Marketing is not a bunch of random acts of marketing.
After reading Kim Rice’s blog on “How Can Law Firms Help Their Lawyers With Marketing?”, I just had to chime in.
The science of marketing, which is a combination of accounting, economics, statistics, management and, now, online technology, is a complex and fascinating field to which professionals have dedicated years of study. It is the science of trends—of both people and businesses.
May times I have seen law firms treat marketing as the party-planning crowd: drafting and re-drafting invitations like they are legal documents, creating fancy brochures (online or otherwise) and dreaming up one-off seminars.
But on some occasions, I have witnessed a few firms that have created an admirable alliance between marketing professionals and law firm leadership. Together, they create a firm vision, establishing a marketing plan to achieve that vision and then executing a strategy for its achievement.
This is terribly hard to do. It requires law firm leadership that respects the science of marketing and values the benefits that good marketing can reap. It requires a legal marketing professional that knows how to explain the importance of a marketing plan, then build a team that will execute that plan on a daily basis. Sometimes it requires the strength to say “no” to attorney requests that don’t fit into the firm’s vision. And sometimes it requires a leader to stand up for these decisions.
Marketing isn’t random at all. It’s a war.