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.