Alastair Moyes's blogs

Three rings or you’re out?

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Promising levels of service seems an easy thing to do. The Co-operative announced that a caller 'will receive a response from a trained lawyer within three rings'. QualitySolicitors promised a number of things including direct lawyer contact, first consultation free, no hidden costs, same-day response and Saturday office opening. I find the use of the word ‘lawyer’ interesting as it provides a ‘get-out’ that consumers may mistrust and it can cancel out the ‘good will’ intended in the message (see the comments on this article).

Why do these organisations feel it’s necessary to promote these service level features? Most solicitors' firms already offer similar features as an intrinsic part of their service but fail to include them in relevant promotions. This leaves competitors to pick up on the perceived failing of traditional firms. However, service level features are marketing’s version of ‘hygiene factors’, not the motivators or promoter that affect a consumer’s choice. These are expected elements of service, where are the benefits the client can identify as a solution to their problem? There are further questions from a competitive analysis and marketing management view.

What happens after the fourth ring, when the matter and therefore costs change or the client finds out that the person they are talking to is not a solicitor? There can be an erosion of the levels of trust the client has for the firm and which the firm has spent a lot on developing.

Are these the elements of a solicitor’s service that consumers and businesses want? Consumer and small and medium-sized enterprise research into why and how people access legal services shows three basic concerns for clients, costs, access to ‘their solicitor’ and the time taken to respond to contact. So on the surface these promises present some reassurance for the potential client. It may encourage contact but I would suggest it misses the basic point of why a person wants to contact a solicitor.

What the client wants is a solution to their problem(s). They are seeking advice on a solution that offers better value than the alternatives available, usually doing nothing, muddle through or attempting DIY law. How the solution is delivered depends on a number of things including, the particular problem, the amount the client is willing to pay and how well the firm is set up to deliver it’s services. The features of answering the phone, direct lawyer contact etc, are far less important, people want a solution for a known cost. What your firm has to do is communicate the benefits of the services you offer to the target client groups you want to serve. If you don’t tell them, you can’t expect them to call you.

There is an opportunity for your firm to benefit from the high profile advertising campaigns the Co-op and QS will be doing. Their campaigns raise the awareness of where people and SMEs can assess and buy legal services. Your firm can compete if you promote the real benefits of your services to your chosen target market groups in your local area. Provide those target clients with the knowledge of the benefits you can deliver and you can win their work.

Don’t let the phones ring for too long but focus on meeting their needs for a solution to their problem. The client has called your firm, reward them with excellent service.

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

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Challenging the speed of change

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

A challenge has been laid down for solicitors firms. Ajaz Ahmed, co-founder of the award-winning Legal365, outlined what he believes firms need to do to compete in the changing legal services market. Speaking at the recent LawTech Camp London he urged: 'Reduce complexity; don’t sell law - sell solutions to customers’ actual problems; make your prices affordable; teach everyone in your company to talk in a language that your customers will understand; be totally transparent; and make loyalty dramatically easier than disloyalty.'

This is also the approach being taken by any business with serious intent to enter or stay in the legal services market. While most of the points are already well known and discussed widely in solicitors firms, the last point of loyalty is the most challenging. How can you make a loyalty to your firm stick in the minds of your clients? This is about influencing the actions of potential clients so that they contact your firm first. If they do, then your firm has the ability to make the most of the engagement.

The recent Legal Services Board Consumer panel YouGov research reports that the clients are still on your side. It continues to show that people usually stick with the first ‘lawyer’ that they go to for advice (few shop around). When Mr Ahmed states that it’s 'still all to play for' in the market, this evidence would indicate that Legal365 have to do most of the ‘playing’ to tempt clients away. However, his final point is again the most challenging.

For your firm to compete in any future legal service market sector, you will need to demonstrate the value of the services you offer in terms that your potential client understands. Loyalty will only go as far as paying the next bill for the client. If they see a comparable service they feel they can trust to deliver a similar solution then Mr Ahmed wins. That’s not to say that Legal365 or other new services will get the matter, but your firm has lost the loyalty.

In a previous article, Pinch Point, I outlined one element that’s needed in most firms. Alongside that is the need for constant meaningful communications with those client types your firm wants to have in the future. Tell past clients why they should call you first if they have any need for advice. If you are not regularly telling them why they should call you an increasing number of other businesses will be.

