Sometimes lawyers succeed despite themselves. However, it does leave one to speculate how much more successful lawyers might be if they tended better to their brand. Just because a lawyers get a few clients through the door does not mean what they are doing brand wise is the most successful.
Do not believe you have a brand? I bet that you do. Even if you are dilatory and your clients hate you, that is a brand. It is that for which you are known. In fact, being a jackass is your master brand, that overshadows everything else you do.
The opposite is also true. Your master brand can be superb, but I would caution you to not rely on your own idea of yourself and to find out what that master brand really is among your clients and perspective clients.
Regardless of whether your master brand is good or bad, positive or negative, reflects value or not, helpful or hurtful, I have found in the practice of law it really does little to bring a good amount of new prospects in the front door. It more works as a deterrent or is just neutral. You need to be careful of your master brand because you do not want it to hurt your sub-brands or ingredient brands, as they are referred to in regard to general business.
No, most lawyers are not as successful because they do not effectively, or even actually, concentrate on their sub-brands or ingredient brands. These sub-brands represent your practice areas or niche areas, or the descriptive legal services your law firm or practice offers.
The truth of the matter is the almost all lawyers fail to effectively work on their brand architecture and then they complain that they cannot find enough of the business that they want. Now, sometimes this is the bad image of the master brand getting in the way, but most of the time it is not.
When lawyers do work on their brand architecture, and they over emphasis their master brand (such as marketing oneself as simply a "lawyer" or, my personal favorite, as a "attorney and counselor at law") it simply does not resonate and it is not much remembered. I personally believe that an attorney marketing oneself as simply a "lawyer" has about the same response rate as direct mail without the frequency and volume of the communication. One or two percent of those that hear the message need the services and most just mentally trash the communication.
A master brand as a lawyer is simply too generic. Lawyers, and especially new lawyers, think it is so special because they just spent $100,000 and years of their life to achieve the distinction. But, if you went into the grocery store would you expect to spend any serious money on a generic brand? I do not think so, and that is what this master branding tends to do -- lower an attorney's standard of living. So, master branding has none of the upside of sub-brand if it is good, and a whole lot of downside if it is bad. In other words, relying on generic master branding lowers your standard of living, but negative master branding will drive you broke.
In the past, yellow pages, and now search engine results, work best when they concentrate on sub-branding. The reason is pretty simple. It is easy for a potential client to find you, and it makes it worthwhile for a client to remember you and refer you to others like needy people and companies. Otherwise, trying to match up the term "lawyer" to the actual representation needed, especially by a consumer, is a lot like working a Rubrics Cube.
The first step is to, of course, decide to focus more acutely on your brand architecture. However, you best course of action, apart from keeping your master brand positive, is to focus on your sub-brand or ingredient brand. What is it you do for people or companies? How do you help? If you, for example, help regular people get out of their debt, then that is what you need to promote. On the other side, if you help creditors in finding remedies from bankruptcy protections, then that is what you promote. If you provide transaction security or comfort to people trying to buy or sell land, a home, a building, a boat or ship or airplane, then that is where your emphasis needs to be.
If you as an attorney will strive to keep your master brand positive, and promote your sub-brand or ingredient brand actively, constantly and consistently, then you will be able to better allign and meet your practice goals by focusing your efforts where they count the most. You will leverage your resources to get more bang for your buck. You will know which perspective clients fit your model, thereby saving you a lot of time and money. You will be able to organize better. And, you will create a clear, consistent and simple way for potential clients to understand what it is you are offering and the unique value you can provide.
Some clients get confused in lawyer's personal Brand. Designing and creating a company brand takes a little more than designing your company logo. Lots of research and hard work goes before you go on to create a personal brand. The branding for lawyers especially requires to bring around multi facets of your business together, the multi faceted values for law firm includes the goals, the values, the strategies that may want to implement in your business.
Posted by: Nancy | June 15, 2010 at 01:08 AM