Now this is not a heavy, dull, traditional marketing book with lots of complicated definitions and systems that will mean nothing to you. All these types of textbooks are dry, dull and mostly irrelevant to what you need to know to run a successful business. They might help you to pass an exam, just like the law books I was forced to study for years to qualify as a solicitor, but once you have passed your exams you can forget about using the textbooks to help you in your day-to-day job because they mean nothing in the real world!
There are so many different definitions for marketing, and some of them are long and convoluted enough to curdle milk. I believe that my job is to make it easy for my clients to ‘get it’. Here is the only definition and checklist, rolled into one, that you will ever need for marketing your law firm:
Clients First!
If you put your clients first in all that you do and say, you will have great success when it comes to marketing your business.
Every single time you provide your legal services, write a page for your website, prepare an advertisement, write a direct mail letter or an email newsletter for your clients, you must read it back and say, ‘Have I put my Clients First?’ If not, you need to go back and rewrite it.
In the world in which we now live, where reviews posted online remain there forever more, it is absolutely critical that the legal services you provide are as good as they can be.
Whenever you are providing your service, ask yourself this question and genuinely mean it: ‘How can I make this service better and easier for my clients?’ This question alone, if used regularly, can and will add more clients into your law firm. In the marketing context, let me give you an example of how this might work in practice. On a law firm website, the opening paragraph on the home page might well be as follows:
‘We were established in 1840 in our offices in Basingstoke . . . ’
On reading that, ask yourself if the clients are being put first in that opening line? No – the opening is all about the law firm and nothing to do with their clients, isn’t it? If I am a potential client of that firm, why does it matter that they have been there since 1840? It doesn’t really, in the way it is presented above, but it could be given meaning for me as a potential client if it were changed as follows:
‘If you are a small business we can save you thousands of pounds of unnecessary tax and expenses every single year, using our expertise gained from helping businesses for over 100 years.’
Now that puts clients first, doesn’t it? If you are a small business, you are now thinking ‘tell me more’, aren’t you? With reference to my own business I could say:
‘I established my law firm marketing consultancy in 2003 to use all of my legal marketing expertise to help solicitors to grow their practices.’
That’s a bit ‘me, me, me’ though isn’t it? It would be better if I said this, would it not?
‘If you own or run a law firm and are looking to grow it substantially, I can show you exactly what you need to do to achieve this.’
Put your clients first, always, and everything in your practice from this moment onwards will be a lot easier for you.
Would you like to buy the book for a discount?
Having got this far, I would like to offer you a copy of the paperback book for a discounted price. I will even sign the book if you would like me to – just let me know (although some might say this will de-value the book…).
The book retails for £14.99 on Amazon, but as a reward and a thank you for showing interest to this point, I would like to offer you a copy for £9.99 including postage and packaging.
If you would like to benefit from this offer, simply take the following steps:
- Click the link below to make payment using Gocardless (my direct debit payment provider backed by the bank of Scotland);
- Once you have made the payment, you will be redirected to enter your postage details – please ensure that you take this step as otherwise I will not have your details for the postage of the book);
- Within 7 days, your book will arrive by first class post.
Click here to buy the book for the discounted price of £9.99>>