What is now more important to the challenge for solicitors is the speed of change in the market. Most change is unnoticed by hard-working solicitors because they’re not in the target market so don’t see the advertising and promotions aimed at their clients. Most firms are thinking about and some are making the changes necessary to compete in the changing market. However their pace of change is a ‘solicitors' pace of change’ and we are now not in that closed market. Others are driving the pace of change and many firms will be left behind, even those with radical plans and the finance to push forward.

Solicitors are not moving quickly enough to secure their future clients, leaving the clients to try out new legal services - not necessarily because they want to but because it "looks like a good deal", it’s easy for clients to contact rivals and for them to get a solution to their current problem. And because their solicitor didn’t tell the clients why they should call them first.

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

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Is it different this time?

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 17 April 2012

Two things have occurred that need your attention. The first alternative business structure (ABS) firms have been announced and QualitySolicitors’ new TV promotional campaign has started. I’m sure there will be a fierce debate about the pros and cons of QS' approach to promoting legal services; however given the Co-operative is now an ABS offering ‘solicitors’ services, this will be somewhat academic. Whatever your opinion is, the facts are that both these businesses are starting a high-profile market entry strategy aimed at generating a brand value that will bring the work to them. Is it different this time? Is this the start of the consumer legal service revolution?

The answer is yes and no to both questions, we’ll know the answer is a couple of years. Certainly other businesses will be advertising and promoting their services and I’m sure the Co-op will be along soon, as will other ABSs with big plans and financial backing. They may not all compete via TV advertising but you can be sure their promotional messages will be arriving in front of your current and past clients soon.

One of the significant elements of the market’s development and all the Legal Services Act 2007 changes is that, as yet no one has consistently told the consumers and small and medium-sized businesses (SME) that anything in the legal services market comes with changes. The market for domestic and SME legal services is still wide open. This is an opportunity for all to present the benefits of their services to the clients they want to serve in the future. For a number of years Professor Richard Susskind has been outlining the potentially huge ‘latent market for legal services in the UK’. These are the unrealised needs of consumers and small businesses that solicitors need to tap into, by delivering the benefits of good legal services at sensible costs and in a manner easily understand by the client. Consumers with choice will not necessarily return to their previous ‘supplier’ without a compelling reason to do so.

A further significant point is the consumers’ needs have changed little in the past few years. Consumers have chosen to use or not use legal services in the situation they find themselves in. This is why I would suggest it is different this time. Significant investment in legal services businesses, ABSs or not, will lead to increased promotions of the services they offer. More people will be aware of where they can get legal ‘help’ should they need it and will have more knowledge of how and in what situations it could be beneficial for them. That promotional activity will grow the market for legal services of all kinds. However, to compete in that market all suppliers have to be able to present the benefits of the services they offer in a meaningful manner to the target client groups.

So far the revolution has been on the supply side, those delivering services to the consumers. Now we have the real test and from the marketing department we must ask difficult questions within solicitors firms. 'Are you ready to compete and accept the changes needed within your firm to remain competitive in the future market for your legal services?' Clear your mind of the history of your firm, its solicitors and clients and try to answer this question looking forward, not backwards.

Each firm has a unique marketing management challenge and the opportunity is to use the high-profile ad campaigns as a spur to get things moving in your firm. Those that do will be the firms that have a chance to be around in two years time to assess whether this really is the start of the legal services revolution.

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

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What you can’t see will hurt you

Alastair Moyes

Thursday, 16 February 2012

Here’s the problem, there’s a nagging uncertainty about ‘high street’ solicitors' firms. There is a lot going on but you haven’t quite seen a specific challenge or threat to your firm. Whatever the threats are, you can’t quite clarify the problem in terms of how you run your firm because there’s not enough hard evidence to base business management decisions on. Your firm is busy, you’re profitable and the client enquiries are coming in to keep the firm going. You, your partners, fee earners and staff work hard to deliver a high-quality service to your clients. You know change is happening (Solicitors Regulation Authority, Outcomes-focused regulation, Jackson, etc.) that means you have to make some alterations to the way you work and run your firm.

However there’s a whole mass of words and opinions in print and online about what’s happening but you just can’t see it as a specific risk to your firm with an achievable solution.

