If I had a quarter for every time I've heard one of the following statements about marketing, I wouldn't exactly be rich, but I'd have a lot of quarters:
"We don't need to do any 'marketing.' Everyone in our industry knows who we are and what we do."
"I've never marketed myself. I get my clients by referrals."
"The firm's marketing doesn't concern me I do my own marketing."
"This isn't really 'marketing' because we're not sending this newsletter to clients, only to other lawyers."
"We're too small to do any marketing."
"Marketing costs too much. We can't afford to do marketing."
"We don't do marketing. Those ads and billboards are tacky."
"We're not focusing on 'marketing' right now; we're focusing on 'business development.'"
These statements, and many others that I've encountered, exemplify some of the common misperceptions about marketing: it's a cost, it's expensive and it's a luxury nice to have but not necessary for financial success. What falls under the heading of "marketing" also tends to be understood narrowly communications directed only at clients and prospects, printed brochures or a website. Many people confuse marketing with advertising, which can be part of your marketing efforts, but isn't all there is to marketing (kind of like squares and rectangles, all advertising is marketing, but not all marketing is advertising). There's also the tendency to see "marketing" as separate function from and unrelated to "business development."
These outdated views lead to the prevalence of what I call "reactive" marketing.
Marketing gets relegated to the bottom of many lawyers' to-do lists (somewhere below filling out time sheets for the month). It gets short shrift in terms of resources time, money or both and it's often one of the first functions to be cut in times of financial stress. There's no marketing strategy, no marketing plan and no tactical implementation of any marketing tasks. Instead, any marketing that does get done is usually a reaction to random events a meeting with a client or prospect that leads to the realization that a bio or practice page is hopelessly inaccurate or out of date or worse, missed opportunities to bring work in or work that goes to a competitor.
What if I told you there was a better way to view marketing one that would actually make marketing worthwhile, even profitable for you?
What if I told you that adopting a marketing mindset was key to financial success?
Stick with me here.
First, we have to start with a reframe a new way of thinking about what marketing is and isn't.
At its core, marketing means thinking about your practice from a client-focused and market-driven perspective: identifying your clients' needs and wants, and then developing services and solutions to satisfy those demands.
Everything else that you do flows from there. You work to discover your clients' needs and challenges, and then position yourself as the solution. You move from reactive to proactive, replacing opportunity-based efforts to convince your clients to pay for your expertise with long-term, forward thinking strategies for shaping the legal services you offer to appeal to your target market. You develop tactical plans to communicate this value proposition to your clients and prospects.
Here's another way to think about it, one that shows how interrelated marketing and business development really are.
When asked about their business development goals are, many lawyers respond with "increase revenue." (True story: I once interviewed with the director of marketing for an AmLaw 100 firm, who gave me this very answer.)
Well, of course. But how do you plan to do that?
Are you looking to get more and different work from existing clients?
Get new clients in industries, markets or regions you're already in?
Expand your offerings into new industries, markets or areas?
To answer these questions and, more importantly, to execute on these business development goals, you have to think like a marketer.
You need to identify and study your target market: Who are your clients? What are they trying accomplish, and what legal and practical roadblocks get it the way? What are the emerging issues confronting your clients what's keeping them up at night and what's on the horizon that they may not yet know about? Are there other markets and industries with the same or similar issues? What opportunities exist for you and other lawyers in your firm to help these clients? (This is an essential question for increasing revenue through cross selling, which I wrote about in "What Your Partners Don't Know Can Hurt You.")
The answers to these questions will not only shape what services you offer your clients, they will help you determine how to best communicate your services and your brand value to your market. (For more essential marketing questions to ask, read my July 2016 article "Seven Reality-Based Marketing Questions You Should Be Asking."
Marketing is also a big bucket. In addition to your marketing strategy, it includes your marketing plan the tactical implementation of your strategy. How do you communicate your brand message to your clients and prospects to create awareness and visibility, with the ultimate goal of generating revenue. What channels will you use? What specific actions do you plan to take, who you expect those actions to impact, what do you expect the impact to be and how you plan to measure the impact (beyond "increased revenue"). Depending on how big your practice or firm is, marketing may also includes determining the best organizational structure for your different marketing efforts who will be to responsible and accountable for implementing the various tasks involved in your marketing plan.
When you look at marketing from this broader and more holistic perspective, it becomes clear that it's much more than a nonessential support function or an expense item on your balance sheet. Marketing can be a revenue-generating function that impacts the growth and strategic path of your practice and your firm.
