Many law firms don’t utilize a marketing plan (or they think they do, but in reality fall very short). The truth is that a marketing plan sets the foundation for understanding your ROI. This article will explore what exactly makes up a marketing plan and how you should implement it in your firm.
What Constitutes a Marketing Plan?
There are four things that a marketing plan ought to state:
- What your firm is doing
- When you are doing it
- What do you think the result will be (or what do you hope it accomplishes)
- What it is going to cost
Your plan should be to identify when you will do something and which type of marketing you plan on doing. You could have sponsorships, digital ads, networking, and content marketing. Most solo or small law firms will have 3 or 4 of these categories.
What Sort of Strategy Is Involved In Making A Plan?
All you need to know is who your target market is and what you’re trying to sell them. As you create a marketing plan, you must decide on a strategy, but the magic is that a marketing plan forces you to do this.
The benefit of the categories in a marketing plan is that they are not unique to a business type. In this regard, the owner of a record store and the owner of a small law firm are similar. These categories are universally applicable. The difference is how the person creating it wants to use and combine the categories.
For example, there is a difference between organic social media, where you post things, and paid social media, where you buy ads. You can create a category for “Social Media” that encompasses both. Or you have a “Digital Ads” category because you want to combine your Google and Facebook advertisements.
When you choose what categories you want to use, you may get hung up on the concept of alignment. For instance, you have four columns—one for each quarter—and twenty rows—one for each type of marketing you want to do.
Thinking about how all these categories will align may cause your head to explode. In other words, having twenty categories is great, but ensuring your marketing message stays consistent will be a battle. Does what you’re saying in your newsletter match what you post on Instagram?
Having a plan is more important than ensuring your messaging is consistent. General Patton pointed out, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” It’s not that someone shouldn’t worry about alignment, but the bigger problem is a lack of planning overall. Once you have a plan, then you can make the plan better, i.e., aligning the channels.
Patton’s quote is about traction. Executing a plan now gives you something to work with and react to. The way to get strategic alignment is by starting with a plan or a basic framework to understand what needs to be aligned.
The Power of a Plan
Organizing your marketing efforts into categories is the foundation of building a more extensive, effective marketing plan. Whether you group social media and digital ads or keep them separate, the important takeaway is that having a plan is more valuable than striving for the perfect one from the outset. Executing a good plan now provides the foundation to improve and align your strategies over time.