Marketing experts call this behavior reactionary. Market participants limit themselves to communicating with their clients in some way – via their own law firm homepage, newsletter, brochures or advertisements. However, professional law firm marketing or lawyer marketing for client acquisition means something completely different from pure law firm advertising.
It is basically a puzzle consisting of thousands of pieces. The picture can usually only be recognized when 50 to 70 percent of the pieces fit. Marketing is about conceptual, consciously market-oriented corporate management that aligns all corporate activities with the needs of current and potential customers in order to achieve corporate goals. It concerns thereby the famous four P´s: Product (product policy), Price (price policy), Promotion (communication) and Place (distribution and selling). Without a professional orientation of the firm towards these four essential marketing elements, no client acquisition can be successful in the long run and this info just posted on Attorney At Law Magazine. Because lawyers – unlike tax consultants – usually live from individual mandates.
This requires a corresponding number of clients to generate sufficient turnover – triggered by continuously effective law firm marketing. However, this is hardly possible without an appropriate marketing strategy to win clients.
Law Firm Marketing as a Topic of Law Firm Management
The aim of lawyers should therefore be to actively use law firm marketing to improve their business. To do this, they must draw up marketing plans and attorney strategies in which they describe in detail how they intend to implement the four P´s and what concrete goals they have. They must also focus on improving the service. They also need to differentiate the firm from its competitors and identify new markets. Clients are regularly asked about their satisfaction.
Client databases are created and maintained, sales and service training for lawyers and employees is offered. In other words: All four P´s of the Kanzleimarketing are taken equally seriously. Because who sits with the correct product at the wrong place, has likewise the Nachsehen like that lawyer, who offers its services in a certain target group simply too expensively. In addition, marketing-oriented lawyers and law firms use market research to identify trends and needs in the consulting markets at an early stage and to submit tailor-made offers.
Demanders of legal services grow up
As important as it is to build a firm’s reputation and image through communication and, above all, through the right recommendation management, the future viability of legal advisors depends on their innovative strength and efficiency. On the one hand, the budgets of legal advisors are not growing sky-high in the face of ever new waves of savings in companies. And in the consumer sector, too, clients are becoming more and more demanding in the face of countless free legal information on the Internet. As a result, clients are increasingly demanding higher quality consulting services. This professionalization of the clients in dealing with their advisors is also a consequence of the fact that many professionals have changed sides – for example, lawyers from commercial law firms who now work in the legal departments of companies.
Cut-throat competition has nothing to do with quality
Those who do not succeed in developing an innovative product strategy are hardly perceived as more or less exchangeable competitors, a fact that is disparagingly referred to as “me too” imitation product in the consumer goods world. The result of this development is predatory competition. In the long run, it is not the law firms that perform best in the market that win, but those that have the most financial reserves. At least both factors – knowledge and financial strength – are equally important. Those who do not want to engage in such power struggles as lawyers prefer to avoid profitable niches in order to stand out from the competition.
No law firm marketing from the shotgun
Law firm marketing, acquisition and quality – lawyers must concentrate on these three basic concepts now and in the future. Genuine branding is scarce among German law firms anyway. Although many large law firms stand for sheer size, it is not enough to profile a brand. Numerous smaller law firms tend to stand for dispersion and diffuse service offerings.
The trick now is not to confuse law firm marketing with conventional product marketing, from soup stew to engine oil to fashion items. Because the legal service is not a mass product, but is based on personal consulting services, i.e. trust. And this can only be achieved through continuous work and clear attorney marketing, not through quick shots.
When it comes to client acquisition and client acquisition, it is also important to keep in mind the importance of trust as the basis for a good client relationship.