Brands and the market share land grab

As the holiday season comes to an end and we face the autumn of change in the legal services market it is worth having a brief review of the announcements that will affect how you plan your firm’s marketing.

These are key moves that will affect the consumers' view, understanding of and access to legal solutions and you will need to take them into account when planning your future marketing management.

There is a ‘land grab’ process underway for the attention of potential legal services users. Whether your firm is part of a group or brand, you will need to understand what these new consumer propositions mean for how your firm works.

Looking forward into 2012 there are two USA based businesses looking at launching in the UK, Rocket Lawyers and Legal Zoom. Both have been given significant investment capital and are looking at ABS in the UK.

Rocket Lawyers have backing from Google which apparently already provides access to their services via Google Docs. Legal Zoom are seen in the USA as the competition that every ‘Main Street’ lawyer fears the most. They are aiming to launch a version of their service in 2012.

From the clients’ perspective, they are already seeing a previously low profile legal services sector start to come out into the open market. QualitySolicitors in WH Smiths, Lawyers2you and other brand services in retail settings are offering solutions to legal issues that people didn’t think of ‘getting round to’ before.

The announcements that are closer to our current market situation will have a more immediate effect on how often your phone rings with enquiries.

The Co-op is expanding its initial pilot scheme, and as has been reported, CLS has recently been merged with the Co-op’s Life Planning service. This includes the funeral business, allowing it to capitalise on the opening up of the legal services market.

The Co-op’s statement on its website says this 'will provide an opportunity to enhance our combined partner propositions, optimise our third-party B2B relationships and enable us to cross-sell our products and services more effectively. We will be launching new distribution channels in the second half of the year and expect to continue our strong performance'.

Lawyers2you and CPP have both announced expansions of their legal service offerings that will have an additional impact on the consumers’ view of where they can access legal services.

All these new promotional initiatives are aimed at your firm’s past clients, which means that to maintain your market share you will need to present a meaningful alternative if you hope to retain their interest in your services and gain their future matters.

I would suggest that your firms’ September partners meeting should put marketing management at the top of the agenda. That is, above financial performance, staff issues and practice management affairs, so you focus on why your firm’s future clients should instruct you.

At that partners' meeting, ask yourselves these questions as a start.

• What is it you are doing now to deal with this increase in competition for your future clients?
• Is our IT database of past clients good enough to start a promotional campaign?
• How much time, effort and expense will it take to be in a position to promote the benefits of the services we offer to the clients we want for our firm?
• How do we re-organise how our firm works to ensure we can continue to provide excellent legal solutions to our clients?
• What is stopping us from making the changes we need now?

These should be seen as tough questions with answers that need to be acted on. Firms that feel they have already got their marketing management right, will need to continue to use these questions to be sure they can continue to develop services that clients want.

The “consumers”, your past and future clients, will see more and more easy ways to get a solution to their legal problem and you will need to come up with more new ways to tell them you are still their best option.

Having answered the difficult questions within your own firm, you may find the answers easier.

The big brands and new legal service providers have no secret tricks or magic formulae they use to win business. They just use marketing management best practice to present the benefits of the services they offer to the client they want for their business. And you can do the same for you chosen target client groups, for the services you offer, in your chosen area of the country.

All the tools and techniques they use are available to your firm and with a little effort and thinking are not that difficult to use. To start with you must have a well-maintained database of past clients that you can use for promotions.

Your fee earners and staff will need to be able to confidently present the benefits of the services your firm offers and your firm must have a clear idea of who you want as clients in the future.

At your next partners meeting use this article as the basis for a debate on what you are really, actually doing to secure the future of your business.

Alastair Moyes is a director at Marketlaw and co-author of Marketing Legal Services, the current marketing handbook from Law Society Publishing