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The Professions CAN market themselves successfully
17th February 2010
Reprinted from The Marketeer April 2010
Case Study: Jackson Barrett & Gass Legal Practice
by Tabitha Barda
The brief
The legal sector is still relatively wet behind the ears when it comes to marketing, so when Manchester law firm Jackson Barrett & Gass (JB&G) hired the even younger Rick Barrow as its first marketing manager, some legal wigs were turned. With only seven staff members, the marketing department had suddenly become a major part of the firm’s operations.
But old fashioned attitudes to legal marketing are having to change as competition heats up, says CIM affiliate member Barrow, and the marketplace is soon set to open up further when the so‑called “Tesco law” comes in to play, allowing third-party ownership of law firms.
“In October 2007 I joined a historic firm with an excellent reputation and client-care focus. However, I was starting all marketing activity from scratch,” says Barrow. “While our local presence was relatively strong, years without marketing had affected our market share.”
The strategy
Faced with so blank a canvas, Barrow needed a hook on which to hang his marketing vision. “I came across Home Information Packs, or ‘HIPs’, which at the time had only recently been introduced,” he says.
Legally required in order to market a property for sale, HIPs must contain certain documents such as an EPC (energy performance certificate) and may include additional information about the condition of the house and the surrounding area.
Roundly resented as extra work and a waste of time by house buyers, sellers and estate agents alike, Barrow spotted an opportunity for his firm to create a unique selling point.
“Despite their negative image, I still considered HIPs a potential marketing platform for our firm because I identified the benefits of customer loyalty and lifetime value that they could generate. HIPs are prepared prior to a house sale and therefore prior to any legal work, which is where our main area of business lies,” explains Barrow.
“Also, whether people like it or not, they are legally required to have one to sell their home. While HIPs are technically a legal document, I saw that non-legal companies had taken aggressive market share, having forged strong links with estate agents, often with the payment of referral fees. The legal market either ignored HIPs, or missed the chance to take the lead in producing them.”
Barrow decided to embark on a customer acquisition plan, producing high quality and good value HIPs as the bait with which to attract new clients, in the hope that they would make use of the firm’s legal services later on in the conveyancing process.
The execution
Armed with limited marketing budget and resource, Barrow researched rivals’ HIP provision and found that few people, including those responsible for creating them, really understood the point of HIPs. “No effort was being made in the preparation of HIPs and the pricing was quite steep,” says Barrow. “Estate agents providing them were often charging a large premium and were mainly seeing them as a money-making exercise.”
Barrow decided that JB&G’s HIPs would be packed full of extra information he had not seen in competitors’ products: “Our HIPs include a full local search of plans for the surrounding area, to save time for our client, and to save time and money for the purchaser. This forms a unique selling point. We added extra title documents and certificates and guarantees, as well as the standard seller information forms.”
A crucial competitive edge was Barrow’s potentially risky decision to provide the new and improved HIPs to clients at cost. “With time and stationery required in the preparation of the HIPs accounted for, they were in fact loss-leading for us. However, this meant we could save clients on average £66.26 compared with the main chain estate agents in our immediate area.
Barrow liaised with stakeholders such as the local search companies and borough councils to ensure that all time targets could be met, allowing JB&G to market its promise to have all HIPs ready within a working week. He ensured all packs were professionally produced with clear Jackson Barrett & Gass branding.
“This ensured that in the short term our HIPs purveyed our brand values, while in the long term our HIPs would remain with title deeds and possibly lead to future business,” he says.
Barrow forged deals with independent agents based in various local areas to become distribution channels for the firm’s new HIPs. “We rolled out an integrated advertising and PR campaign to promote our HIP expertise to potential new clients. And lastly, we developed e-shots and mail-shots to communicate with our most important stakeholders – current clients,” says Barrow.
The outcome
From August 2008 to September 2009 JB&G provided 72 HIPs, 54 of which were for new clients. The cost to the firm of each HIP was £77, amounting to just over £5,500. Including the PR and advertising spend, Barrow says the HIPS cost the company £6,500. But subsequent legal work generated by the HIPs with new clients has so far led to £30,250 being billed, resulting in a 446 per cent return on investment, and Barrow estimates that just under £20,000 of further new work is still in the pipeline. “The initial outlay looks heavy, but after just a couple of related jobs it quickly pays off,” says Barrow.
Client feedback has been enthusiastic. The majority of the HIP clients have guaranteed to use JB&G for legal work at a later point and Barrow reports that some have opted to go with the firm because of the trust and goodwill engendered by the HIPs, despite the JB&G quote for other work sometimes being higher than competitors’.
It was a good B2B marketing exercise for the law firm too. “We have significantly improved our relationships with estate agents,” says Barrow. “While the chain agents weren’t interested in my initial offering, they were all suitably impressed with our innovative approach, and we quickly became the answer to all legal questions and any work that needed a quick fix. The chain agents now recommend us because of HIP dialogue.”
Barrow says the independent agents report that faster transactions can be directly attributed to JB&G HIPs. “The full local search has proved to be a unique selling point for them, and they have said that fewer enquiries are raised by the purchaser’s solicitors because of the additional information, such as planning permissions and building regulations. These factors have increased their client satisfaction and brand reputation. As a result, the independent agents now recommend us to all their clients.”
Analysis
Barrow is pleased that the strategy of making an initial loss on HIPs has paid off for JB&G in long-term new business, and he’s proud of the recognition he has received for the scheme, despite working on a much smaller scale than many peers. “It was the client focus and added sense of value that meant we got so much more work afterwards,” he says.
“The chain estate agents might make £100 per HIP in the short term, but by offering a less informative pack they are delaying the process and simply postponing their income from the sale of the house in the long term. Our HIPs have been recognised by the Law Society at its 2009 Excellence Awards, at which we won the Marketing & Business Development Award.”
Jackson Barrett & Gass was also shortlisted for the Chartered Institute of Marketing Excellence Awards in the Professional Services category.
Tabitha Barda is features editor of The Marketer
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