Marketing or good marketing is always a derivative of understanding your brand, how it’s positioned in the market, your unique value proposition (UVP) and of course your marketing channels.
This is undeniably the case!
Let’s say for example you’re wanting to start a personal injury law firm and you’re in a crowded and competitive market, you want to have at least a few things going for you, or better still, all of them:
- A rock-solid brand strategy and a UVP;
- A referral network cultivated that will generate quality leads;
- An AdWords monthly budget in the vicinity of $15,000 upwards (ideally).
If you’re going to do none of these, good luck! We’ve canvassed plenty of calls from apathetic personal injury firms who have rested on their laurels for too long and one day they find that the phone no longer rings, there are no web-enquiries and despite the fact they’ve been around for a long time, it means nothing in a highly competitive market.
The Australian law firm, Logan Law is a great example of a personal injury firm that nailed a convincing brand positioning strategy to a hard-working or not-working, low socio-economic demographic, passionate about fast cars, fast-food and cage-fighting. Their brand collateral, be it in the shape of billboards, TV-ads and their strong social media presence derived from “marketing 101” understanding and being able to engage with your target market. The firm in their first few years experienced exponential growth.
In relation to pounding Adwords, another Australian firm, Law Partners came to market recently as a two-person outfit, now have a string of offices across the country, but did spend and continue to spend an inordinate amount on Google Ads. Our research suggests in the vicinity of $150,000 upwards every month. Of course, they’re not alone, plenty of the larger personal injury practices are forced to do similarly to garner their share of the work.
We worked for a number of years for an estate litigation practice that essentially did the same thing!
So, it is the case that some practice areas are harder to market than others and I think the three points emphasized above do apply to most, though your Adword spend may be lesser depending on the niche. Notwithstanding this, you’ve got to cover off on all the other aspects of marketing as well to build the brand awareness, generate and convert leads and obviously (though this doesn’t get talked about too often) do awesome work and have happy clients talking about it.
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Dan Toombs
Lawyer & Founder, Practice Proof
Dan Toombs is a lawyer, law reformer and founder of Practice Proof. Admitted in 1997, he built his first career inside the legal profession — practising law, leading legal organisations, driving law reform and publishing with Thomson Reuters — before building the marketing, technology and AI practice he has now run exclusively for law firms for 20 years.
In that time, Dan and his team have helped law firms grow from single offices into multi-office and national practices, ASX-listed brands and acquisition targets. That experience gives Practice Proof an unusually deep understanding of both sides of law firm growth: what happens inside a legal practice, and what it takes commercially to make one grow.
Dan is a Winston Churchill Fellow and Australia Leadership Award recipient, with national recognition for his work in law and human rights.
If you want to know what 20 years of growing law firms could bring to yours, talk to Dan and the Practice Proof team.