News that the Co-operative has launched a high-profile campaign in its stores to promote its legal services is hardly surprising – given that they have a market of 17 million weekly shoppers. What caught my attention and got me thinking was the fact that the campaign will last nine weeks.We live in a village where the Co-op is the only supermarket. During term-time my son’s bus stops in the Co-op car park. Consequently I no longer do a weekly shop, but tend to pop in and pick up a few things at least three times a week.

Given that I will be seeing this information at the door and the till, in theory I will be exposed to their offers at least 30 times over the next nine weeks, and maybe much more (I will try and keep a record). I doubt I will be subject to the door-drop as our house is quite hard to find.

This is very different to my experience with many law firms, which is that of a 'one-hit-wonder' approach where they will promote a service once via an advert, mailer or email-shot. There then tends to be two reactions – 'we have marketed that now, so do not need to do so again', or 'well that did not yield much, so it was a waste of time'.

It is well known in marketing that a customer usually needs to have seen or heard of your product or service several times before making a purchase decision, but this is not something that I see practised in legal services very often.

If firms are to compete with the likes of Co-op, they will need to significantly increase communications with their clients in order to sustain their relationships and create awareness of their portfolio of services.

On average, how many times do your clients hear from you in nine weeks, or even nine months?