If you are responsible for marketing or business development in your firm, you are probably under pressure to deliver more for less. Does this apply to you?

Perhaps your budget has been slashed, or there is a greater focus on ROI. There has never been a better time to consider creative alternatives to the staple and expensive diet of marketing, e.g. advertising; sponsorship; hospitality, and rebranding exercises.

How can you market your firm for (almost) free? Consider the 10½ Top Tips presented below and how they work for you. Not all these ideas will be right for you, but implementing one or two might just make your marketing budget go a little further.

Please do share your own practical tips if you don’t see them presented here. We will feature the best in a future newsletter and award a pair of Size 10 ½ Boot cufflinks to the best idea.

1. Public Speaking

Find speaking opportunities to show your expertise without overtly selling. Being given a platform on stage demonstrates credibility. With this platform, be interesting and engage your audience.

People will remember how they felt about the experience of being in the audience long after they remember the content. It is therefore very important to develop a good presentation style and command the stage. Use highly visual slides and talk to the audience, not the projection screen!

2. Press Articles

Another way to position yourself as an expert in your field is through press articles.

The key to PR that really delivers is to collaborate with clients and write joint articles, or at least get their endorsement. Don’t pay for advertorials, but instead seek writing opportunities to present ideas and share best practice.

Build relationships with key trade publications and find out what their forward features are. You can plan your writing around the issues that are really relevant, important and topical. Getting articles published also gives you news to freshen up your web site and information to share with your existing network.

3. Postcards

Brochures are boring and invariably get put in the bin, or if you are lucky get filed away. An alternative – cheaper and more effective – is to create a branded but interesting postcard.

Postcards can be more fun and made more personal by writing messages on the back. Some ideas to get you going are ‘Thank you’, ‘Happy Birthday’ or perhaps to promote a new service or specific promotion. If you are mailing out a large number, digital printing makes it more cost effective to personalise with the recipient’s name and business.

Perhaps you are bold enough to be more innovative and use postcards to say ‘thank you for your business’ or ‘congratulations on being a client for 1 year’, or ‘good luck with your office move’.

4. E-marketing 

E-marketing is simple and is a very cost effective marketing approach. Assuming you have a well maintained database and accurate information, you can be no more than a touch of a button away from connecting with your network.

Regular e-bulletins is a great way to add value and increase touch points with clients, prospects and connections.

The difference between an e-marketing campaign that works and those that are viewed as spam is about developing what a Size 10½ Boots legal client calls a 'from me to you' culture.

Issue communications that are relevant to your target audience, do not use them to shout about yourself.

5. Strategic alliances

Collaborate with competitors and/or clients to form a strategic alliance.

In the current trading environment many markets are shrinking. The trick is therefore to win a bigger market share. Collaborating with competition is one way to achieve this. It is better to win half a project, than not to win any at all. If you are able to piggy back a bigger brand, this will build credibility and increase the chance of success.

An example of where this has worked well, is when Size 10½ Boots ran a joint seminar with Roythornes law firm. We provided an external speaker and Roythornes hosted the event. Both firms were able to achieve more than if they tried to run this event independently.

6. Social Media 

Use social media, for example, LinkedIn and twitter, to spread your message further and build brand awareness. If you are sceptical about the business value of such tools, read what Don Tapscott and Dan Williams are saying in "Grown up digital; how the next generation is changing your world”.

7. Free Seminars

Invite prospective clients to free seminars or round tables discussion groups. If you can get a celebrity or key interesting stakeholder to attend this will endorse the event; build credibility and increase attendance.

For example, Size 10½ Boots recently helped another law firm by getting a Labour MP and chair of a select committee to be a guest speaker at their event.

8. Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is a concept created by the author Jay Conrad Levison. The term describes a positive and creative mindset where you promote your business on a shoe string budget.

Here is a personal story that elucidates this point:

A previous boss of mine at Procter & Gamble wanted to ‘punch above our weight’ to get free publicity and influence the Proccter & Gamble CEO.

Some savvy enquiries with our colleagues in the US alerted us to the hotel where the CEO was staying on a visit to the UK. Our team created a welcome pack for the CEO with some carefully crafted messages.

The result was a very welcome phone call from the CEO and an unplanned addition to his itinerary – a visit to see our team!

An emotional connection was therefore established and all it cost was a few postage stamps!!

9. Referral Strategy

People often say ‘a lot of our business comes from referrals’. However, do you proactively ask for referrals? If you were to build a process to do this, you have an opportunity to create significantly more leads.

People buy from people they trust. People are therefore more likely to buy from you if you have been recommended by someone else in your prospects existing network.

Why is it in your contacts interest to refer business to you? Because, you are able to enhance the reputation of your client, by delivering an excellent product or service.

10. Video Testimonial 

Seeing is believing. When a client is evaluating whether to buy your services they are really weighing up risk. They are thinking: 'can this person or service really deliver?' If you can demonstrate that you have delivered a solution for someone else in the past in a very similar position to your prospect you are mitigating this risk.

10½. List price

Never pay list price for advertising or sponsorship. Everything is negotiable!

This month's famous feet

Bernard met up with international violinist Valeriy Sokolov at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall recently.
 
Valeriy is a Size 46 (European size). We think that makes him a member of the international Size 10½ Boots club!

Famous feet

David Morrissey
Actor
Shoe size: 10