Does Your Law Firm Marketing Plan Actually Kick Some Ass?

Okay you’ve just finished your law firm marketing plan or individual attorney marketing plan.

Depending on how complex you like to make things it’s either scribbled on the back of an envelope (the “entrepreneur’s way) or it’s a “mental barfing exercise” running to several hundred pages (the “Big Law” way.)

No matter how you’ve put it together or when you put together, there’s one BIG question you have to ask yourself:

“What now????”

In spite of what I’ve said in previous articles here’s the number one reason that law firm marketing plans fail…lack of EXECUTION.

Successful law firm marketing requires that you build credibility in your marketplace. Building credibility takes time. Building credibility takes massive ACTION.

How do you translate nebulous marketing plan goals like “increase biotech legal advisory service billings by 12% this year” or “get 10 new clients in the next 3 months” into reality?

Grinders sit in their offices…Rainmakers take MASSIVE action.

Here are 12 action steps that will give your law firm marketing plan a “kick in the ass”:

1. Understand your client’s DEEP pain. Tap your knowledge of your niche markets and write down the top 5 things that cause your clients GREAT and MASSIVE pain. Pain they are willing to PAY you to remove from their lives. Do this on your lunch hour TODAY.

2. Pull out all of your existing marketing materials TODAY and review them to see if they address your clients massive pain in a POWERFUL way. If they don’t throw them out and redo them within the next seven days.

3. Look at what your competitors are doing. Can you present yourself in a differentiated way or offer something that they don’t? Get this analysis done this week on ONE sheet of paper.

4. Create a POWERFUL positioning package for your firm that describes in detail your history, your mission, your personnel, your philosophy, your alliances, your process for working with clients and your fees. Also highlight what makes you the “go to EXPERT” in your niche market. Get this done within 14 days. Make sure every existing, new and prospective client gets this package. Get this done within 21 days.

5. Get a web site that works. Visit 10 web sites within your niche and then design something that CLEARLY showcases your expertise. Get a blog up and running and put 10 articles on it. Hire someone who actually knows how to sell professional services via the internet to “build the damn thing” while you write keyword rich targeted articles that get noticed by search engines. Get this done in 90 days.

6. Find out what your clients read (i.e. what trade magazines, association newsletters etc.) and what associations they belong to. Get your articles from your blog published or discussed at association meetings by calling editors or association heads and FINDING OUT what they want to see from contributors. Target 90 days for this also.

7. Create an email newsletter that is MARKETING driven and send it out regularly to your captive “herd.” Your herd includes current clients, prospective clients and referral sources. You can easily automate all this crap and get your first one in 14 days.

8. Deliver small breakfast seminars to your best referral sources and prospects once a month. Invite 7-10 people max and base them on your blog articles. Better yet…use the Internet and deliver the whole thing as web cast. You can get one of these up and running by next week.

9. Write 4 white papers per year and distribute them to clients and put them up on your web site. Make a BIG DEAL out of each white paper released in your newsletter, seminars and other contacts with your marketplace. Do your first one in the next 90 days.

10. Write and publish or self-publish a book. Books make you the ULTIMATE perceived go to expert in your field. Plan on taking 6-12 months to pull this one off.

11. Get your handsome face on TV or your great voice on radio. Call your local stations and offer to speak on a topic that will interest their target audiences. You could start on this one in the next 5 minutes…simply pick up the phone.

12. Go to lunch twice a week with someone who isn’t a client or a coworker (your coworkers aren’t going buy anything from you but they will drink beer with you.) Next time you see an interesting business article in the newspaper about a local success story…phone them up and ask to meet them…NOT with a view to selling them anything…simply to learn something about them and their businesses. The largest client I ever acquired in my professional career came from just such a phone call and subsequent lunch.

Show a POSITIVE and GENUINE interest in what other people are doing and you’ll have more meetings, more fun and make more money than you EVER thought you would.

Rainmakers “kick ass…any ass” and they learn something from each experience…grinders do massive analysis followed by…NOTHING.

Next time you find yourself saying: “I don’t where to start with my marketing activities;” refer back to this list.

Remember…your law firm marketing plan will NEVER kick any ass until you decide to get up and off of your ass.