Planned, targeted, marketing a key law firm profit builder

Planned, targeted, marketing…

When we talk profit improvement it’s important that readers appreciate that my position is that most lawyers make far too little profit for their education, legal skills, effort, risk, and dedication.

They do so because they get a lot of things, fundamental things, wrong in managing their businesses.

My mission is to help those who are interested, and willing to change, to get far better results…

Many lawyers spend many hours a day doing things that aren’t particularly useful, including client file work they should not be doing…work that in future it would be better they do not have, replaced by interesting, profitable, work.

In my view your aim in marketing should be to consistently generate far more enquiry than you originally may feel you need, so you open up the fundamentally important option to be selective about the work you accept.

At the outset review what work you really enjoy doing that meets a real need in your markets, will be of good value to clients, so it’s easier to price it profitably for you, and easier to generate the necessary volumes.

You’ll market this work with the most enthusiasm.

Identify exactly where that work has been coming from…Clients, Client Referrals, External Referrals, The Public…there will be many sources but 20% of them will be critical for you.

The failure to carefully record work sources is a major failing in law firms. Not tracking the new work sources, or doing it poorly, robs you of vital information. Matters sources such as “Unknown”, “Blank”, or “Other”, are not particularly helpful, and a bit of awareness training and effort will fix that problem.

Now set goals to close the revenue gaps in your firm, lawyer by lawyer, group by group.

If you have a lawyer involved in Commercial Recovery, with spare capacity of 1.5 hours a day on average, it’s worth at least $575/day and you are losing profit of about $130,000pa.

Work out how many extra files you need to close the gap…and spread the goal for new files across the Source categories according to your thoughts as to what additional marketing efforts will produce results.

You’ll find that a few extra files here and there across a number of categories is often all you need to close the gaps for a huge profit boost, and is not all that hard to achieve with planning and focus.

You might need more newsletters, more client visits, more seminars, improved website content (usually not a new website!), more “How’s Things’ calls to key clients and referrers, more short quality emails to clients and referrers, and in certain circumstances, some pay Per Click Internet advertising. There is an ever-growing resource list of nearly 60 Tools of Business Development on my blog for you…the link is in the signature block to this email.

Then monitor results very closely so you have the accurate knowledge to manage going forward.

It’s worth noting that I observe percentages of work sources within even General Practice small firms vary greatly, consistent with location and what efforts are already underway.

Traditionally well over 80% of all new matters in such firms came from Clients and Client referrals…essentially because very little marketing was going on.

As you do other things in marketing you may well see those percentages drop but it’s not a bad thing if the gross numbers increase.

So, if you don’t do much information flow to clients or referrers, but have a reasonable spend in Pay Per Click advertising, you may well see “Internet” as a source rocket up to 20% of total new files.

A quick KMSProfitPower™ Tip here…I’d be splitting source codes wherever you need to, so Internet will split into Generic Search Internet, and PPC Internet, and make sure you have simple effective devices for determining in most cases which is which!

The trick is to keep the gross numbers of Client files and Client Referral files growing, while also plugging revenue gaps from less traditional marketing efforts. The new clients introduced will of course become part of a very strong working “mine”.

I trust these thoughts have been of interest and value to you…