Big brands are ready to dominate the B2C market

As an increasing number of businesses are granted alternative business structure (ABS) licences and gear up to join the UK legal services market, we are about to see the profound impact that big brands can have on the way clients buy legal services.

This will happen first in the private client (B2C) market, where the Co-op, Saga and AA have all recently been granted licences to operate as law firms. These big brands are very well known and have millions of customers.

By contrast, most B2C law firms have very low recognition outside of their immediate client base. This didn’t matter too much when all law firms behaved in the same passive way and waited for their private clients to return to them every few years when they needed legal help.

Big brands, however, don’t work like that. They have sophisticated communications and marketing strategies that are designed to actively promote their offerings to consumers. This doesn’t mean expensive advertising campaigns, although these may have their place from time to time and big brands can afford them. The real battle will be fought with data.

Big brands in the B2C space have sophisticated data sets of their existing (and potential) customers. They are likely to know, amongst many other things, their customers’ age, marital status, economic profile and buying habits. Big brands have easy access to this data and their marketing teams can cut it and use it in many different ways.

A key outcome of this data analysis is being able to predict which services and products are likely to be of interest to customers and how they should be packaged to be most appealing. Another is to segment their offering to those customers who fit their ideal demographic for each service/product line.

We are all familiar with this approach, as we are all consumers of big brands and many of us hold loyalty or store cards. This approach has never been widely used in the heavily-fragmented B2C legal services market, but it is about to be as big brands transfer their skills into this space.

I expect we will soon see highly targeted campaigns from new big brand entrants designed to persuade existing customers that their brand is an excellent and good value choice for a will or conveyance.

Focused marketing strategies combined with good quality data sets will mean that the message is tailored to the audience by reference to their age, health or financial worth. Good quality research amongst focus groups will throw up problems experienced when using traditional law firms. These will be highlighted in the message and a solution offered. It will be a message designed to make that customer feel positive about choosing that brand.

This is a world away from the approach of traditional law firms, whose data is generally incomplete and out of date and whose communication with private clients is sporadic and untargeted.

Law firms can change this and actively build a loyal private client base, but it will require considerable effort and a sea change from being passive providers to active sellers. If this doesn’t happen, their clients will surely be tempted to try the big brand that seems to understand their needs and concerns and is making a real effort to keep in touch with them.

tim.aspinall@dmhstallard

Follow me on twitter @tjmaspinall