Real marketing isn't PR

Marketing is a word much-used by lawyers but little understood. Too many believe marketing should be measured by the money spent on the annual summer party on Lincoln’s Inn lawn, or the number of clients lunched per month. One firm hired a hot-air balloon with their name on the side.  Marketing defined by a target for money spent on it.

The point of marketing, particularly when times are difficult, is to retain current clients (providing doing work for them is profitable) and attract new ones. We suggest the aim should be to make money, not spend it. Marketing defined by a target for income from new clients and another target for cross-selling to existing ones.

Achieving that objective can be surprisingly simple.

To market effectively your firm needs

• clarity over which types of clients to retain and which target clients to seek more of
• some system for identifying where your prospective new clients are located and listing them
• a thought-through succinct message about your firm’s USP (Unique Selling Points) that distinguishes it from its competitors (this may require information from a well-planned client survey)
• cheap effective ways of communicating that message at regular intervals to your chosen clients/prospects
• a group (the "Marketing Committee"?) to manage the sequence of activities as a team activity on behalf of the whole firm (or, for larger firms, the whole Department), so that marketing isn't left to individual fee-earners.

What we do

The Minster Group provides detailed advice on the four-point approach to marketing outlined above. We provide marketing training for Partners and other staff (with CPD points).  We assist firms in putting the four-point approach into practice. We assist with the quality of service agenda that is central to the third point above. We advise on cost-effective means of communication that avoid cold-calling; and we have much experience in carrying out electrifying client surveys.

Your next step

Please contact us for an initial, without-commitment discussion, so that we can respond to queries you may have, understand your firm's previous marketing activities and diagnose what beneficial improvements should be considered. In turn, that will assist us to recommend an Action Plan to galvanise your firm's marketing and to give you an accurate idea of our fees for doing so.