Most firms understand the value of having their lawyers market: they just don’t know how to make it happen. So, they rely on the lawyers. They create a marketing plan requirement (or tie in marketing activity with compensation review) as a motivator for action. Then they sit back and wait until the end of the [...]
The most powerful marketing is honest, consistent and meaningful to your firm and your target audience. Because of this, it makes sense to ensure that how we market ourselves reflects our firm’s values, goals and differentiators. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. Some firms spend time in a retreat or hire a consultant to take [...]
If you aren’t preparing for every interaction with a client or prospect, you may be wasting your time and theirs. Here’s some food for thought on lunches and other planned client interactions. Lawyers who “do lunch” do so because it seems like part of a healthy marketing strategy. And it is. But just showing up [...]
Ideally, a law firm’s marketing plan and budget would have been set last quarter. Got those who are late in starting this process, or who don’t know how to do it, here’s a guide. In a perfect world, you would start assessing your current year’s productivity against the year’s plan in August or September of [...]
While law firms are generally comprised of intelligent, multi-talented individuals, there will always be the need for law firms to hire some outside service providers. Yet law firms are not known for being particularly good managers of these providers. It might be a good New Year’s resolution to improve your ability to manage these services. [...]
Most firms are under-utilizing one of the most effective marketing tools of their future: their Associates. This results in increased pressure on the rest of the firm to build business and may potentially jeopardize a firm’s stability in the future. Law firms need Associates to step up and market, for everyone’s sake. To steal from [...]
Most businesses – especially law firms – must market to some degree. And they do. They have a website. They print business cards. They make sure the logo is used on tombstone ads and sponsorship programs. Law firms do spend some money on marketing, and some of their lawyers even spend time on marketing – [...]
I often get asked “what kind of marketing should we do?” Or I’m asked to “just provide us with a bunch of great marketing ideas”. No time spent determining what the firm wants to look like in the future. No proper assessment of where they are today. No indication of what success would look like. [...]
Client teams may be one of the most powerful business development tools at your disposal, but are an oxymoron to most lawyers. As a profession, lawyers aren’t usually known for being team players. By nature, they are individual thinkers and doers. They like their autonomy, and tend to feel that too many rules restrict their [...]
Many firms include a marketing section in their plan and budget. But what they really mean is marketing and business development (or sales). They are two different functions, and if you don’t understand the difference, you might not be getting the results you would like from your marketing initiatives. So before you determine your marketing [...]