I can hardly wait.
More or bigger entrants to the UK legal market.
No doubt, the usual marketing triggers will be wrung through. Interruption marketing will be the default position.
How many times have you heard the expression that legal services are a distress purchase? No one in their right (or wrong) mind would want to spend money on lawyer (“Are you mad?”). It’s no wonder that firms feel the need to spray their message – sooner or later something is bound to stick.
But, apart from anything else, it is expensive, difficult to measure and does nothing to elevate the profession. Is it any wonder that you get compared to selling baked beans or being no different in your marketing ethos to the local plumber?
Firms constantly look for an edge to unlock a flood of clients. But, in truth, they do little, if anything, to look or feel different to their nearest (and not so dearest) neighbour.
Same looking website.
Same marketing guff.
Same looking people.
Same words used to describe what they do.
Same looking premises.
Same sounding messages.
Same long, long letters.
Marketing and sales is hard.
Hard to do well.
Hard to get it right.
And hard to show a return.
But more of the same will leave where you are now.
And it’s fear of change that is keeping you that way.
Apart from the obvious lack of imagination, your are scared to death that if you change the time-honoured methodology, such that it is, that any trickle of work will quickly dry up.
But what if you were to consider:
- Creating something remarkable;
- Giving away your intellectual capital;
- Following your (gut) (heart) instinct;
- Being genuinely be different, without reference to the market;
- Inventing something that clients may not even know they need;
- Building a Tribe that is so narrow in its focus you create a monopoly (I did this in recruitment as the only person then recruiting for people who sold ‘pens’).
In the old days there was a definite distinction between marketing and sales. No more. The Internet has seen to that.
If you haven’t yet thought how you can engage with your clients, and earn their attention, then perhaps you should consider starting the most valuable Blog in the World (your legal world). Clients wouldn’t then feel the need to flick through website after website.
As I have said many times before, you have to earn your clients’ attention. Hitting them hard with your message won’t work.
[BTW. If you don’t accept that digital marketing is: (a) here to stay; and (b) will make a massive difference to your practice, then I suggest you read Jeremy Owyang’s post of 4 February with the headline: “P&G Layoffs Signal Focus on Digital Industry.” I am quite sure that their science of marketing success is more refined than yours (and mine) and if they see the future in digital, then so should you.]