Selecting the Right Marketing Team

Related to my last post on the big picture of law firm marketing it could be important to understand how much marketing effort (person hours) and skill sets needed to accomplish either or both.

Creating or Changing the Identity of a Firm

• A good team needs a leader of the marketing effort that is a visionary. BUT, one that can collaborate a new vision of direction with the unshakable foundation at the core of what the partners believe is possible. Exceed their core beliefs and the vision will never see a successful sunrise.
• A creative to loose on turning words and ideas into better words and incredible shapes and images. I've had the most success with creatives that need reeling-in often. Someone fearlessly suggesting things way outside the defined box often take projects in great directions.
• An engineer to worry about details, politics, budgets, timelines, expectations, and deliverables. Without someone to obsess about the little things around large expectations what get delivered is lost in apologies and disappointment over simple things left undone.
• The right set of external resources (the creative(s) may be one of these) to execute from outside the forest. In the same way that we as marketers suggest attorneys may not be the best choice for all marketing decisions; Marketers on the inside may also get in the way of powerful insight and ideas.

Helping What Already Exists to Work Better

• The leader for this stage is a visionary. But now, one that understands the big picture is already defined and can envision all of the ways the big picture can be executed. And, the leader needs to be a "true believer"; Unstoppable in wanting a market to BELIEVE!
• An engineer. Still focused on the little pieces. The details that make things happen perfectly with no constituent left behind, hypersensitive to expectations, and aware that no process requirement can be left undone.
• Managers to work with groups and individuals to help make the vision come true. Once a firm has a vision everyone wants a piece of it. But it takes caring, mentoring, doing, at the group and partner level to help make that happen.

There are a lot of other critical parts like PR, writers, coordinators, and consultants that can make everything happen correctly but this is only a highest level look at the parts of executing on the two types of marketing effort needed (at least according to me....).
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