What is it that the new competition, in the form of the Co-operative, QualitySolicitors, banks, insurance companies and other branded organisations, are doing that you can’t see which will mean changing the way you run your solicitors' business? The answer is, they are using direct promotions, (often called direct marketing) targeted so tightly that you don’t see it unless you are in one of their target market groups. What we can see are these comments taken from the Gazette’s LinkedIn discussion group on the very popular topic of QS that gives a brief glimpse of what’s going on.

…the WHSmith Legal Access Points… …I can tell you that in Newport… …over 2,500 households have already signed up - in Smith's - to the QS Legal Privilege Card scheme and now have a credit card-sized membership card for the scheme. That is 2,500 households right from the outset that are now very much likely to use the local QS firm than any other in Newport whenever they need legal services - and that's before the major advertising campaign commences. (QS chief executive Craig Holt's comments on a LinkedIn discussion group.)

Whilst that is a link with less that 2% of the local population, I’d suggest it’s actively promoted links with 2,500 more households than any local solicitors' firm. QS are doing the same in many areas of the country. This is alongside the Co-op which has millions of members with a membership card and there are other schemes and businesses doing the same. The Co-op also sends out a popular magazine that has promotions for their legal services in both editorial and advertising items.

That is alongside the direct mailing of letters and leaflets to publicise their offering. There are many more examples of this expansion of promotional campaigns.

What’s needed is to turn the nagging uncertainty about the future of ‘high street’ firms into hard management marketing plans for your firm. What is it you can do to compete with these high-budget, closely targeted, mass promotional campaigns before the enquiries to your firm trickle away? The answers will depend on the size and services your firm offers and there is no easy solution. One thing to remember is that any promotion of legal services by the big brands will expand the market and your firm can prosper in a growing market as long as you tell current and past clients (and therefore future matters) the benefits of using your firm’s services.

All the marketing and promotional techniques used by the new competition are available to you too. Common themes are focusing on the client’s future needs and how to organise the firm to serve them profitably. That will take management time and thinking to make it work in your firm.

If there’s something you can’t see creeping up on you, be prepared for a shock when it’s fully revealed. Rocket Lawyer and Legal Zoom’s entry into the UK market is just another example of unknown market competition, in the same way Direct Line changed the insurance market. In the end the consumers will decide, but they need information to base their choices on. Make sure your firm is telling your clients why they should choose you.

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

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Pinch point

Alastair Moyes

Friday, 2 December 2011

The stark comparison between new legal service providers and traditional firms’ approach to clients’ contact shows a way forward for all firms. In many solicitors offices there is a pinch point that restricts the ability of a firm to grow, the traditional solicitors’ receptionist and switchboard operator.

In the past their job was to direct phone calls, greet visitors or send faxes. Essentially they turned people away, protected the fee earners and acted as ‘gatekeepers’ to the firm. That’s alongside some secretarial work that needed doing. Direct dial systems may have relieved them of some call handling, but in essence they have always been over stretched people with no time for anything else because the phone is ringing. Seen as a cost, occasionally difficult to manage or retain the right person, this front of house operation will become a significant problem as we move into a more competitive business environment.

From the client’s point of view, how easy is it for them to contact ‘their solicitor’ about the current or potential matter? It usually goes something like this: a person calls a firm, the call is answered but the receptionist has no time to talk to the client and mostly cannot put the client through to the fee earner because they are busy. Potential client rings off dissatisfied and has to try again later or calls another firm.

Reception has mostly been run on a ‘minimise costs’ approach because it doesn’t generate fees. Now there needs to be an alternative because clients won’t bother to call back or wait. Clients will pick the firm that engages them with a service that deals with them on their terms.

Depending on the size of the firm there needs to be three, four or five people, trained and ready to answer the phone, emails or greet visitors. Each person must have the ability to confidently present the benefits of all the services the firm has to offer and have time to discuss these with the potential client.

Whether you are a single branch firm or spread across a region your firm should have a separate client reception department that is responsible for delivering a satisfactory contact service with the firm. They need to be measured on and have targets for increasing the new matter instructions to the firm.

All that will be seen as increasing costs. However, there are two reasons why this is an imperative change needed for firms. First, many of the new services being offered focus on customer service and immediate engagement with the client. That is, providing the client with substantive assistance so they have no need to go anywhere else. Your firm needs to compete with this offering whatever the cost. The second point is that a new reception for clients relieves the fee earners of dealing with non-profitable communications. Fee earners can then spend more time concentrating on current clients and leave the qualification of enquiries to a well trained client receptionist.

