As we look forward to 2012 and the challenges that solicitors’ firms face I would suggest they need to think carefully about their management priorities for the coming year. Direct competition for the domestic, small business and corporate client groups will become more visible as new businesses (alternative business structures or not) set their market entry strategies in motion. Solicitors' firms need to get the basics of marketing management and promotion in place before they can fully engage in the competitive market. Everyone in a firm has a marketing role to fulfil but how can this be quickly achieved and managed in a systematic way that is acceptable to everyone?

For the past few weeks I’ve been working with a firm to sort out what it is that they say to clients about the services they offer. What we are driving at is organising the firm to consistently present the benefits of their full range of services in a systematic approach. The end result will be a comprehensive set of promotional and informational brochures or leaflets that everyone in the firm can use easily and quickly. The content will be in print or pdf file format and reflected on their website. Simple promotional marketing stuff you may say, however it is the process of producing this promotional material that is more important, along with how it is then used.

The new competition, current and yet to come, are marketing lead organisations. They (attempt to) understand their target market groups and present their services according to the needs of each group. The process with a solicitors' firm is to understand who their profitable clients are, what services the firm offers and how to consistently present meaningful benefits in all suitable situations. The management priority is to simply write down what they do in terms of benefits to clients and then tell the clients in the most appropriate way.

Partners, fee earners and staff in general practice high street firms understand that there are many different groups of clients within each area of legal service. That's obvious you may think, but while many know this, they rarely act on it or tailor their services accordingly to attract the most profitable clients (and therefore reduce the lower margin clients). For example, there can be three broad domestic conveyancing markets, first-time buyers, family movers and the elderly sellers. For businesses, there are differences for small and medium-sized, and larger businesses looking for employment law advice. Grouping current and potential clients into smaller meaningful groups helps a firm present the right benefits to people that can appreciate them. Each client group is looking for a different set of benefits for the same underlying legal advice service.

Once the process has identified future client groups, the firm and the fee earners that deal with clients each day need to understand the benefits a client is receiving. Each service presented to a distinct target client group should have a specific set of benefits. That’s not features of the service, we have local branches, expert solicitors and competitive fee rates, but the benefits that these features deliver. Convenient access to your solicitor that saves you time, with expert solicitors that understand your needs, all at a cost controlled by you.

Benefit needs to be qualified by a ‘so what’ question. If you think you’ve got a benefit statement for one of the services you offer, can the client say ‘so what?’, ‘what does that do for me?’ If they can, you need to think again about the benefit.

The process has now identified clients groups and listed the services the firm offers in terms of benefits the client will receive. The next step is to turn it into promotional material that means something to the target client group, that’s been generated by and agreed upon by the firm and they are happy to use.

But that’s not the main point, the process of looking at the firm from the clients’ perspective means fee earners and staff increase their ability to gain profitable work. The management process needs to continue by regularly reviewing the process to ensure the firm stays competitive to new market opportunities or threats. From this point a firm can build up other promotional methods with confidently. Web and search engine optimisation, email promotions, seminars and all the fancy stuff often mistaken for ‘marketing’, becomes easier once you have the basic marketing management in place.

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