Marketing: Plan to Plan

Published February 3, 2015

Bankers know that new clients are the lifeblood of any business and that a scattershot marketing approach is counterproductive to securing new clients. It’s far more effective to develop—and adhere to—a well-thought-out marketing plan that consistently evaluates your tactics.

The best way to create a marketing plan is to define your specific marketing tactics, the hypothetical client targets at which they’re aimed, and the work that those clients can or may give to you. Here is an overview of how you can build such a plan:

  • Strategies. Prepare a list of five things you do to market yourself or your law firm and rank those things in the order of what has worked best (for example, networking, seminars, website, advertising, and media relations). Then cross off the bottom two items and focus your time and resources on the top three.
  • Clients. Create a profile of your ideal client and develop a marketing strategy that focuses on this target, not on everyone. You can increase your revenue dramatically by focusing on the demographics, occupation, location, financials, and other characteristics of clients who will give you the work that you want.
  • Work. Free up time for profitable new work by (1) declining matters from an existing client that are less profitable; or (2) increasing your fee to reinforce client perceptions that you’re good and in demand by many people, which allows you to command a high price for your services—the definition of successful marketing.
  • Mix. Make sure that no single clients exceeds 10 percent of your total revenue. Thus, if any one client forgets to pay you, or even leaves, the loss won’t be so hard to handle. Too many firms focus on a few, larger clients and are severely damaged when the fees from that client fail to continue—from dissatisfaction, change of billing attorney, merger, recession, or other unanticipated problems.

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Audience type: Administrators, Associates, Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms, Sole Practitioners