And there is more. Once in place the client reception team provides a resource to take more non-fee earning task away from fee earners. They can follow-up costs quotes, make call backs for fee earners, make out-bound past client follow-ups and deal with promotional campaigns or advertising responses. All this adds up to capturing profitable enquiries, dealing effectively with no-matter enquiries, allowing fee earners to concentrate on current matters and a whole host of improved management measurement information.

It need not be a radical change. Firms already have most of this in their current set-up. What makes the difference is re-defining client engagement in a way that suits the client. While the details in each firm may be complicated, a new client reception can be achieved if the partners concentrate on the main issue; capture profitable matter enquiries before your competitors do.

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

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Quality, quantity or both?

Alastair Moyes

Friday, 14 October 2011

With the announcement of another new legal services brand, ‘Simplify the Law’, firms are being presented with an increasing complex choice of partner organisations. Solicitors’ enquiry services can be a useful additional source of business, however firms need to correctly manage these services, choose them carefully and avoid a couple of common errors.

The approach to the consumer and SME markets varies widely, from QualitySolicitors or HighStreetLawyer.com at one end of the spectrum to rightsolicitor.co.uk and ContactLaw in one area or FreeIndex and Wigster.com off in another. Which one or what combination of these services is most cost effective for your firm? None are really exclusive of the others and all should be considered against a firm’s business objectives.

One of the common errors we see will be familiar to partners in personal injury departments. They become too reliant on one source of enquiries for a particular type of work. While it’s easy to drift into this situation it becomes increasingly hard work to extricate a department or whole firm from just one source.

The other common problem is managing those enquiries that come through external providers. PI partners are more used to this, however most firms don’t have the robust systems in place to measure the productivity of enquiry services or their profitability for the firm. This leads to partners having a ‘feeling’ of how good or not the enquiries received are but it’s often not backed-up by hard evidence.

Given that these services offer attractive benefits how should a firm judge each one on it’s merits? Client enquiries, brand development, national advertising and direct mail are some of the elements of promotions and marketing, being offered to firms through these outsourced suppliers. As partners or a marketing manager of a firm, it is becoming more difficult to gather together an overview of the market. The competition for the clients’ attention is increasing rapidly and will only continue to increase as ABS businesses start to promote their services.

We are often asked by firms which of these services is worth trying. The response is which one best fits your firm’s long-term objectives and is likely to generate profitable matters at a cost less that you would normally pay. To assist firms in choosing, Marketlaw conducted a research project to list all the available solicitor enquiry services alongside their response to a few basic questions (the report is available free from Marketlaw’s website).

The choice of which services to use is only half of the issues a firm needs to consider. In the same way as buying in any external service, it's how you use it that counts. This leads to a wider point for all solicitors firms. Given the introduction of outcomes-focused regulation that focuses on client satisfaction, all enquiries need to be handled in a way that maximises the potential of gaining a profitable matter and retaining the future work from that client. Overstretched receptionist, busy fee earners and secretaries means clients often finish contact with a firm without a satisfactory result. Whilst in the past the client may have just tried again, but now they have a plethora of alternatives being heavily promoted and your competitor are now just a call or a click away.

Handling client enquiries efficiently and effectively, whether from an external supplier or your own promotional activity is now an essential part of a successful firm. Organising your firm to profitably satisfy the needs of a client is a definition of what marketing means for a solicitors firm. It’s not just good business practice, now a requirement of your firm.

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Brands and the market share land grab

Alastair Moyes

Wednesday, 7 September 2011

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

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Quality solicitors for all

Alastair Moyes

Monday, 1 August 2011

Having followed the QualitySolicitors debate in the Gazette you may feel we have been in a type of ‘phoney war’ for the past couple of years. Now the battle for the domestic and SME legal services sectors has started with the launch of QS’s Legal Access Points in WHSmiths around the country. The ferocity of the debate around QS on these blogs clearly highlights the two sides of the arguments (see the comments after any blog that mentions QS).

