The right tools for the job

For effective marketing, there can be no doubt you need material, often referred to as 'Marketing Tools' to explain who you are and the service you are offering.

When I first started in the profession it was all about glossy A4 brochures, suites of literature and folders with numerous inserts for different departments. Marketing consultants and graphic designers led the competition for who had the slickest looking literature with the finest images.

Even though I fully agree with the principle of 'people buy from people' and that one of the biggest marketing assets any firm can have is its staff, it was so frustrating when someone handed in their notice and instantly the brochure in which they featured was out of date.

You put up with it for a while, but if a couple of people left and the new recruits were feeling left out, you had to call in the photographer, designers and printers for a reprint (or occasionally get persuaded into a complete overhaul) of the literature.

Then came the internet and, with it, the glamour and excitement of the website. Suddenly, we could put all the information online and update it at the click of a button. Fantastic! Once you paid for your website to be created (which was a big investment if done properly, but felt much better when compared to your annual print costs) usually your IT department could take on the management of its content, or you could retain your 'webmaster' (which I have always felt sounds more like the title of one of Harry Potter's teachers) for a reasonable fee.

When we all first ventured onto the information super highway, websites were often treated like a library. We could put everything up on our site and people, excited by the novelty, would search for what they wanted to find out about us.

Now, a decade or so later, everything has changed. Users are blasé about the internet and if you don't grab their attention and appreciation within a few seconds, or provide the answer to their question within a couple of clicks, your site will be abandoned in favour of a more 'user-friendly' outlet. Having painstakingly put up everything we had on the internet, now we are busy ripping it all down!

One of the first things I wanted to do when I was made managing partner of Eric Robinson Solicitors earlier this year was to redo our website. And it has been a fascinating experience. If all goes according to plan, I will be unveiling our new online presence in next month's column.

I don't believe that the online world has completely negated the need of hard copy literature, but everything has become more succinct. Big glossy brochures have become leaflets, marketing mailouts can use postcards and a service can be described in key words on the back of a business card. This smaller items can be bolder, make more impact and, if needs be, act as signposts to direct you to information you have placed online. SJ

 Catherine Maxfield is managing partner at Eric Robinson Solicitors