What’s in your marketing plan: Strengths and Weaknesses

 
The first step in creating a workable marketing plan for your firm is to look at the strengths and weaknesses of your firm. Much of the information you’ll use in writing your marketing plan will be in your business plan.

What are the core competencies, or strengths, of your firm? This can include areas of law in which you practice, the particular strengths and experience of the partners and associates, or your geographic proximity to a specific industry, such as oil in Houston or entertainment in Los Angeles.

Equally important are your firm’s weaknesses. This isn’t to imply that the firm is offering poor services to certain clients or in certain areas of law. These are simply areas where your firm has little expertise and which you do not want to develop at this time. However, if you discover a serious weakness that could impact the firm’s success, it should be addressed before completing and implementing the marketing plan.

So, having cleared the decks and determined your strengths and weaknesses, the next step is to develop the specifics of how to market your practice.

The Four P’s of Marketing

 
Traditionally, marketing starts with the four P’s: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. This represents a little poetic license on marketers’ part because Place should really be Distribution or something similar. It’s where you put your product and how you get it there. But Three P’s and a D just doesn’t have the kind of punch that marketers love.

• • Product
• • Place
• • Price
• • Promotion

What’s in your business plan: Mission Statement

 
The mission statement outlines your company’s purpose, vision, values and goals. An effective mission statement should not be set in stone. Everything changes and being able to easily adapt to evolution in market and business environments is critical to the long-term success of your firm.

What’s in your business plan: Executive Summary

 
Your business plan will have several parts, beginning with the Executive Summary. This is a snapshot of your vision for the firm, as well as a synopsis of everything that’s detailed in the plan itself. You can write it first as a working outline, last as a summary, or some combination of both – whichever approach works best for you.

It should answer all the basic questions that might be asked – by clients, prospects, or potential investors, for example – about your practice:

• • Describe the business
• • Specify where business will be conducted
• • Explain how it works
• • Outline your objectives for it
• • Identify your competition
• • Identify your current and potential customers
• • Explain how you will promote your business to them
• • Develop financial analysis and projections
• • Outline a timetable for implementation

Your executive summary should also include descriptions of the management team – the people who will help you make your vision of the firm a reality.

Reciprocation is a fundamental principle of successful marketing

 
One of the most fundamental concepts in human relationships is reciprocation, which is essentially, one person repaying what someone else has given them.

It is the basis of every human interaction: you like me and I like you, I give you three shirts and you give me a goat, you give me a hamburger today and I will gladly pay you Tuesday. It’s also based on a high level of trust and the assumption that everyone in society will play by the same rules.

There are three reasons reciprocation can be exploited, causing us to do things we otherwise might not.

• ● First, because it’s integral to successful cooperation within a group, it is very powerful and can override other factors which might otherwise dictate that we not comply with a request.
• ● Second, if someone does a favor for us first, even someone we don’t like or trust, it puts us in a position of obligation which may result in our complying with a future request from that person.
• ● Third, it can result in an unequal exchange where, to relieve our feelings of obligation, we may agree to grant a request that is much larger or more demanding of us than the original favor.

In scheduling group presentations and training, one of the most common requests I receive is “bring food.” This simple request has always fascinated me because it shows just how deeply the principle of reciprocation is embedded in our collective psyche and how long we’ve been practicing it.

My guess is that it goes back to the dawn of time when small bands of humans, encountering each other, would either fight, flee, or share their possessions, principally food. Eating together could be one of the most powerful social bonding experiences we have.

What this means, in modern terms, is that a group has made a request of me: Bring food. By doing so, they get what they want: food. And I get what I want: an appreciative, receptive audience for the presentation. Imagine how many deals are closed after a good meal.

It also makes me wonder about golf. Spending half a day in the hot sun, chasing a little white ball with three other people must be a tremendously strong bonding experience, especially if everyone plays badly! After that, drinks or a meal in the club house are icing on the cake to close the deal.

The principle of reciprocation – when not misused – makes it possible for us to create relationships with prospects and clients that produce benefits for all involved.