However the battle analogy doesn’t help QS or non-QS firms think about their marketing and promotions. QS firms have made a strategic decision to use a third-party brand to convey the benefits of the services they offer. There are similar promotional initiatives like Blakemores’ ‘Lawyers2you’ in the Midlands or groups like highstreetlawyer.com and others. Some firms have retail outlets in city centres or choose to promote their services effectively and efficiently in other ways. However, QS’s is the biggest assault on the public’s consciousness of legal services as it will be backed by television advertising and a celebrity launch.

This is the start of clear, overt competition for the attention of the public and SMEs for their choice of where they go for legal services advice. There is an old ad agency truism that fits well in this situation that can help all firms look at their future position. It comes from the USA’s advertising competition in the 1950s over soap power advertising: 'if one business advertises their soap powder, all soap powder sales rise'.

The fight is not exclusively between providers of legal services. It’s more a battle to get the public and SMEs to think about where they buy their legal services. If our current £10bn (guesstimate) legal services market grows because of QS and other businesses promotions, then all firms can benefit. But only if they promote their services effectively and efficiently in their areas, as a viable alternative for potential clients. This competition between providers becomes a well-known commercial task of gaining (or losing) market share (think of the newspaper and magazine market’s competitiveness).

Marketing management offers many ways to analyse and plan a response to the new market conditions. You could compete head-on or use other promotional techniques to gain market share that suits your budget. One of the most important aspects of deciding which way to go is something we have been working on with both a QS firm and many non-QS firms.

Our experience shows that changing the internal organisation of a firm to focus on clients’ needs is the essential element of future competitiveness. A firm that evolves its services to quickly and satisfactorily deliver the benefits of legal services to their clients will remain a profitable business.

To achieve that firms need an accurate database of past clients and promotional materials that focus on the benefits of their services for identified target client groups. Capturing client inquiries and retaining them as future clients means ensuring your internal organisation allows easy client access into your firm and follows-up closed matters with relevant communications about further services.

QS is using a loyalty card scheme which is not a unique idea of solicitors but how would your firm match or compete with that in your local area?

All of this is about competition between solicitors firms with or without a brand. We’ve not mentioned the other competitors like the Co-op, Halifax, other banks, insurance companies and new entrants. These businesses are after your current and past clients and are ‘battle hardened’ marketing machines.

The raw commercial realities of winning and maintaining a competitive market share are here. Without a clear marketing management approach, firms are likely to be trampled underfoot in the charge towards the future profitable clients.

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

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What you don’t know about your clients

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 5 July 2011

The Legal Services Board’s independent consumer panel has produced some good research in their recently published Tracker Survey 2011.

These results build on the ideas about how to use research in my blog post from February, ‘Consumer research: will it tell you all?’.

The FT and the Managing Partners Forum also published some research in the commercial sector that helps highlight the changes needed in a more competitive market.

Both pieces of research can be used to help firms plan for the future with a wider view of the market for their services.

From the inside of a solicitors firm it is often difficult to get a good understanding of the public and businesses’ use and views of solicitors and the service they offer.

The discussion between solicitors and in the legal sector talks about clients and services as an amorphous lump but this misses the distinct segmentation of the consumer market.

Understanding that segmentation is a vital part of successful marketing and promotions.

By marketing, I mean how you organise your firm to serve clients’ needs and promotion being the communications methods used to promote your services.

Focusing on the client, their needs or requirements and the competition or the alternatives a potential client can choose between makes the LSCP’s research useful.

It provides an understanding of how the market should be broken down into suitable segments for your firm to use.

This is necessary because of the entirely different approach in marketing terms for each segment.

Commercial versus domestic, personal injury versus probate, first-time home buyers versus elderly house sellers and so on, into every service type and client group in your firm.

One of the things we can do is gauge the levels of inputs in terms of time, effort and money, required for different clients groups across the services offered.

Sixty-70% of people choosing a solicitor went by some form of recommendation, therefore a similar proportion of the firms marketing effort should be towards re-enforcing recommendation.

Looking at the next level down in the details, just over half (56%) of the total was a personal recommendation and half of that was because they’d used the firm previously.

This is the evidence need to explain why your past clients should be the highest priority in promotional effort.

The research is less helpful in some areas where the terms used, like ‘reputation’, are too wide or undefined.

Reputation is the highest ‘choice factor’ when choosing a solicitor at 81% followed by ‘specialist in area’ (of law) 73%, ‘speed of delivery’ 72%, local office 71%, and price 70%.

What important here is the clients’ view of your firm and not the strict definition of each term.

