Ep. 46 - How to Market Your Firm on a Budget

Marketing on a budget? As Marc Whitehead sees it, most firms are looking for a way to compete with the 800-pound gorilla in their market. How do you outcompete someone with a million-dollar budget? You don’t—you outsmart them. Tune in for tips about smart marketing, the top three channels for marketing on a budget, and key tips from Allan Dib’s Lean Marketing. 

Marc and Diana start by defining lean marketing, and then they dive into the book Lean Marketing and their takeaways from it. They move into discussing lean marketing as it applies to firms and the lean marketing strategies used at Marc Whitehead & Associates. 

For detailed show notes, navigate using the time stamps below:

[0:00] Introduction

[1:52] Today’s episode will loosely cover Lean Marketing by Allan Dib. The book focuses on high-action, low-waste, and fast feedback marketing. 

[5:44] The first step to lean marketing is avoiding random acts of marketing. Next, you look at how you can out-compete the largest players in your market by focusing on smart spending. 

[7:49] Marketing is the price you pay for being unremarkable. In your marketing, you have to identify something that makes you remarkable, or at least unique, and sell potential clients on that aspect. 

[10:13] Lean marketing is about being strategy-first, and then moving into execution. Blindly executing on ideas without a plan is a great way to waste money.

[14:38] Marketing campaigns can focus on any of seven motivators: money, time, freedom, peace of mind, status, leisure, and approval. Key motivators for law include money, time, status, freedom, and peace of mind. 

[21:21] Your firm is in the people business, so definitionally it is in the feelings business. Marketing is about playing into the feelings clients have about their legal representation.

[23:20] Marc Whitehead & Associates has identified three unique parts of their firm: Marc Whitehead is board certified, he wrote a book on disability law, and his firm is convenient and easy to work with. 

[26:35] There are three cost-efficient tools that Marc recommends. The first is digital channels like having a good website and search engine optimization. The second is attorney referral marketing, or marketing to other attorneys. The third is client referral marketing. 

[33:52] For people with a small marketing team, social media can be used in a lean way by leveraging your networks.  

[41:00] When Mark Whitehead & Associates experiments with marketing, the experimentations are tracked in a spreadsheet by the head of
marketing. Channels are tracked by tracking numbers and surveys.

Visit the Successful Barrister website: https://www.successfulbarrister.com/  

Visit the Marc Whitehead & Associates website: https://disabilitydenials.com/ 

Buy Lean Marketing: More leads. More Profit. Less Marketing. by Allan Dib: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Marketing-Less-More-Business/dp/1774583941 

Listen to Lean Marketing: https://www.audible.com/pd/Lean-Marketing-Audiobook/B0D2DW5KJF 

Email Marc Whitehead: marc@marcwhitehead.com