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Marketing and business development are not synonymous. Both are important tools in your toolkit for building your legal practice. The important distinction: marketing is communicating one to many (an article or LinkedIn post), and business development is one to one (sitting down for lunch and conversation). Marketing is useful and effective because you can create once and reach many. But the connection between you and your audience is distant. Business development, on the other hand, offers the opportunity for deep connection with important contacts, but it doesn’t scale. So do both.
Earned marketing is more beneficial than paid marketing. You can advertise and generate opportunities, but it will be expensive and inconsistent. As John Wanamaker famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” A better way is to earn attention and build trust by sharing your ideas—creating insightful content for your ideal-client audience.
Do marketing you enjoy. Determine what form of marketing you like to do and you're good at. A useful analogy: don’t make jogging a central part of your workout routine if it’s boring to you; play basketball or tennis instead—whatever you enjoy—and it will feel like play, not drudgery. It works the same way for building a practice. There’s no single playbook—if you hate public speaking, don’t do it. If you choose to do things you enjoy and that come easily to you, you’ll do more of them, more consistently. And that’s key for building a practice.
It’s better to be known well, than well known. Marketing is all about staying visible and building trust with an audience, but the composition of that audience matters. It's far more important to be known well by a relatively small audience of the “right” people (your ideal clients), than well known by a large following of people who can't and/or won't help you achieve your objectives. Create for someone specific not the masses.
Know your audience and be consistent. Tune into the questions, challenges, and opportunities of those you hope to serve with your legal services, and address them through your marketing content. Also maintain a steady drumbeat. Build a body of work online that makes you visible. Keep making deposits in the form of generous content and wait for the compounding.
Have a process for generating interesting ideas. Ideas are the lifeblood of effective marketing, so you need to be intentional about pinpointing and capturing new insights. Consume a diet of high-quality information that will allow you come up with interesting ideas, and build a note-taking system to ensure they don't escape you.
Marketing and business development have a symbiotic relationship. The marketing content you create is an important asset for business development outreach. Reach out to your contacts via email and send them your insights. Also, have lots of business development conversations with clients and other contacts. Ask questions. Learn about their challenges and opportunities. Then address their needs—their questions and uncertainties—through your content.
Identify the ecosystem of attention of your ideal clients. Your target audience doesn't exist in a vacuum. They are part of an ecosystem—a network of information sources (publications, podcasts, conferences, etc.) they turn to for advice and insights. To make your marketing more targeted and effective, you need to understand this ecosystem and find ways to immerse yourself and your ideas within it. Join the conversation.
Experiment and iterate. The only reason the Wright brothers successfully took to the skies is that they crashed many times and learned from their mistakes. It works the same way with marketing. You can ponder the best strategy. You can benchmark what other people are doing. You can spend countless hours making sure everything you put out is perfect. But, as with most things, the best way to move forward and ultimately make your marketing soar is to take lots of action, review what’s working and what’s not, and continually refine your approach.
Do the little things well. Everything you do when interacting with a prospective client…it’s all marketing. Show up two minutes late to the conference call, send the proposal a day later than you said you would, spell the client's name wrong in an engagement letter, or fumble through your notes during a meeting, and you'll erode trust. Fulfill every commitment you make with a sense of urgency and you'll establish trust and confidence that you're the right lawyer for the job.
Jay Harrington is president of our agency, a published author, and nationally-recognized expert in thought-leadership marketing.
From strategic planning to writing, podcasting, video marketing, and design, Jay and his team help lawyers and law firms turn expertise into thought leadership, and thought leadership into new business. Get in touch to learn more about the consulting and coaching services we provide. You can reach Jay at jay@hcommunications.biz.