We can use these results to check your firm’s promotional leaflets and website.

How does that promotional wording present the benefits of your firm’s services in the terms people or businesses want to see?

When reading about your firm’s services, how can a client understand that the reputation of your firm is a benefit to them?

Then repeat that question replacing ‘reputation’ with the other ‘choice factors’ listed in the survey.

If a potential client can’t easily see how the benefits of the services you offer fits with their situation you are likely to lose them to a competitor that does.

The Tracker Survey and other good research is an excellent way to get a non-solicitors’ view of legal services.

Use it to help your firm retain your current clients and gain new clients and matters.

Alastair Moyes, Marketlaw

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Branding with hot irons?

Alastair Moyes

Thursday, 26 May 2011

‘Brand’ is a widely used description that covers many things in a lot of marketing areas and means many things to many people.

Focusing on your firm’s brand is one way (of many ways) to manage the marketing process within your firm.

From a marketing management point of view for solicitors there are several ideas we need to look at to understand how to use branding techniques for legal services.

Your firm’s ‘brand’ is a tool, like a vehicle for delivering the idea of potential benefits to carefully chosen target client groups.

The aim is to manage, influence or plant in the head of your target markets, a variable set of thoughts that ‘pop-up’ when a potential client arrives at a situation that should involve legal or associated advice.

The size of the potential market you want to influence will then dictate the media and promotional channels you will need to use.

Large markets means TV ads and other national media, like PI enquiries. Small markets mean using more targeted media like direct mail or other promotional methods.

A person thinks, ‘I should ask a solicitor about this…’ is the point that brands come into play.

How will that person, given their individual circumstances and the legal issue they have, choose the solicitor or alternative supplier to contact?

It depends on what they know already, based on the last legal brand they heard of, mixed with personal experience, recommendation and a whole host of other influencing factors.

National brands like Quality Solicitors, The CoOp or services like Wigster.com may be in with a chance since they promote themselves widely.

But if the person’s problem is with equine law in a rural area and they read Horse & Hound magazine, other firm’s brands may offer more fitting benefits.

Your firm, represented by a name or logo presents different benefits for each potential client that knows of you. Having the word ‘solicitor’ in your firm’s name is an essential part of your brand.

For brand and marketing purposes, you will need to divide potential future clients into meaningful groups.

Initially, consumer or commercial followed by all the sub-categories representing the service you offer.

Once in groups you can assess which future services they could be interested in and devise a communications plan that delivers the idea of the potential benefits of your services.

We would all like to do one to one promotions but it’s too costly. Using a brand, whether bought in or developed by your firm, becomes the potential clients ‘easy handle’ to put on your firm.

The collective marketing processes, alongside other promotional methods (advertising, direct mail, PR) all contribute to the perceived value of your firms services in the mind of each potential future client.

It’s important to remember the main value in your firm’s brand is delivering valuable legal service solutions to your current clients.

Using brand management techniques aims to maintain and enhance the past clients or potential new client’s view of the benefits you can deliver.

Recommendation is still by far the best way to gain profitable work and your previous clients are a valuable source of recommendations. Your firm’s reputation for delivering excellent legal services is one part of your brand presentation.

As we are all aware, there are other information sources not in your control (recommendation, gossip, web, media) that will have an influence on your firms brand in the minds of potential future clients.

The word ‘solicitor’ is a powerful brand but it is at the mercy of the media.

For brands bad publicity is bad publicity.

Branding is part of the marketing management approach for any commercial organisation.

Brand management can present tricky problems. What does ‘Halliwells’ stand for now as an extreme example.

The vital part of branding for a successful firm is to know who you want as future clients and what it is you want to say to them through all forms of marketing communications.

An essential part of that understanding of future clients is your firm’s database of past or potential future clients, it’s accuracy and usability for promotional purposes.

Without a good database you will be wasting a considerable proportion of your advertising budget on attempting to influence people who will never buy your services.

To use your firm’s brand effectively and efficiently really means looking carefully at what you want to say to potential clients and how you will communicate with them.

Get the marketing management right and your firms brand value will follow.

Start doing something about your firms marketing and brand now because there are many trusted and valued brands competing for your future matters now and more to come with ABS.

As an example, think about BT or M&S and the thoughts occur to you having heard their name.

Did it also occur to you to pop into M&S on the way home or did you decide to use a different retailer?

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