CRC Case Study: Legal Marketing at Bagia & Associates Click here to visit Bagia & Associates.
Bagia & Associates, a Philadelphia immigration law firm, asked the Customer Research Center to work with them on an updated marketing plan. Jay Bagia, the founder of Bagia & Associates, is one of the leading immigration lawyers in the greater Philadelphia community. Mr. Bagia has 22 years of successful experience helping the immigrant community and local businesses achieve their personal and professional goals. His practice has grown steadily over the years, primarily by providing extraordinary legal advice and personalized service. Even given this success, Mr. Bagia saw an opportunity to move his firm to the next level. “We’re still expanding, making new marketing investments, and constantly looking for the best talent to join our firm. We wanted an objective, third party perspective that could help us test our assumptions and build the best possible marketing plan.”
The CRC uses a hypothesis driven approach to the development of marketing plans--supported by quantitative analysis of the leading hypotheses, baseline surveys to identify systemic organizational engagement opportunities, and process modeling to identify workflow improvements or enhancements to the underlying business model. In addition, the CRC typically develops a baseline assessment of the client experience and completes external surveys of client perceptions to round out the initial assessment.
Peter Cooke, the CRC engagement leader for the Bagia & Associates project noted, “We bring a methodology that guides our analysis, but we always customize our approach to provide clients with the maximum benefit. We were focused, initially, on an analytical marketing assessment and quickly determined that workflow design and organizational engagement were equally important leverage points.” To support these additional objectives, the CRC used brainstorming sessions with all employees to pinpoint workflow design opportunities, while modeling the communication and engagement levels needed to drive the plan’s success.
Bagia & Associates enjoys a very strong referral flow from word-of-mouth among former clients. They have a deep reservoir of good will based on decades of providing expert legal advice. Their marketing strategy needed to build on this successful base while also testing new strategies that would extend their market reach and gather information to guide expanded investments.
A data collection and referral tracking mechanism was implemented that feeds a linear optimization model to evaluate marketing investments on a monthly and quarterly basis. Mr. Bagia noted the importance of these new tools to challenge their intuitive assessments, “We are always open to new marketing approaches, but human nature wants to stick with the most familiar options. The analytical tools provided by the CRC let us test the ROI (return on investment) of each channel and really balance the short-term financial returns against our long-term brand strategy.”
A second component of the marketing plan was the redesign of the referral model, or business system, which was implicit in the historical evolution of the business, but not documented in a formal process model. Process modeling is a relatively new concept for law firms and many other professional service organizations. There is a tendency to believe that a business evolves optimally as a natural consequence of clients interacting, successfully, with the professionals meeting their needs. The reality is that an explicit understanding of the business model can make many improvement opportunities readily apparent. The natural business model almost always lands at a point which is effective, but not optimal. There is a tendency, in any office, to adopt the solution which first works, rather than an optimal solution which may require many iterations to realize. Process modelers use tools which help eliminate the high cost of physical modeling in favor of software simulations or paper flowcharts. CRC developed a flowchart of the existing business and identified, with the Bagia associates, the key design features of their business model. Subsequent brainstorming sessions then identified the performance characteristics desired in a future state model for the business. The future state model was, in reality, only a few steps away from the current state, but these steps were enormously significant. The new business model allowed improvements in the cycle time to consult with new clients, increased the yield from initial inquiries to retained clients, and allowed an improved balance of the workflow across all available resources. Manufacturing businesses have used process modeling for the past 50 years to improve resource allocation; law firms and professional service firms can use the same techniques to enhance their client experience, increase cash flow, and drive revenue growth.
The third, and final, major component of the new marketing plan was a comprehensive effort to fully engage the aforementioned reservoir of goodwill by designing a “Bagia alumni plan.” Much like the efforts of colleges, universities, and associations to maintain and nurture their relationships with graduates, there is a significant opportunity for Bagia & Associates to build on their success with thousands of clients over decades of service. These former clients are now community leaders, business owners, and thought leaders in the immigrant community that are an important source of guidance, leadership, and stewardship to new immigrants entering the greater Philadelphia area every year. Bagia & Associates is in a position to learn from, assist, and partner with these important resources on an ongoing basis. The most difficult part of any relationship, establishing a position as a trusted advisor, is already in place. These trusted linkages can provide a stepping stone to a myriad of additional relationships that are the lifeblood of any thriving professional services business.
There were many other “tools” and “methodologies” provided by the CRC: a referral forecasting model to dynamically predict the full year based on each month’s results; an annual “Activity Matrix” that allows rainmakers to quickly make time trade-offs across a full year of marketing activities—while balancing case loads; a “Marketing Engagement” survey tool to cross-check communication strategies; but the core of the program was to build on the existing brand and professional skills inherent in the Bagia & Associates’ organization.
Steven Grant, a CRC Managing Partner supporting the engagement, summed it up, “Brand coherence is a critical factor in the success of any marketing strategy. All the pieces: brand, marketing engagement, client experience, professional advice, must fit together and support the business objectives in a way that resonates with the clients. We were fortunate to find a partner like Mr. Bagia who was willing to combine a very strong existing value proposition with the marketing analytics and process methodology provided by the CRC.”
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