Running a successful Philadelphia law firm requires many things, including solid business acumen, keen oversight of billing and accounting procedures, and strong managerial skills (as well as all of the prodigious legal knowledge you possess that is at the heart of your business.)

Having to spend time on things other than legal matters can initially seem like a poor use of time – that is until you consider the opportunity cost involved. Every potential client you miss reeling in is – cha ching – another dollar in your competitor’s pocket. Framing it in that context, suddenly marketing doesn’t seem like such a waste of time, does it?

Many companies say they know marketing, but Law Firm Marketing is a beast of a different nature for several reasons (including the fact that many clients are intimidated by the legal process, or are reluctant to discuss private financial or personal information with a stranger.)

Additionally, the legal profession requires a diverse spectrum of marketing strategies, because while some specialties (such as Business Law) yield consistent, repeat business, other specialties (such as Bankruptcy, Foreclosure, or Divorce) are situation specific, and hinge upon events that occur infrequently in a client’s lifetime.

Because of this, it’s imperative that you work with astute marketing experts — ones that won’t pigeonhole you, or lump you into one all-encompassing legal marketing niche – “Attorneys.”

That’s where we come in. We’re the Legal Marketing specialists of Axis Creative Group, and we can help you plan marketing campaigns for maximum efficiencies at your specified pricepoint. From Philadelphia, to West Chester, to Exton, we have a proven track record of helping attorneys across a broad spectrum of subspecialties all boost their bottom lines via our array of innovative legal marketing strategies.  We take extreme pride in custom-tailoring legal marketing solutions unique to your specialty and your practice or firm.

Whether you seek to increase conversions (turn prospects into paying clients), expand your market share, improve client acquisitions, or increase your ROI, the legal marketing analysts at Axis Creative Group are here to help. Not only are we cognizant of the complexities that legal marketing for attorneys requires, we are experts at integrating the many dynamics necessary to help you achieve success.

So call today, and let the pros at Axis Creative Group put our legal marketing muscle to work for you in Philadelphia and beyond. Just because the scales of Justice are balanced, doesn’t mean the competitive legal field is. You need a way to set yourself above the competition, and Axis Creative Group can make that happen.

What makes for a good social networking website?

Is it the look and feel of the website, the ease of navigation, the tools and features?

For Facebook, it is the pleasant mixture of all three with a slightly more focus on technology-driven tools that has enabled it to overtake its close competitor, MySpace.

The Beginning
Ever since its birth in February 2004, Facebook, the privately owned and operated social networking website has been enticing and accumulating followers, being a free-access website where people from all walks of life can join networks (organized by cities, workplaces, schools, or regions) to interact with others, and to some extent, rekindle old friendships and reconnect past relationships.

Beyond the Face Value
Four years have passed and Facebook has managed to remain virtually on top while undergoing a lot of progress in terms of applications. Starting from an idea (the website’s name came from the “paper facebooks” illustrating members of a campus community that some American colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, or staff aiming to familiarize them with the other people inside the campus) of a then Harvard sophomore student, Mark Zuckerberg, the website turned out to be a major hit as a multi-million dollar enterprise.

Bridging Gaps and Cultural Differences
The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, describes the impact of Facebook through a story about a group of young militants from Lebanon who have reconciled their views of Western culture by way of Facebook friendships. The story spoke of the free expression of ideas which the World Wide Web allows, thus making people rise above their cultural disparities.

On Expansion and Language Translation
Facebook has reached a great number of users, as it quickly expands to other regions, internationally. In fact, the website stands unruffled to the top as a global social network. The numbers released in August 12 by comScore says it all. There are about 132 million followers of Facebook, 63% of which are outside North America. It helped that the network has been translated to 20 languages such as French, Spanish, and Mandarin. Recently, it has added 69 more languages. The international manager of Facebook, Javier Olivan views this as more than just enabling everyone to understand one another. The translations, according to him, will jumpstart astronomical growth internationally.

Growing and Thriving
To date, Facebook faces tough competition with MySpace and News Corp.’s to name a couple. They not only focus on their local markets, but are also meaning to saturate the global scene to amplify audience growth, thus making them very attractive to advertisers and prospective investors.

MySpace has spread out in 29 countries such as India and Korea. Based on a study from Pingdom, a Swedish website availability monitoring website; it is mostly frequented by users in US, Puerto Rico, Australia, Britain, and even in Asian countries such as Malaysia.

LinkedIn is another social network catering to professionals. According to Pingdom, it is popular in India, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and US.

Despite all these, a staggering 153% increase in new members last June has thrown other social networks off-balance, in terms of the website’s success through a purely user adoption.

Tech-Savvy Socialization
Facebook proved to have more ease conquering the international market through its technology-driven strategy. The social network boasts of translation tools, enabling users to take their existing sites and personalize them using their native tongue. The tools proved to offer very accurate translations, setting it apart from the other social network websites. The senior analyst of comScore, Andrew Lipsman, said that it is indeed, a very scalable process, with the audience’s number multiplying really fast.

