Law Firm Marketing 101
This should go without saying, but sometimes it helps to actually say the things that go without saying. I’ve been reading a lot of information on marketing principles for law firms. Before getting to the fancy stuff, here’s a basic marketing plan that will get you 80% of the way there.
- Competent work in a timely manner
- Return phone calls
- Be nice to people
That should be a baseline. If you don’t have that going for you, the fancy stuff won’t work.
Well said! As a professional services marketer I would agree that too often we need to be reminded of the most basic principles. There is no program, initiative, or branding exercise that can do more than plain old common sense and good manners.
Not to be flip, but that's not marketing. It's operations. And thinking that getting the operational stuff right counts as marketing is one of the reasons that so many law firms' marketing programs fail so badly. Don't get me wrong -- great marketing won't save operational ineptitude. You do have to do good work, return calls and be nice to people. But they've got nothing to do with marketing. Saying they do is like saying that the meat, bun and cheese that you get on your cheeseburger at Wendy's counts as marketing.
If you have to choose between operational excellence and marketing excellence, choose operational excellence. Every time. You can do without marketing if you have to. You can't do without a good product or service.
But marketing isn't just about "fancy stuff," either. It's about the ways in which you communicate with clients. The ways in which you attempt to understand your industry and economic environment. The ways you choose to grow and adapt to change. Those are important issues; not just frosting on a cake. Simply a different flavor of cake.
So... if you don't want to do any marketing, that's fine. But don't try to convince yourself you're doing marketing when you're not.
For Law Firm Marketing 201 students, I suggest they build on the 101 curriculum with:
1. Refusal to bill for G&A activities
2. Alignment of legal purpose with business purpose
3. Business rules and norms apply to the business relationship between attorneys and clients
Andy,
You're right. Marketing is *not* just 'fancy stuff'. I was using that as shorthand for a lot of advice that marketing professionals give.
My primary point in a sentence was that the first step to getting and keeping clients is to provide a good service.
Once you get past that point, depending on the market you're in, the size of the firm, type of cases you want to get, marketing can be tremendously helpful.
But the first step is having a good service.
To use your Wendy's analogy, having a good burger is the first step to having people come back and eat it again.
Now, if you already have that, but there's a lot of other burger places in town, plus pizza, chinese, italian and deli's too, then other marketing can help. But the first step is to have a good burger.
It doesn't bother me if you define the items listed as operational and not marketing, but it leads to having clients come back and refer their friends. That's what I'm looking for.
