MARKETING THE LAW FIRM

Before yours truly got into the marketing business, there was this assumption that marketing was really about flogging the product, about pushing it and coming up with ways to get the customer to buy, buy, buy.
So what about all those lofty definitions: marketing is understanding the client so well that your product fits his needs (Drucker). Do they have any meaning or use in the marketplace? They do, in fact all the consistently successful marketing and business executives swear by them, from Ogilvy to MillerHeiman to Louis Gerstner Jr.

A word about stimulating demand for products and services: while the tactics are questionable and the need tenuous, entire companies and economies live on the very fact of consumers buying things they do not want or need.

Well clearly the first letter in the alphabet of selling your services is to know what you are selling. It also helps to have an idea of how you are presenting it to the market. For example, you could offer it as a great product (Apple Smartphone), as innovative (3M), as quality for the masses (Walmart), as a luxury brand (LVMH). As you can see there are many varieties as there are products and companies.

What do all these product examples have to do with your law practice?

1. You are primarily an advisor and enabler to businesses so you should understand their product offerings and how they roll.

2. Inevitably from offering advice to complex corporations you will have to pick up some of their ways so you can work at the same levels.

3. A certain aspect of marketing stimulates needless buying but legal has limited use of this concept. Imagine urging a divorce to get legal business or a financial audit to get tax business.

Being able to assist matters so you really have to be worth something to have a seat at the table.