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