MySpace on the other hand follows a different route. Facebook’s close rival opens offices in countries where ad dollars and friends are probable. This strategy definitely slows down their expansion internationally but this approach is deemed to be a surefire way to better reflect the cultures of new countries while racking up dollars from advertisers, too. Soon, according to Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing, MySpace’s non-US users will cover half or 50 percent of the its total revenue.

Hi5 language translation tool applications strategy resembles that of Facebook’s, except that this social network from San Francisco initially hired a third-party service provider, Lionsbridge, to translate the social network to languages such as Japanese. This strategy increased its popularity, making the base users amount to a hefty 56 million. According to Pingdom, the site remains immensely popular in Latin America.

More Possibilities
The Facebook executives, though focused at present on the website’s tools, have not closed their doors on the possibility of opening offices in other countries to make their website more culturally-relevant, similar to the strategy employed by MySpace. Right now however, Olivan stresses that as long as there are users, advertisers will continue to create campaigns and put ads on their sites, making Facebook remain universal.

In an industry where it is a dog eats dog battle, it is crucial to come up with a marketing strategy that will make your wares sellable, if monopolizing a target market is not an option.

How does one set his products or services apart from the rest? Take a leaf out of Universal Pictures, Carl’s Jr., and Southwest Airlines’ book and try counterprogramming.

Counterprogramming operates under the assumption that a particular product or service has a target market. Rarely does one encounter a product that answers everyone’s needs. Therefore, there is always a need to fill and address, and with filling that void comes your target market.

Timing may also be a key. When a competitor launches a product or a service, a counter to that product or service may be presented, too. Consumers would always need an option and would welcome a refreshing one at that.

Starting for example with the case of Universal Pictures which chose to show Mamma Mia amidst the hype of Batman: The Dark Knight, Universal Pictures saw the possibility that the older, female demographic would not be as thrilled as the young, male audience to see Batman hurrying off to free Gotham. They would probably prefer Meryl Streep’s hilarity of having to solve the riddle of her daughter’s paternity (her daughter who is a would-be bride had three alleged fathers).

Counterprogramming is another avenue opened to competitors to offer an alternative when another competitor’s creation is less appealing.  For example, the proliferation of fast food fare coupled with Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary “Super Size Me”  gave McDonald a run for their money. To repair the damage, McDonald and Taco Bell started offering slightly healthier fare (not that any fast food is really healthy). Crusades against trans fat and fast food restaurants sprouted up faster than one can say “fast food”, causing a ban against them. Despite the growing resistance to the fast food way of life, there were still those who craved “real [fast] food”.

This made Carl Jr. tout its own sandwiches, in terms of size and sloppiness, to tap the once big market for fast food. The result is a 730-calorie, 47-fat-grams Monster Breakfast Sandwich, tagged as “Breakfast as Big as Our Burgers”. Up to this day, Carl Jr. continues to serve and feed the hungry stomachs of young men.

Southwest Airlines follows a different lead but with a similar tactic. While most airlines would charge for every single thing a passenger would ask for during a flight, Southwest Airlines is very proud to say that “Fees Don’t Fly with Us”. Never charging for second suitcase, snacks, a choice to sit in a window seat, pillows or blankets, bottles of water, and fuel (though most airlines would disguise it under the term “surcharge”), the airline racked up more dollars than those who do.

The bottom line of counterprogramming is to make your ware different so it would stand out. Put more items for consumption than frills. Sell to an untapped market (a market where there is only a few selection or  a narrow array of choices), allow for something (this really depends on your own considerations) that others will not allow. One man’s loss is another man’s gain anyway.

Going against the flow may just give you the sales that you are aiming for. If you like more risks, do not only take the road less traveled; instead, blaze new trails. You will never know what treasures you might unearth.

What other things besides communication and education can technology redefine? For Polo Ralph Lauren, it’s the word “shopping”.

?Speaking of the “s” word, Polo Ralph Lauren plans to make it big this year, as the very first luxury retailer to revolutionize online shopping through a mobile e-commerce site. According to the retailer, the idea of buying train tickets and vending machine products for example, is not out of the ordinary in Japan. Ralph Lauren says phone shopping is not commonplace in the U.S., it’s something viewed to be only for people who are comfortable with technology, though not age-specific per se.

?Why phone shopping, you might ask? Being first in the U.S. to launch the technology is one thing, keeping up with the trend as a fashion mogul is another. Anyone would probably agree that in addition to feeling the need to keep up; Polo Ralph Lauren discerns that technology-savvy fashionistas would appreciate the convenience that phone shopping can offer.

?To counter the U.S. economy’s recession, a new-fangled inventory management system is definitely in order. The designer of the high-end apparel has thought of setting special codes in print ads, mailings, and store windows alongside the U.S. open tennis tournament beginning later this August. This means all the shoppers have to do is whip out their camera phones, download some special software, and use that to scan codes. Through this, they can access the Ralph Lauren website (which they have designed to be phone-friendly) to start shopping, read company profiles, or even watch tennis videos.

?The question still remains as to how much Polo Ralph Lauren invested on this technology or how this will either make or break their projected sales. This opens up a possible demand for mobile phones with built-in code readers; these phones are anticipated to be out in the market within the year, as per the apparel-maker’s heads-up.

?Phone shopping will definitely be groundbreaking; an event that will grace the morning papers and fashion magazines from here on.