A small two-year-old, full-service Montgomery, Alabama law firm hired FM to swiftly grow revenue. Following an intensive strategic planning process, rather than targeting the statewide business community, we recommended targeting the national pest-control industry.
In what became the profession’s first fully featured industry-based marketing campaign, we developed an integrated marketing campaign entitled The Bug Lawyers. The tools included a BugLaw.com web site, “We Know Pest Control” brochure, and official USPS bug stamps. We sprinkled realistic plastic bugs into envelopes and created animated cursors that morphed from bugs into the firm’s logo.
Within six months the firm dominated the industry and had grown by 50%, and the firm received the Legal Marketing Association’s grand prize in 2000, the optional Best of Show award.
“Giving a speech at a national pest control industry conference, I asked the hundreds of audience members to hold up their hands if they had visited BugLaw.com. Remarkably, half the room raised their hands.” – Greg Crosslin, Managing Partner, CS&O, the Bug Lawyers
The Strategy
In a crowded marketplace full of look-alike law firms, one particularly efficient business-development strategy is to focus your resources on a narrow industry niche, one where there is minimal competition.
Rather than trying to build the firm’s name recognition within the broad business community, we aimed the firm’s marketing efforts toward a fast-growth industry where they had significant experience, pest control.
Leveraging the firm’s extraordinary industry knowledge, we developed the nation’s first full-service “Bug Law” practice, one which encompassed all of the firm’s practice areas, from litigation and tax, to corporate, regulatory, real estate and estate planning.
Marketing Program
We utilized the full range of marketing tools:
- Humorous ads in industry trade magazines
- A “We Know Pest Control” brochure
- Web site, with a termite crawling around the home page
- Animated cursors, blending bugs and the firm logo
- Industry-specific public relations
- Leadership positions in industry associations
- Industry-related bylined articles
- Insect mailing stamps for pest control client letters
- Crawling bugs on the letterhead inserted with a simple macro
- Realistic plastic ants pour out of the envelopes
- A toll-free 877/BUG-LAW1 phone number.
- “Bug 1”, the firm’s twin-engine airplane
- Omnipresence at industry conferences
- Trade show booth with Timmy the Termite beanie babies
- Giveaways, e.g. “We Know Pest Control” hats
- Handouts in conference attendees’ rooms.
- Networking and speaking on pest control issues
