Yesterday, we discussed, failure. Finding a successful law practice development plan’s case study in the Indian market is no less than a Ranthambore tiger sighting!
Make no mistake, Legally, India’s terrain is full of prodigies and massive professional empires. Without taking anything away from their feat, we can also not ignore that most of them were first-movers by decades.
However, we cannot name one law practice that came up without antecedents and dominated any particular market segment in record time. Because the fulcrum of that kind of advance-mapped success is an effective PD plan.
So why can’t we cite enough examples of such effective PD market strategies in the Indian law practice market? We discussed 5 reasons why, yesterday, and we’ll lay out 5 more today:
Weak allocation: you haven’t loosened the purse strings
‘Penny wise pound foolish’, could find one of its best illustrations here in the realm of law practice marketing in India. A practice that is ‘there, but not quite there’ when it comes to market itself, is a cost drain unto itself. When it comes to marketing budgets, there’s no bigger wastage than ‘middle paths’ and ‘starter budgets’. To navigate the intricate landscape of legal marketing, you need to find a lead orchestator (Read: How a CEO is imperative to your PD plan), who is adept at milking every expense for more returns than the spends. In the strategic space of law firm marketing strategies, you need to find a implementation team (Read more here about ‘bloodhounds’) that asks – what’s the finest we can go for? Now what’s the cheapest ‘jugaad’ to achieve same quality. ‘Jugaad’ trust me, is a urban legend, that unlocks unfathomed levels of innovation in us Indians. It’s a challenge, that we jump on!
In the pursuit of effective law practice marketing, bring in the best strategists and relentless implementers. Those individuals in both these categories exist above fair market price. Their cost benefit? Save on wastages in two directions. One, from trial and error with unseasoned alternatives. Two, from unrationalised expenses on initiatives that had cost effective alternatives and hacks.
Weak reality-check: you don’t go to field enough
Sure you serve your market, but, how often do you ‘listen’ to your market? What do your best law practices entail? As part of service industry in a crowded market ranked higher globally on individual IQ, what is your differentiator? It can’t just be your sharp academic understanding of the law, or practical experience of business legal scenarios.
It is your EQ, which will let you remove yourself from the rat race of predatory pricing. Do you speak to the industry enough? in capacities other than service delivery or business development? What is it that you understand about their underlying sentiments, anxieties and emotional concerns? How can you customise your delivery formats to address their unsupported areas as a facilitator?
Strategic law firm marketing strategies go beyond the confines of traditional service delivery or business development. The answers to these questions are in a journalistic, non self-motivated investigation into the challenges of your market. Such data is not derived in Market Intelligence reports on sale, or in newsrooms. It comes through heart-to-heart conversations.
We, at The Dealmaker’s Theorem, are uncovering some such aspects on this front.
Weak agility: You swear by formulaic approaches
Marketing is not science – even though it deigns to come as close to it as possible through data analytics. However it is not. Legal Marketing is art. Selling is based on emotions. And emotions are a volatile territory. Storytelling trends change monthly, as data consumption sky rockets in the age of scrolling. Mediums lose novelty before you can buy the kit (Did you read our Video marketing guide for effective law firm marketing strategies yet?)
Market shifts happen quarterly now, instead of over a few years -living in the age of artificial intelligence.
Therefore, the window not to lose an opportunity is short and the PD plan needs many pivots, in order not to waste resources in the competitive landscape of law firm marketing. You can’t stay set on formulas like 4 newsletters a year distributed over 12 months with pre-written 12 legal articles per practice dusted off in January. Or cycles of expensively designer PDF whitepapers rotated in monthly cycles on LinkedIn.
Clearly, its the age of content saturation. What worked yesterday for someone, is already old today. And what worked for you today, will yield for you for not long before its natural death. Therefore, to succeed in legal marketing, reinventing the wheel is something that works in favour of PD plans, not against.
But there’s a flipside as well, which is….
Weak discipline, or patience: You don’t stick long enough
It’s a numbers game as well in the dynamic landscape of law practice marketing in India. If you don’t scale a well thought out measure enough, there is no proof of success or failure. The plan did not work in this case because you did not create a probability runway to lift off of.
You could argue that one can shorten the timelines by creating enough of a critical test mass in the first or second attempts. But you’re making a sale after all. Buyers need reaction time, the more high value the buyer the larger the reaction time. Marketing for lawyers demands a careful allocation of resources and if you’ve been smart about that, you could fill in that reaction time with other visibility campaigns that positively affirm the case to your buyers organically, without you persisting through cold reminders.
Last week we had a high value cold lead from March 2021 reach out enquiring for the services of one client for an equity transaction. See screenshot below and cheer up!
Weak conviction: you don’t believe it could happen..
…And it doesn’t! We’re not about to launch into a Manifestation Guru class, but legal marketing is a collaborative effort. There’s one mind that always knows more than the most informed, well-researched, experienced, innovative and agile practice development strategist. That’s the mind of the practice head who has raised the practice from the lowest of lows, or from scratch, to either exceptional highs, high-lows, or the levels the practice is sustainably serving at, at present. The practice head interacts with clients like noone else does.
To take a good campaign and channel it to a pocket in which the practice head can home her belief for potential – that’s what separates failure from success in the competitive landscape of marketing for lawyers.
This is especially true in legal services. Because here, noone is selling through a sales team. Beyond a point, growth cannot be automated. You need to be involved, and you need to find your optimism. Strategic marketing for lawyers is the key to navigate this intricate terrain, ensuring sustainable success.
