Evolution And Your Law Firm

Evolution is the change in groups of living things over time. Differences between organisms, called traits, can be passed down to future generations of offspring. Evolution is the process of these inheritable differences becoming more common or rare within large groups (populations) of organisms. PBS provides this great resource on the subject.

Ok, law firm marketing evolution doesn’t operate exactly the same as biological evolution, but many of the same principles hold true.

Like biological evolution, law firm marketing evolution occurs in two different ways. The first way is random. This occurs when you stumble on a new method, strategy, or change by chance. The second way is called selection. Selection happens when a marketing strategy helps a law firm to generate more revenue. This helpful strategy will tend to become more common, as more law firms identify the benefit of the strategy.

However, unlike biological evolution, in marketing evolution, as a strategy becomes adopted by more and more law firms, it becomes less favorable for any individual law firm. In other words, its effectiveness becomes diluted.

Take the Yellow Book, for example. Think of how much more powerful a listing in that directory was when there were only a handful of lawyers with listings. Today, unless you’re paying for premium real estate, directory listings are about as effective as dying the ocean with a bottle of food coloring.

That is why your marketing must continuously evolve. Try something new. Measure it. Test the results. Modify, pursue, or abandon.

This is why internet marketing can be so effective. Unlike earlier evolutions of marketing, the internet makes measurement easy. Key data is easy to track, measure, analyze. The investments can be small. The risks, low.

New strategies can be quickly implemented, the unsuccessful, quickly abandoned.

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