/works and how it is going to benefit meIf your shopping pages load fast and smoothlyIf you can make your checkout point easy for me to complete my purchaseIf you visibly disclose a return policy; when the deadline for return is; a
Reach Out to Your Market. This law involves developing and implementing a system of strategies to build and sustain relationships with your target market and current clients. They are executed both offline and online. They are done systematically and repeatedly. They work in synergy to create an unstoppable buzz and attraction to your firm that takes on a desirable life of its own, once you’ve put them in place. These strategies include things like networking, direct outreach (personal or mass mail), PR, articles and speaking, keep-in-touch systems, using technology to attract, develop, and retain relationships; tapping centers of influence, developing joint ventures, launching a client relationship strategy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.
Orderly Conduct
This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing h
'Touched for the very first time'Call it what you want, but few pop stars and fewer businesses have understood the intricacies of Madonna's genius of reinvention and the inevitable end of the business cycle. Learn from the branding expert.While Madonna soars, everyone else seems to stumble, bumble and disappear down a deep, dark hole.So, what is it about Madonna Incorporated that has allowed it to consistently reap profits for over 18 years on the trot? And is there something we in business can learn about branding from the chameleon of pop music?================================ What Madonna Learned from Houdini ================================Gasp! That's what the audience would do, every time Harry Houdini cheated apparent death. Except that death was a deliberat
Orderly Conduct
This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing happen is a function of carving out the time from precious billable hours - not an easy task! However, you can do it, especially if you take a disciplined and orderly approach to staying on track. This means you have to…
Get focused. Schedule a meeting with key decision-makers in your firm to discuss making a commitment to marketing. You don’t have to make any major decisions at this first meeting, except determine how much time you can commit weekly to your firm’s marketing efforts. Start small (2 hours per person) and put it in your schedules. Then schedule your next marketing meeting to discuss the results of your homework, the attached Are You Ready for a TurningPointe? marketing assessment!
Get organized. Use the results of the marketing assessment to stimulate discussion about where to start. At this point, if you’ve not done market strategy and planning before, call in an expert. It’ll save you lots of time in the end, since you’ll START with a strategic marketing plan that makes sense for your firm and is realistic to implement.
Some basics to consider when developing your plan include:
• Keep it simple; don’t take on too much at once. Spread out your deadlines.
• Identify a mix of short-term, easily implemented goals and longer-term, harder-to-implement goals. Build in some quick “wins” for an immediate return on your investment.
• Prioritize but be flexible; be willing to change dates or put things on hold when other marketing priorities make sense (which means you don’t stop, you just shift).
• Identify the obstacles (people, time, money, lack of expertise, etc.) that could derail you and plan tasks for how to overcome them.
• Plan for how to make marketing a reward, not a punishment. Build in rewards for people who take time from billable hours to market.
Stay on track. At a minimum, guard one hour every week for a status check on your marketing plan – even if you’re a solo practitioner, that means making an appointment with yourself! The mere act of focused thinking or discussion about marketing every week will make an enormous difference in your ability to attract more clients.
Once you have a smart plan in place that’s realistic (see Get Organized, above), all you have to do is focus on taking one step at a time, then another, and another. Each small marketing task builds momentum and before you know it, you’ve implemented a major goal. The key is to keep moving…or if you stop, get restarted. It also helps to have “accountability” to an outside party, who keeps you on track through regular telephone and in-person coaching sessions.
The Defense Rests
So your practice ha
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