If you’ve been to Toronto on vacation or are a local resident in the area there’s no doubt that you’ve seen advertisements promoting and endorsing the personal injury law firm “Diamond and Diamond”. One of the fastest growing and successful law firms (D&D) have assisted clients and victims through various case situations and have successfully recovered compensation for many of their clients which have earned them the “Consumer Choice Award” for three consecutive years!
You may wonder why there are so many local ads promoting this personal-injury law firm and the answer simply put is because of the high competition between and among firms within the city.
There are in excess of 50 personal-injury law firms within the Toronto area and atop sits the Diamond and Diamond law firm with a team of 19 lawyers and growing and 1000’s of cases where compensation was recovered for their clients. However, while the advertising is a significant factor to the firm’s success, it’s not the only reason they excel within this business.
I was able to sit down with Jeremy D. to discuss exactly how his firm was able to move ahead of the personal injury pack.
Your firm Diamond and Diamond has incredible leadership and results. Can you walk us through where it all started for you?
We’re known for fighting hard for our clients, but when they first launched no one knew who we were. I knew that I wanted to reach the top so that I could help as many clients as possible, and to do that, I needed to be able to keep up with the fierce competition in the city. When we first launched, there were many firms out there, but the marketing strategies were by no means at the level they are today in any of the firms.
We focused on building a strong reputation with our clients and that definitely helped for word-of-mouth.
I think it’s fair to say you have a dominating approach to marketing. What are your thoughts on the current state of personal injury advertising?
When we first opened our doors as Diamond and Diamond, the marketing boom for personal injury lawyers was just about to begin in Canada. In the United States, law firm marketing was already an intense battle as firms fought for commercial spots, magazine ads, and sports sponsorships. We knew Canada would soon be joining the fray as well since The Law Society of Upper Canada had recently removed regulations against Canadian law firms advertising in anything more than a newspaper.
Today, it feels sort of hectic. There’s advertising everywhere and it takes an entire department to keep up with the industry. We’ve enjoyed the process however and have had a lot of fun marketing ourselves.
How did you get started with marketing Diamond and Diamond?
I feel like we’ve always had an intuition for industry trends and we knew that our firm would need to not only be in the mix of marketing activities but also on the forefront in order to take the center stage in the market. We wanted to have first mover advantage on our side.
We tried to be creative when we began and aimed for easy places to advertise the firm that would be in front of everyone’s eyes. We put advertising on public benches, on the side of buildings, and on public transport so that no matter where you went in the city, you couldn’t miss them.
What do you find is the most important thing when it comes to marketing?
It’s definitely having a clear message. We feel that we understand our client’s needs and so our goal is to get that across as effectively as possible. We have a consistent message to fight for clients against the big insurance companies who treat them unfairly. It’s wrong the way that big companies bully people, so we developed services to help people who need proper representation. We have built a reputation on this message so everyone knows we are willing to take on their case and fight for justice.
Not only are you marketing yourselves in Toronto, but you also have a strategic digital marketing plan. What does that strategy look like?
Well, it’s mostly searching engine optimization and tools like Google Adwords. The internet is a goldmine for potential clients because when people want a personal injury lawyer, they don’t go to the phone book anymore. They go to Google. We want Diamond and Diamond be the first search result when they search for someone to take on their case. We also have a website with a lot of information and a blog to help people learn more about who we are. Our firm was recently featured in Forbes; one of the largest news publishers in the world.
At the beginning of the interview, you mentioned how you wanted to get a good reputation among your clients. How important is the customer experience to you?
It’s the most important factor for our firm. When a customer is coming to us, it’s typically due to an uncomfortable situation because it’s, of course, a legal matter. The majority of our clients have never needed legal assistance like this before so it’s important that they feel at ease. We work hard to make sure our clients do not feel alone and most importantly, that they feel safe.
We make sure they know they can win.
What challenges have you faced in a market that is so crowded?
Every day brings new challenges but that’s sort of the thrill of running your own firm. Staying ahead of industry trends is always challenging because it’s a game of risk. You make a move, but you don’t know what could happen to you next. You may enlist one marketing strategy to gain first mover advantage, but then you end up striking out. There’s a lot of trial and error in it.
You’ve grown extensively across Ontario and I’ve heard you have plans for expanding across the rest of Canada. What’s driving you?
There have been a lot of things that have surprised me since we launched Diamond and Diamond such as how much we have scaled over time. We now have more than a dozen offices in the greater Ontario region and that’s taken the time to adjust to. When we first launched with one office, it would have been so hard to imagine where are now and how quickly we’ve grown.
Honestly, what I believe to be responsible for our growth and success is our eagerness to help clients. We love representing clients in small and big claims because we feel like we’re sticking up for the little guy and it helps us sleep easy at night. I think there’s something to be said for doing what one can to help their community and that’s what we’re trying to do too, it’s just that our community is our country of Canada. We have plans to expand, but the markets out west are a bit different than the one’s here in the east, so there’s going to be an adjustment period. We’re excited about the challenge though.
What do you think the future has in store?
I think the future has a lot of good things in store for our firm. We continue to recruit the highest talent among lawyers in the industry and we consistently get high praise from our clients who have enjoyed our services. With our expansion, we hope to help a lot more people in Canada so that we can not only become the number one personal law firm in Toronto but in the whole country.
I’d like to thank Jeremy Diamond for talking with us today about his firm’s impressive growth over the years into the mega-success it is today. Jeremy D. is known for his firm’s aggressive approach to marketing in addition to successfully winning cases which has gained him much notoriety in Toronto and has made Diamond and Diamond a household name.
