Don't be all things to all men

One of the highest priorities for any firm today has to be increased efficiency. However, there is one area where this is being overlooked: marketing.

I will say from the outset that when I mention marketing, what I am talking about is targeting. Far too many firms are still targeting everyone as a potential source of work, and however stringent your budgeting and however sophisticated your reporting, your marketing will never deliver the greatest efficiencies (or the highest financial returns) if you do not focus.

Focus your efforts

All focus really means is picking the sectors you think offer most opportunity, but for some reason sector marketing is still a divisive subject in the legal industry. That scepticism seems to boil down to two things – potential conflict and the chance of losing opportunities from other sectors.

With regards to conflict, it’s true that if you are asked to act for an organisation that offers exactly the same product as one of your existing clients, there is going to be a conflict. However, if you take the automotive sector as an example, it doesn’t just stop at the recognised car manufacturers – how long is the supply chain that supports those manufacturers? You have the tyre, component, battery, lights, and audio suppliers, and many, many more besides.

With regards to missing other opportunities, please remember that the increased focus you place on your networking, marketing communications, and profile will bring you into contact with all sorts of new people and associations, all with their own network of friends and contacts. As long as you are doing a good job and providing the right level of service, this could well generate referral opportunities from inside and outside the sectors you have chosen.

However, the biggest benefit is simply that it will make your marketing more time efficient and cost effective. You only have a limited amount of time for marketing, so it needs to be spent as profitably as possible. That objective becomes more difficult to achieve if you are forever trying to be all things to all men, but if you know the types of businesses (or individuals) you want as your clients, the decisions as to how you spend your time and budget – for example, which events to attend or social media groups to get involved in – become easier.

Develop a sector strategy

The key part of developing a sector strategy is deciding which sectors to choose. My suggestion would be to base this on three factors:

• Experience: Which sectors are most prevalent within your current clientbase?
• Opportunity: Which sectors do you know are set to continue to grow?
• Geography: Which sectors is your local area best known for?

The answers should produce common themes, which in turn should make it easy to produce a shortlist.

The only other criteria I’d suggest is a little less tangible and a little more human – genuine interest. Implementation will be so much easier to manage if the core of your delivery team has a personal interest in the subject.

One important thing to remember when you start your discussions is that your choice shouldn’t be limited to standard industry classification codes. If you are led by your private client side, you may want to look at working with disabled or autistic people, with the foreign national groups who represent a large chunk of the local population, or with industries largely built around individuals, such as farming and other rural businesses. All of these sectors are serviced by specialists from other professions, by magazines and websites, and by associations and events, just as an industry sector would be.

Alternatively, you may want to look at particular towns or postcodes. Linking this strategy to the private client side, there may be more affluent postcodes or villages close to your office that you’d like to concentrate on. This would work in the same way as a commercial sector strategy: you would find out who to know, where to go, which events to get involved in, and which local press vehicles service the local area, and use those as your channels to market.

Or you may have a branch office serving an area that perceives itself as very different to the town or city in which your head office is based. Banding your team together and focusing on building your profile across the practice areas you serve within the local area could be a way of achieving critical mass – and, by extension, market share – more easily.

However you choose to slice and dice the sectors you pursue, the outcome will not be a loss of opportunities but more targeted and efficient marketing; in terms of both the time and the budget you will need to spend to attract the type of client you want to build your firm’s future upon. SJ

Douglas McPherson is a director at Size 10 1/2 Boots