Having worked closely, if indirectly with the legal profession since the noughties, I have often felt that solicitors deemed ‘marketing’ somewhat of a dirty word. A word perhaps considered by the profession to be more linked to the other mistrusted expression, ‘salesy.’
In fact, before the Retail Distribution enhanced the professionalism of the financial services industry and the Legal Services Act opening legal services to new entrants and competition, solicitors probably saw marketing as the sort of unsavoury thing financial advisers might do! I hope both the financial and legal advice professions are in a different place today, but I would also contend that solicitor practices could learn a considerable amount from their financial planning colleagues.
Why do solicitors find marketing unsavoury?
Firstly however, I think it might be worth considering just why the legal profession had been averse to overt marketing for so long. The origins may just be lie in the inherent belief that professionals such as lawyers, accountants or even doctors, should not need to advertise their services – Clients come to us!
Alternatively, the suspicion of marketing might lie in how it has traditionally been considered or described. For example, if we take the Oxford English Dictionary, then we might understand the reticence of solicitors to get involved:
“Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. including market research and advertising.”
The legal shop is no longer a closed one!
For a highly qualified profession, operating in a closed shop environment who would consider legal advice as their specialism, we can appreciate why ‘promoting or selling products or services,’ might seem a tad sordid, inappropriate or even just an unnecessary expense.
These days though, solicitors are not operating in such a closeted market, competing, and not only with other solicitors, so a revaluation needed to take place. From my perspective, having many years advising quality financial planners how to market their firms as referral partners to solicitors, the Oxford definition is not only dated but inaccurate. Perhaps the following might resonate far more:
“In the 2020s, marketing must be the art and strategy of educating prospective clients on how your services can help them.”
Is this not the whole essence and thinking behind the SRA’s Transparency initiative?
Transparency is designed to encourage effective explanation in plain language of your core services, who will deliver them, and how much they might cost. Is that any different from educating prospective clients on how your services might help them – that is, marketing.
This clarity and opportunity to promote your firm and your lawyers’ professionalism and quality should be grasped, and your website is the main shop window for this, more subtle marketing. We all know that an increasing number of customers, in need to legal advice of services are comfortable beginning the research online. In short, your future potential clients NEED you to market to them. Marketing in 2022 is not a dirty, salesy practice, it is an essential mainstay of best business practice.
Existing Clients must come first.
I am sure we all familiar with the business adage, that is easier to gain new business from existing customers than to find new ones. I have no doubt that this is true, so more important even than marketing for new clients, is improving how your firm markets to existing customers or clients, who have bought services from your firm, or perhaps from an individual solicitor within the firm, before. In so doing it is also still fine and indeed, appropriate to remember that your old belief that customers do not want to be sold to is almost certainly a correct one.
They do, however, wish to learn which services they may need and wish to buy. The difference is subtle but dealing in professional advice, it is an important one.
Matrix Capital can assist.
It is in this arena, in 2022, that I respectfully suggest a chat with us at Matrix Capital might be beneficial. I suggest this for 3 reasons, and all are relevant to where the legal services industry finds itself, relative to the financial planning profession.
Firstly, financial planners have longstanding client relationships because they will implement a plan based on goals and aspirations. This plan will alter as circumstances change and as such financial planners simple have to maintain a regular dialogue and open communication channel with their clients. (Importantly they will have ongoing opportunities and cause to refer the mutual client back for legal requirements.)
Secondly, the push for transparency occurred far earlier in financial services, so the use of plain language in client marketing and on websites should be second nature to your financial planning partners. After all, a client does not want what a pension is described to them but the lifestyle it can potentially offer in retirement. I am sure, the same might apply when establishing a trust for example. It is not the technicalities of the type of trust you use but how the vehicle can ensure the client’s beneficiaries receive the money at the right time and in the most tax-efficient way.
Thirdly, the financial planning profession is further along on its journey with customer relationship management, (CRM) systems than the legal services industry. CRM is the best and most efficient way to market new services or products that might be of interest to existing clients, or customers who perhaps have only bought one service from your firm. Again, this is using technology not for sales marketing but to educate on other services, which based on your current knowledge of the customer, might be of interest or needed.
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