The Marketing Carnival This Week

…is expertly hosted by Larry Bodine’s PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MARKETING Blog, News, opinions and insights into professional services marketing.

Visit Bodine’s Blog. And surf. He has outstanding analysis of marketing for law firms. An example from our friends at McGuireWoods last April:

McguireWoods rattled the Chicago legal market by running ads starting this week that markets its ability to tailor fees for its legal services that go beyond the traditional hourly rate.

Professional firm marketing could use more of this … edgy advertising.

The beauty of the campaign is that most firms will already offer an alternative fee; but McGuireWoods is promoting the fact. It reminds me of the service guarantee that Ungaretti & Harris offered a few years ago….

Basically, if you were unhappy with their work, they’d be willing to talk about a discount. Most firms would do the same, … I thought it was a fabulous tactic! The way it was reported in the press, including the New York Times, was that for the first time a law firm was offering a money-back guarantee!

The Chicago legal community huffed and puffed about it, but it was the novel marketer that will be forever remembered.

There is nothing more challenging than teaching a room full of very bright lawyers how to sell. How to market. To be competitive. Larry makes a living doing it.

And the blogosphere is the better for his writing.

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Thank you (foot)notes:

More on Larry Bodine’s practice at the jump.

Larry Bodine is an industry leading advisor in the marketing of professional services, with extensive experience in the legal profession, and a prolific author. He is the director of The Law Marketing Portal, the number one web destination for business development articles, resources and tools in the marketing of legal services.

Since 2000 Larry has also been a strategic marketing consultant. He advises professional firms and businesses across the country on marketing strategy, individual sales plans and Web sites. Typical assignments include developing a firmwide marketing strategy, meeting with partners to compose individual marketing plans and using technology to market a law firm.

He is the former Director of Communications of Sidley, Austin Brown & Wood, where he served for eight years. He also has 15 years’ experience as a journalist, serving as Editor and Publisher of the American Bar Association Journal, the National Law Journal, Lawyers Alert (renamed Lawyers Weekly) and other news publications.

Larry practiced law in Madison, Wisconsin and is a cum laude graduate of both Seton Hall University (J.D., 1981) and Amherst College (B.A., 1972).