Know your Competition
Information and Strategies to Promote your Law Firm
Essential Guide to Law Firm Marketing
By Margaret Grisdela, Legal Expert Connections, Inc.
Ignore the competition at your own financial peril. Your fellow attorneys are also searching for new business, including the business you want for yourself. Do not let the competition steal your clients, lure your best prospects or steal your valued employees.
Here are six basic questions you can use to analyze your competition.
- Who are your top 5 competitors and how do they get their business?
- What is your best advantage compared to your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses?
- When is the best time to launch a competitive campaign?
- Where is the gap in the market that your competitors may be overlooking?
- What is your success rate when you go head-to-head with the competition, and why do prospects choose your firm?
- How can you further differentiate your services from the competition?
Your answers to these important questions can become an important element in your annual marketing plan.
Subscribe to a news archive like LexisNexisTM or Dow Jones FactivaTM so you can compare your press coverage to that of your competitors. Evaluate competitors’ use of newsletters, white papers, speaking engagements, articles, sponsorships and legal or industry directories.
Google supports searches of non-HTML file types, making it easy for you to find PowerPoint presentations or PDF files published by or mentioning competitive law firms. Just search on a firm’s name followed by filetype:ppt or filetype:pdf to identify documents of interest.
Look closely at competitive web sites to benchmark levels of professionalism, graphic design and ease of use. Adopt “best practices” when it comes to the presentation of attorney biographies, useful resources, the firm’s news and contact information.
After evaluating the competition carefully, determine how you can improve your own service levels and market visibility. Maintain a proactive weekly or monthly watch on competitor press clippings, web sites and promotional events to keep your own services current and competitive.
Successful firms are always asking themselves “How can we improve ourselves to do better tomorrow than we did today?” This insight from authors James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras in their best selling book “Built to Last” (HarperCollins, 1994) underscores the importance of continuous focus on delivering value in today’s competitive market.
Read our other articles at www.hg.org and check back frequently for new law firm marketing information
About the Author: Margaret Grisdela is the Founder and President of Legal Expert Connections, Inc., a legal marketing firm specializing in marketing and business development in the legal and litigation support markets. You can reach her at mg@legalexpertconnections.com.
Read Also:
- Cross-sell and Up-sell More Legal Services New!
- Measure Your Clients' Satisfaction New!
- Overview of the U.S. Legal Market
- Business Development Imperative
- Growing Your Practice
- Pick a Niche for Your Law Practice
- Know your Competition
- Branding your Law Firm
- Key Elements of a Successful Internet Marketing Campaign
By Margaret Grisdela, Legal Expert Connections, Inc.
HG.org is hosting this new series of excerpts from the book “Courting your Clients": The Essential Guide to Legal Marketing,” scheduled for release in May 2007.
Experts in Marketing for Attorneys
Other Legal Marketing Articles
