Finding the Intuitive Law Firm Marketer

It has been my experience that inside every professional services firm is an accountant or lawyer that has a benign talent for marketing. At least at the firms I have worked at it is not the partner that has that vision for themselves. Instead it is the partner who simply speaks from their feelings about what is feeling right and what feels wrong without imagining themselves a marketer on top of being a lawyer or accountant.

If you can, FIND THIS PARTNER! They give themselves away by making a greater balance of comments that are right on. They temper their comments by admitting it is, "just my opinion and I may not be right". They listen to discussion and try to work with all of the fact and feelings yet remain unafraid to voice their feelings on a topic or tactic.

The mark of a great marketer is an intuitive sense of what will work after all of the data, ideas, comments, and facts have been assembled. This innate talent can rest in anyone including people trained as lawyers and accountants.

What makes this partner so valuable is that he/she sees things from within the forest of BEING and attorney or accountant. They live the politics and cultural variances of being a principle; A part of the puzzle I cannot know (yet). This special knowledge can be a wonderful influence on what will work internally as we (marketers) struggle to make the message external.

Getting Your PR Right

Some might think the title of this post will lead them to the ultimate tips for getting media attention. It's not. It's about getting the right attention in words that will not haunt you for hours, days or months after a release is published.

A real-world truth we need to remember is writers and editors at publications we send releases to will not (in almost every case) publish what we send in its original length. They will boil down what we submit to fit the space they have. No matter how eloquent our prose they (writers and editors) have to turn 30, 60, or 100 words into about 25. That's the way it is. The ONLY way it stays just as long or gets longer is if they decide it is "story" worthy; And they are going to write the story. Not us.

So my lesson, my reminder of this truth started last September when I transmitted a press release about my firm's involvement in a very worthy cause that we had joined behind several other firms here in Southern California. In the release it included our participation as one part of many.

This week.... THIS week a publication ran our release (edited of course) and in its (publication writer) edited version it read like we were responsible for what this group of firms had accomplished. NOT GOOD! Now we are dealing with alienated administrators and MP's of other firms around a truly good thing we had all done together. To give credit where due; We didn't lead this group, we followed.

The short fix was to get the publication to issue a correction in the next print. Done. And some phone calls to bruised parties with apologies and telling them how we are correcting the goof in print. Done.

The long fix is to start reading my releases as edited shorts. I even have a reporter friend that I have enlisted (at no-charge thank you) to read my releases in the eyes of an editor. How would an editor take the release apart? What would they use and what would disappear?

When we craft our releases we like to shave the fine line of spin to represent the best messages... That line dissolves in the hands of a writer tasked with creating a 30 word block when we've submitted 120.

Lesson; My releases just got shorter and tighter. You?

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....).
Technorati Tags: Legal Marketing, Professional Services Marketing, Marketing, Business Development, Sales

The Big Picture of Law Firm Marketing

In the big picture there are two areas that marketers can focus on at a law firm, or any professional service firm. The first is creating or changing the identity of a firm and the second is helping what already exists to work better.

Creating or Changing the Identity of a Firm
This process is about discovering the essence of a firm, creating a brand, and translating it into look, feel, and words; It’s building what has not been built before. The tasks in this process are focused on:

• Discovering the truth of a firm and its people
• Creating words and messages that match that truth
• Understanding what needs to be totally different from anything prior
• Turning words and messages into color and images
• Gaining the agreement of many to how the firm is represented
• Introducing something new to the market
• Helping the internal audience adjust to major change and keeping the culture calm

Helping What Already Exists to Work Better
The firm is already well positioned within a marketplace with no need to change current messages, look, or feel. What is needed is an acceleration of effectiveness in the marketplace. The tasks in this process ore focused on:

• Improving relationship networks of partners and business developers
• Filtering and selecting sponsorships and alliances
• Mentoring and training of client/market-facing people
• Fine tuning of marketing materials and processes
• Discarding unproductive programs and projects

Every firm needs one or both of these things to get from today to tomorrow. Sometimes a firm can’t know which is what they need most just because it (the firm and its people) is too close to its own identity. It is up to the people in marketing roles to step outside the firm and see it as it is seen in the market, and then pick the right area to focus on.
Technorati Tags: Legal Marketing, Professional Services Marketing, Marketing, Business Development, Sales

Law Firm Branding in Bite Size Pieces

Refreshing the brand of a law firm is a daunting task from the outside. So many parts touching each other… everything is so intermingled it’s hard to determine even where to start. I’ve been fortunate to have done it several times with different firms and companies; A top to bottom brand refreshment. Here are the basic steps, in order, that have produced the best results for me.

