Legal Marketing & PR

What is Your Branding Focus?

By Tom Kane

As I began to meditate in this new year about a post for today, I decided to go to the old standby 365 Marketing Meditations: Daily Lessons from Marketing & Communications Professionals by Larry Smith and Richard Levick with Levick Strategic Communications. The ones for today and tomorrow both refer to Starbucks. Today's says:

"Coffee and Starbucks are synonymous. That's the value of a brand. Customers visit Starbucks five times a week, spending money on something that costs much less if they made it at home."

And tomorrow's:

'Starbucks sells more than 30 different products, but it markets one thing – coffee. Focus your marketing efforts narrowly.'

There are two lessons in all this for law firms. The first is that obviously brands are still important, branding was not and is not a fad, and firms need to remember how key a brand or value statement really is.

The second lesson is that firms should not waste time and resources trying to promote all its practice areas. They should determine what they are really known for (their brand) and focus their marketing efforts narrowly on only one or two practice areas. Remember the old adage attributed to former President John F. Kennedy: 'a rising tide lifts all boats.'

Full post as published by Legal Marketing Blog on January 04, 2011 (boomark / email).