We recently touched on an important part of solid marketing strategy; knowing what you’re asking for. Take an honest look at whether the ever-popular but ever-ineffectual “speed and greed” approach is really working. It might be time to step back and look at the big picture.

While running bold, call-to-action TV commercials with the goal of obtaining as many quick-settlement cases as possible may sound like a sensible business strategy, what you might find is that most of those leads either don’t pan out or are so low-value that they actually undercut revenue in the long run. Plus as clients get smarter, using the Internet to do their homework and weigh their vast legal options, short-term-gain ads and tactics are not keeping law firms in practice long.

After more than 32 years of helping lawyers market their practices, we’ve found that a smarter long-term plan is to build a multi-pronged marketing strategy around obtaining quality, high-value, big-referral cases that deliver reliable results for both the client and the practice.

To gauge where you are on the value scale, start by asking these questions:

1. What is our current reputation in the marketplace?
2. Is our firm known for high-quality or high-turnover settlements?
3. Are we leaving too much on the table with a churn-and-burn approach?
4. Are we really prepared to take cases to trial like we say we are?
5. Are we offering cookie-cutter law or something more specialized?

Getting real and asking tough questions is the first step in developing smarter strategic marketing. The bottom line is law will always be about the money—how much can you get for a client and how much will you charge to get it. But by positioning your legal services as a cheap commodity, you are devaluing the importance of the services you provide to the community.

Instead, start to focus on marketing tactics that help your firm:

• Position how unique you are in your legal niche or specific market
• Demonstrate how you can solve a specific problem for a client in need
• Build on valuable referrals from past clients and your professional network
• Prove your lawyers’ integrity, confidence, approach-ability and transparency
• Build deeper, lasting relationships with clients

Start to think of your firm like the best brands. You don’t have to be the Neiman Marcus of your market, but maybe you can start to provide Nordstrom-quality service. The kind that puts the clients’ needs first. The kind that stands out among the competition. The kind that pays off in the end.  The kind that you would want.  The kind that truly gets you referral business.

The fact of the matter is – your clients truly do not know if they received a great settlement or not.  They do know how they were treated.  That is a fact!

Marketing a law firm is no different than positioning any other professional services business. You need a strategy. It’s not uncommon to try to “wing it” by designing low-budget brochures after-hours, or assigning a receptionist the daunting task of keeping up with the firm’s website.

But while you might have skated through with that approach in the past, increasing your caseload ever so slightly but not knowing how, the reality is that kind of scattered marketing approach is no longer viable in today’s sophisticated, crowded market.

With the introduction of social and mobile platforms, plus increasingly tech-savvy clients, law firms have to market from every angle from TV advertising, to direct mail and internet-tracked eCRM campaigns — to reach customers consistently. Here’s your wake-up call: You can’t handle this alone, even with paralegals pitching in. Plus, shouldn’t your employees focus on what they do best, converting the leads that do come in?

Marketing a law firm carries a new level of complexity best handled by an agency, preferably with legal expertise, that knows how to leverage every new and changing facet of marketing and advertising.

Now that you know it’s imperative to have a marketing expert as a partner, you can start the rewarding part; creating a strategy to maximize your advertising budget. While we know TV advertising is still the biggest bang for your buck, you can stretch your marketing money in some very creative ways these days thanks to the relative affordability of Web-based marketing tools.

Here’s how to begin thinking strategically when it comes to marketing your legal brand:

1. Learn your market. Task your marketing experts with finding out out everything about the competition and how your firm fits in — and therefore, can stand out — in your specific legal or regional niche.
2. Identify your audiences. Do you really know to whom you’re marketing? Is your current message truly tailored to those people? Are there some “fringe” client bases you’ve left out and could target better?
3. Know what you are asking for. It sounds simple, but if you are trying to compete by selling “speed and greed” law, you are going to get exactly that: an of quick, low-value cases. Consider how that approach may undercut your revenue in the long run.

Formulate a plan based on real data about your market and competition, learn as much as you can about your target audiences, and tailor a message to get exactly what you’re asking for — quality, high-value cases based on relationships that lead to referrals.

Once you’ve worked with a marketing strategist on these core elements, your firm can quickly get on a predetermined path to success. It doesn’t mean things can’t change. Be flexible about tweaking tactics as you go, but hone in from an initial strategy. You can’t go wrong if you start from the right place.

Don’t stress. Get back to brand basics.

One of the most common mistakes among legal firms is trying to be all things to all people. Building a brand can help you stop this mistake in its tracks.

By now you know that you are in one of the most competitive business’s in the world. And depending on your legal niche, that competition could be amplified 10 fold. So in the middle of the masses of firms marketing to the masses, how do you stand out?

The answer is branding.

If you want to increase your credibility and caseload, we highly recommend going back to basics. Building your brand doesn’t have to be intimidating. By engaging in a brand exercise, you’re simply revisiting your firm’s history, values, reputation and intentions. Ultimately, you’re giving your marketing efforts a focus by answering questions such as:

What do you stand for?

What do you want to be known for?

What are your five core company attributes?

What is your niche within your niche?

What do people think of when they see your firm’s name?

If you’ve never had a conversation about brand, it’s not too late to start. Or if your firm is changing from what you thought you were a decade ago, now’s the time to think about re-branding. Whether you are in a micro-niche or the massive personal injury market, for example, it’s your job to dig down to the essence of what makes your law firm stand out from the competition.

It could be a novel approach to client services, a consistent method for solving a core problem, identification with a particular type of client sector, a corporate culture that shines from the inside out, a proven ability to obtain settlements in even the most challenging cases, etc.

If you can’t define a differentiators, re-define it.

That means create a way to say what you do and who you are—which may be nearly identical to a competitor—in a different, more engaging, more compelling way. In essence, position your expertise, service style, results, staff, resources or results in such a way that creates a new point of differentiation.

The more clear your brand, the more consistent and aligned your marketing will be. And, like anything, being focused and efficient pays off by stretching your spend. In the end, if you don’t know what you stand for, how can you expect clients to stand by you?