Hundreds of millions of dollars from investors are flooding into the legal space, and it’s going to land in your backyard soon. This is happening because states like Arizona are making it possible for non-attorneys to share in legal fees. According to this Stanford Law School White Paper, the authors see a benefit to both attorneys and consumers. The question is, which attorneys will it benefit? And what does this mean for you?
Let’s use Walmart as an analogy. When Walmart moves into a new town, they are able to leverage their economies of scale to offer more for less. In many cases, they put several local stores out of business due to the convenience and lower prices that “Big Box” stores offer. This same thing is about to happen in the legal industry. Now, firms with a massive infusion of capital will have the resources to market nationally which offers huge price breaks. These firms will have more actionable data and technology to work with to constantly improve their ads and targeting.
What You Need To Do Now
“Big Legal” is already in the mass tort space and they will be coming for your local single-event practice as well. In order to compete, you need to take advantage of your local knowledge and new technology to help you level the playing field. Here are some steps you can take to build a moat around your practice and even grow during this next phase of legal marketing:
Build Your Brand
One of your distinct advantages is that you are truly a local firm. You may have even grown up in the town where you practice. Use this to inform your community. This will brand you as the firm that understands the ins and outs of your city and state laws. Make sure to get involved with and give back to your community. If you can’t afford to take action on a large scale, you can still enact steps like sponsoring a local baseball team or using social media to spread the message.
Use Tech To Your Advantage
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to target specific areas and demographics to:
- Build your brand
- Emphasize your local roots
- Stake your digital flag on the internet
- Give back to your community
- Use technology to your advantage
You can also use practice management software and outsourced intake services to offer 24/7 live phone answering. There is no doubt “Big Legal” is going to be using these services as well.
Streaming TV offers you incredible targeting abilities at an affordable price. With traditional Broadcast/Cable advertising, you needed to run ads to an entire Designated Market Area (DMA). That means you needed a budget large enough to cover every household within that DMA, whether you wanted to target them or not.
For example, the DMA for White Plains, NY also covers NYC, one of the most expensive markets in the country. If you want to run traditional broadcast/cable in White Plains, you have to pay for the NYC market as well. With streaming, you can advertise in a specific area down to the zip code along with other targeting metrics for your perfect client. These metrics include age, gender, income level, and literally tens of thousands of other attributes.
Change Is Inevitable
You may already be prepared for this new era, or you may assume it won’t happen to you. It might not, but Blockbuster never saw Netflix coming, and now this generation of kids have never heard of them! You should at least be prepared for an 800 lb gorilla to enter your market. You don’t need to invest a lot to protect your turf. At Market My Market, we’re always looking at what’s around the corner to protect our client’s business. Technology is helping to even the playing field so you don’t have to spend dollar for dollar with Morgan & Morgan to compete in your backyard.
