Keeping an Eye on Your Competition
A leak can do tremendous damage before you know it.
The competitive environment for law firms is ever changing. If you’ve ever had a leaking pipe in your house, you understand tremendous damage can be done before you even know there’s a problem. Your competition continues to make moves that may catch you off guard. The damage can be severe if those moves go undetected.
In business, you’re either moving forward or sliding backwards. Standing still is not an option.
Over the past week, I’ve noticed that national, family law firm Cordell & Cordell has launched a new television campaign. Here’s a link to the commercial in the Louisville market (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMNClTsNDfo). If you search YouTube for their firm, you’ll see that they launched their 3rd YouTube channel approximately 1 week ago. They already have 2 other channels with a ton of videos.
What I found interesting is that their new channel has state-specific “bundles” that appear to be the same videos, simply formatted for the individual states. This is actually an interesting way to rapidly deploy a uniform, marketing campaign. For those of you in Kentucky personal injury, I’d expect Morgan & Morgan to do something similar.
I point this out for several reasons. First and foremost, we’re about to begin the 4th quarter of the year. If your caseload is down, it’s time to investigate your competition to see if they’ve quietly changed a tactic or implemented new tools to gain market share. Remember the leaky pipe that slowly, quietly does a ton of damage? If you’re not tracking your local competitors, you might miss some tools you could incorporate into your own strategy and combat the competitive attack.
Second, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. In the case of Cordell & Cordell’s videos, take a look at the ones that seem to have a lot of views. Could you update your videos and/or on-page content to address a similar topic? Put your unique perspective to work and launch some new content. Again, standing still is not an option. You may already be leaking clients, as well as revenue.
Third, remember to cluster or group your content assets. Just having a single page of content on a topic may not be enough. There are always related topics that can be addressed. This is even more important if the topic is a highly competitive area of law. You and your prospective clients may be thinking about the same type of case, but they may use different terms or be focused on a sub-topic issue. By creating content clusters (both in text-based and video-based content), you’ll have a better chance of appearing relevant to the search engines (e.g. Google) and your clients. Oh, and don’t forget to create several internal page links so the content creates a web of informaton.
If your house has a leaky pipe, the sooner you do something about it the better off you’ll be. If your firm is leaking clients and revenue because of a competitor’s new tactic, it could cost you much more.
For more free information and tips to help grow your practice, subscribe to my firm’s Facebook page. If you’re ready to change your marketing tactics, let’s assess your competitive environment and begin implementing a plan to grow your firm’s business. My phone number is (502) 208-9639.
This is the text from my September article in the Louisville Bar Association’s Bar Briefs (page 9). I recently gave up an hour of my life for the sake of my clients and this article. Google’s CFO and Chief Business Officer hosted their 2015 second-quarter earnings call, in July. I listened in to see what they were reporting. If there’s one thing that came through clearly, it’s the way YouTube is contributing to Google’s overall growth and profitability.
