Marketing Ideas for Lawyers from Stacy West Clark
Tom Kane of the Legal Marketing Blog points to an article My 2007 Holiday Gift: Advice from Top Marketing Consultants by Stacy Clark. The bulletpoints of the advice is below. Click on the link for the full article.
* Give so you can receive (Sally Schmidt)
* Visit Clients (yours truly)
* Fix up your web site (Deborah McMurray)
* Don’t waste marketing dollars (Andy Havens)
* Focus on your own market (Susan Saltonstall Duncan)
* Spend 200 hours on marketing (Larry Bodine)
* Have a plan (John Remsen)
* Happy Birthday, client (Elizabeth Lampert)
* Meet face to face (Sylvia Coulter)
* Keep what works secret (Micah Buchdahl)
I think these are all great ideas, but I don’t agree with Micah Buchdahl’s suggestion of keeping what works secret. I think the best marketing is something that fits you (or the firm) very well and can’t be copied easily.
Also, marketing by it’s very nature means that you are going out and putting your information in front of the public (or targeted segment). So it can’t really be a secret.
I’m a big believer in the idea of giving things of value away as a means of marketing. I’ve given out over 3,000 of the PowerPoint compilation disks that everyone helped put together.
Of course, you don’t have to give away everything and every piece of information you possess, but I think that good marketing is hard for others to duplicate.
The reason you don't have to keep what works a secret is because they key is not trying to figure out what to do. There are few magic elixirs out there. Anything you do takes effort which is usually what is lacking, not some secret idea you have on how to build a practice.
Happy New Year, Dave!
I would agree with you on this one Dave. Jay Conrad Levinson who invented Guerrilla Marketing and sold over 13 million marketing books says he would rather have someone be consistent, persistent and well targeted over time using proven strategies and tactics than a creative person doing them in fits and starts. I have written a 125 page report on 31 Proven Law Firm Marketing Strategies that is complimentary on my site if folks are looking for what is known to work for lawyers in marketing. There is a lot to be said for president!
Dave - you are right. This is not a zero sum game. If marketing is done correctly, it benefits us all. Many of us have benefited from your materials and I am sure you haven't lost a nickel from it, but rather, have found that your practice has grown from sharing. I share what works for me with others and it seems to come back around to me as a benefit, not in lost business.
