Two Market: More Marketing Plan Tips, from the Group

At my last post referencing topics covered during LOMAP’s inaugural Marketing Group, we reviewed some tips and tricks for the drafting of your marketing plan. This week, the LOMAP Marketing Group met to discuss marketing plan drafts that each member had derived. This being the anchor session of the first group of classes, we were fortunate to receive several thoughtful and well-constructed marketing plans. The discussion on plans presented, as well as on some more general marketing plan matters, was quite vibrant. So, piggiebacking on our last post in this vein, I thought it appropriate to add some quick pointers that were made during our last meeting, and that were not covered in my last post on this topic. Thanks for the substance of this post goes to the LOMAP Marketing Group members, who really came across with some excellent ideas and suggestions for attorneys seeking to draft their own marketing plans.

In the fashion of braindroppings, then:

--When doing your “Market Analysis”, look beyond your town, region and county. Great ideas and solutions don’t stop for manmade borders. The further out you look, the better sample you’ll get. This may allow you to jump your local competitors on trends that they may not know about yet. It will also give you a more holistic view respecting billing rates within your practice area(s). This will be especially important insight if you are one of few practitioners in your area specializing in a certain type of law. Your local sample size may be too small to give you a good read.

One important question respecting your marketing plan crafting, is “for whom” are you writing it:

--One group for which you are writing your marketing plan (as included within your business plan) are investors, the persons who can provide capital for your firm’s (initial) operations. The investor version of your marketing plan should focus on your current financial picture, and anticipated costs, which your hoped-for benefactor might fill. But, to think that you’re only drafting your marketing plan for investors is too limiting. You are also drafting your marketing plan for your clients and for your referral sources. Your elevator speech enters into your marketing plan as your objective section; so, it is easily drawn out again as your pitch. Your branding efforts are guided by your strategies, as outlined in your marketing plan. Reviewing and refreshing your marketing plan serves to refresh your elevator speech and brand, and vice versa. This is a collaborative-based relationship here, such that your marketing plan becomes a series of moving parts, that you may move in and move out, as you need them. Your marketing plan is, also, most obviously, drafted for you, as your planning document. Your attached goals and deadlines keep you on task, and on time. Thinking of your marketing plan as a one-use document will limit the effect that you get out of it; and, having worked hard to draft a compelling marketing plan, you should get everything that you can in return from it.

--It is also important to determine, through your marketing plan’s directives, who your good clients are and will be, and who your good referrers are and will be. If you have a specific target person, or group, in mind, it will allow you to refine your objective client beyond the conception of just aiming after some amorphous target market. The creation of a “client profile” (age, income status, location, needs, etc.) will help you to better determine who it is that fits your services and who it is that does not. This exercise will allow you to better understand exactly who it is that you are going after, adding some flesh to bones. Not only will this create some of that refinement within your direct marketing efforts; but, this exercise will also allow you to more finely craft your acceptable client description for your referral sources, whom you are training to send you the type of clients that you want. It can be useful, as well, to create a client profile, or profiles, for those types of clients that you do not want.

--An important question to ask yourself, in crafting your objectives, and in tweaking your elevator speech and presentation mode is: How do you pitch to non-legal crowds? While you cannot assume a lack of intelligence just because people are not attorneys, you must, nevertheless, think about ratcheting down your service descriptions, to make them understandable to the general public. Every profession has terms of art, and the law has quite a few, including some in Latin. So, you must be careful that, when you are speaking to those that do not have your professional experience, that you can make your professional experience understandable to the average person, or that you can communicate across professions, relaying similarities between your skill sets, and smoothing over differences, so that a connection may be built.

--The creation of a marketing plan may be more important for partnerships than for individual attorneys. If each partner is on the same page, and has helped in the creation of that page, it can only strengthen the partnership. An early allocation of responsibilities and expectations will serve to decrease disagreements and disfunction later. It is easy, over the course of time, for partners to lose sight of a common goal, in the onrush of day-to-day business activity. It is important, then, that partners attempt, at all events, to create a marketing plan early on in their partnership, when they do have the time to do so, before the workload ramps up. It is equally important that partners continue to review their marketing goals, not only to refresh their marketing platforms, but also to take the pulse on the state of their relationship. A partnership is much like a marriage, and can be equally emotional; the key to establishing a solid partnership, then, is much like the key to establishing a solid marriage: honest communication of expectations up front, and continuing, open communication throughout the relationship. Address contentious issues early on, and compromise now, instead of getting sucked into a stalemate later.

--The best marketing strategy may be: to do with your referral sources what you would do with your friends. Other attorneys are likely to refer you cases when they respect your acumen and understand exactly the sorts of services you provide, so that they can be sure that they are matching their referee’s needs. But, they’re more likely to refer you cases when they like you. Being informal, then, should not always be equated with being unprofessional. Sometimes, it is in the professional’s best interest to loosen up a bit. So, try a poker night, order pizza and have people over for the game, throw a Pampered Chef party. You’ll be surprised how many referrals develop when your referrers become your friends. Now, this does not mean that you should be fake about it. If you really don’t like someone, don’t force it. But, in time, professional associates often become friends. You’ll just be massaging the relationship is all.

These are certainly some excellent marketing/marketing plan tips from our Marketing Group. If you have any further tips that you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to comment on this post.

In Memoriam. I’d be remiss if I did not pause for a moment to pay tribute to the musical career of the recently deceased Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson certainly had lingering issues from a difficult childhood that never dissipated, and that he could never quite outrun; but, whatever your feelings for Michael Jackson, the person, Jackson was, nevertheless, a gifted and brilliant performer. His death, at only 50 years old, represents the most shocking music-related passing since Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and ranks there alongside the assassination of John Lennon, the death of Elvis Presley, the death of Hank Williams and the plane crashes and car crashes involving Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (and almost Waylon Jennings) and Harry Chapin and Jim Croce.

From the 1979 release of “Off the Wall” through the 1991 release "Dangerous”, Jackson marshaled an unprecedented string of hits, revolutionized music video and became the most widely recognized performer in the world, before his career was effectively destroyed amid child sexual abuse allegations. For all his personal problems, Jackson’s legacy remains in the music for which he was responsible. I can honestly tell you that I listened to my Thriller cassette so often when I was a kid that I snapped the tape.

Michael Jackson had been a featured performer since the age of 8, singing lead for the Jackson 5 on such hits as “ABC”, “I Want You Back”, “Going Back to Indiana” and “Dancing Machine”. Jackson was a star in the Motown constellation, and moved from there to create his own pop revolution. His first several solo albums were produced on Motown, but it was after Jackson left the Motown label that he became a superduperstar. From “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Rock With You” to “Thriller” and “Beat It” to "We Are the World" to “Bad” and “The Way You Make Me Feel” to “Black or White” and “Remember the Time” to duets with Paul McCartney, to punk remakes of his hits, and parodies, too, to his ownership of the Beatles catalogue, Jackson’s influence on popular music cannot be understated.

Jackson’s relevance had been continually sliding for the better part of two decades. Yet, his death, although a truly sad event, does place in stark relief the tremendous importance and vaulting majesty of his music.