1. Capture in words the essence of your firm – Hold group meetings with your attorneys (partners and associates) and make a list of one-liners that describe the character of the firm. From that list (it will be a BIG one) get them to prioritize and combine until it is under ten one-liners. Then, using those lines write an ‘essence’ statement that captures each one-liner in a congruent and relevant statement.
2. Create a tag-line – Boil your essence statement down into six words or less.
3. Create a logo – The logo (word, name, shape, or combination) will be a graphical depiction of the essence statement and tag-line.
4. Find the right color(s) – Often this step overlaps creating a logo, and again must reflect what is said in the essence statement.
5. Create the stationery – Here is the first large graphical project expressing the essence, tag, and logo. This stage also refines font choices and the basic look and feel for all communications materials.
6. Create an advertisement – even if you do not plan on doing print advertising this creative step is crucial for developing larger graphical schemes and nuances to express your essence statement.
7. Develop you web presence – Using the creative flairs of your advertising and the hard graphical rules of your stationery create the look and feel of your web presence. Here you can explore writing styles for talking about your firm and how your information will fit into the graphical styles you’ve created.
8. Develop your printed collateral and presentation templates.

While you are developing each step keep a large poster-board of everything you developed so far so that you can look at things collectively and gauge their fit.

There are a lot of little side-trips in this process… these are just the basic steps that have worked for me.

Technorati Tags: Legal Marketing, Professional Services Marketing, Marketing, Business Development, Sales

An Answer to the "Mystery of Connecting"

Today I am happy to welcome back business relationship maven Jeff Black of McDermott & Bull Executive Search with another of his "Relationship Story" insights titled, "Becoming Untouchable in a Flattening World". Here are his thoughts.

I’ve always wondered what the key was to why I connect personally with some people and not with others (besides the obvious - that many people are kind enough to humor me!). Is it "opposites attract", or is it common interests, or something weird that I don’t understand like biorhythms? And then I learned a lot about natural themes of strength in different people, and this helped me understand how combining diverse talents makes an organization strong, but it didn’t help explain the difference in connecting on a person-to-person basis.

"The Likeability Factor" by Tim Sanders (a big author/thinker for me – he also wrote another favorite about networking and relationships called "Love Is The Killer App") offers insights that help with this big unanswered question.

Have you ever noticed how a person can be extremely pleasant, but they just seem invisible? They might struggle with RELEVANCE - nobody seems to pay attention to them.

Ever know somebody who is pleasant and friendly but who always seems to be on a different page than everyone else? Maybe their problem is they lack EMPATHY – they can’t read what’s going on inside others.

Or how about the person who is bright, cheerful, empathetic, and highly relevant, but who feels they need to please others too much? They might have trouble with REALNESS – they may not be comfortable enough with themselves to be transparent and authentic.

And then, of course, you have your basic jerk that just seems incapable of FRIENDLINESS – they may understand what to say, may behave authentically, and may really read others well, but they just don’t seem to care how other people feel.

Each of these scenarios highlights one of the four factors that Sanders believes make up our Likeability – Friendliness, Relevance, Empathy, and Realness. Now I get it! I can see more clearly the differences between people, and can understand the success or struggle in my own individual connections and relationships. Sadly (but maybe not really), I also understand my own flaws in achieving Likeability and being consistent. My grumpiness and intensity is not all that friendly, my love for hearing myself talk is often not very relevant, and I continue to try to overcome a life as "authenticity challenged"…ouch, but the insight is so valuable.

Take a look around you – and take a look at yourself – and see if you may be able to understand a bit better why some connections seem to work better than others. Even it it’s a bit painful, or if it borders on being too analytical for your liking, at least it offers a re-calibration for us on a more damaging trait – Cluelessness! Might be worth spending a brain cell or two on.

Note from Bruce: Jeff Black is a respected member of the Southern California business community, fellow blogger, and a successful search professional for McDermott & Bull, Inc. a retained executive search firm based in Irvine, California. M&B specializes in recruiting difficult-to-find and critical talent for its clients and is the fastest growing executive search firm in Southern California.
Technorati Tags: Legal Marketing, Professional Services Marketing, Marketing, Business Development, Sales

Keeping Things Above Board

In the spirit of full disclosure I have added a disclaimer in the footer of MarketingCatalyst to clarify that this blog is an independent effort focused on my knowledge and opinion about the marketing of law firms and professional service providers. My employer, Rutan & Tucker, LLP, does not contribute to the posts on this site nor does this site link to their internet properties.