Happy New Year to all Las Vegas businesses and here’s to your continued success in 2010!

A new year is also a great time to step back from your Las Vegas business and assess all of your current online and offline marketing materials. Have you added products and services? Is it time to refresh your brochure, business cards or logos? Is your website up to date?

This is a great time to readjust things that might not have worked for your business in 2009. Consider polishing your corporate identity and developing new marketing materials. Consider advertising online to promote your website. Consider building partnerships with companies that offer complimentary products and services.

This is a good time to commit yourself to getting out into the Las Vegas community and meeting other business professionals in Las Vegas. You’ll have the time to hear about other companies and businesses and perhaps learn from what they are doing and what has worked for them. It’s also an opportunity to promote your own businesses products and services.

Any way you look at it, you should take the time this week to write down 10 new marketing and business goals and execute one each month of the new year! 2010 should become your year to grow!

Marketing A Law Firm in Las Vegas - The Importance of Marketing

In any kind of sales, competition determines market share of clients. In the legal field, where competition for business is cutting edge, marketing a law firm is exceedingly important. Even in locations where competition for business is minimal, solid marketing strategies can make a difference to a successful practice.

Planning a Marketing Campaign for Law Firms in Las Vegas

Some law firms are involved in general practice, incorporating more than one area of law. Or, practices may be specific. In either case, planning a marketing strategy is key to establishing law firm reputation as well as to promote new clients. One factor that shouldn’t be overlooked is “Word of Mouth”. Often, this is the best type of advertising for marketing a law firm. Part of marketing strategy should include promoting referrals by existing clients. Another facet of legal marketing is image. Most law firms prefer to adapt the image of reliability, professionality and truthworthiness. Prospective clients are attracted to law firms they feel offer “individual” service rather than perfunctory legal consultancy. This is especially true of law firms involved in more than one type of legal discipline.

Getting Marketing Off The Ground

With law firms, advertising directs attention to details of the practice as well as to collective experience and background of firm lawyers. Plan an advertising campaign that will format firm branding far into the future. This may include a broad promotion in newspapers, magazines, legal newsletters and magazines and internet marketing via a law firm website. The website should reflect the intent of the services clearly and in a concise manner. In addition, it’s a good idea to provide information about the firm’s lawyers. The most excellent branding occurs when uniformity is maintained throughout advertising, marketing materials such as letterhead, envelopes, business cards and brochures outlining services. These should bear a professional logo that incorporates law firm image with an eye-catching appeal. Logos are singularly important to any business and is an identifying feature in branding. It should be used in all facets of business promotion. This is especially true whenever new services are to be marketed. Adopting a creatively designed logo project’s the firm’s name for fastest public recognition.

Professional Marketing Consultants

For the sake of expediency, marketing consultants do the work of planning advertising campaigns, arranging for logo design, business cards and letterhead, and assisting with website design and planning. For new law firms, it’s helpful to take advantage of professional Las Vegas marketing consultants. Ideally, a law firm website should be interactive so it will encourage client contact. Create an interactive website to best advantage by making it user friendly, including search engine optimization features. The measure of importance of marketing a law firm should be a business priority.

There are many things to consider when starting a new business or company in Las Vegas and many things to consider if you want your business to be successful.  Business licenses, insurance, legal services, sourcing an office space, hiring and last but certainly not least, marketing materials to help market your new business.  Marketing is often an important factor that the beginning business person tends to overlook. Be aware that if you aren’t thinking about marketing from the beginning, your competitors throughout town already are.

Professionally designed and well-thought out marketing materials will give you instant credibility when searching for new customers and clients. Remember, your marketing materials are most likely a potential customers first impression for your new Las Vegas business, and as you know, first impressions are EVERYTHING.

Marketing Materials Your New Business Must Have:

Business Cards
A professionally designed business card, printed well, will be hugely important in helping establish credibility and market your company. Leave some sort of white space on the front or back of the card and make sure you can write on it with a pen without it smearing as potential customers sometimes write notes on your business card after meeting you.

Website
Many Las Vegas businesses often overlook the importance of a professional looking website, well written, well maintained. A website is as critical as having a business card. Potential clients will visit your website in researching your company. The key is to have it look and sound as professional as possible.

Stationery
Again, when corresponding with potential clients, a professional stationery including letterhead, envelopes and labels can really help your business credibility.

Brochure or Flyer
You also need some type of printed leave-behind when meeting with prospective clients. Some sort of trifold brochure or flyer that describes your company’s products and services and why they need to hire you to help them. Of course, they should be professionally designed.

All of the above marketing materials should be designed so that they all look like the come from the same company. This is known as corporate identity. A consistency across the board in using the same logo, fonts, colors and images creates a polished and professional corporate identity for your new Las Vegas business.

For more information or assistance with creating the above marketing materials, visit www.perkolate.com, my company’s website:

• Las Vegas Web Design Services
• Las Vegas Graphic Design Services
• Las Vegas Website Hosting and Domain Registration
• Las Vegas Marketing Services
• Las Vegas Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Different colors carry different psychological meanings and impacts. They can affect your mind and the way you think and feel. 

With this in mind, you should choose the color for your logo, website and all of your marketing materials carefully. It has been my experience in Las Vegas that most small business and even medium-sized companies clearly don’t take this into account. In doing so, you’ll be able to keep ahead of your competition and look more professional and polished and you’ll be able to narrow down your choices for color much more easily.

So what do colors mean, both positively and negatively?

Blue

• power and success
• trustworthiness
• peace and harmony
• conservatism and idealism
• reliable and stable
• professionalism

A logo can make or break your new business.

A logo is most often the single most identifiable representation of your business and in Las Vegas, creditiblity is key. Your logo appears on your business cards, stationery, letterhead, envelopes, forms, collateral, website, email signature, maybe even on trucks and signage. It represents everything your company stands for, the tone, your products and services, your professionalism.

Many smaller companies make the mistake of not having a solid professionally designed logo for their business. Or worse, they use different logos for different marketing materials, or change the colors, fonts, styles, and more. This creates an inconsistent image in your customer’s and potential customer’s minds. It detracts from your professional identity. 

With this in mind, you should ask yourself the following when evaluating your current company logo:

• Is your logo professionally designed and used consistently across any and all marketing materials?
• Does the look and feel of your logo represent your company in the best possible manner?
• Do you feel that your logo separates you from your competition?
• Does your logo provide that invaluable “first impression”?
• Does your logo speak directly to your target market?
• Do you feel that your logo makes you look more established and bigger than your competitors?