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Strategies
08.08
V10.N07
The Journal of Legal Marketing
PUBLISHED BY
Five Keys to BuildingYour Firm’s
Marketing Committee
by Eric D. Altholz
Lawyers, like most people, want to see results and
want to feel that the efforts they personally expend,
not to mention the costs they incur, are worthwhile.
ost law firms that engage in serious business
development activities have a marketing committee of some kind. A strong and active committee – made up of the right people working in an efficient structure – will help the larger marketing efforts of
the firm gain traction and ultimately yield results. There
is no magic size or structure for a marketing committee,
and what’s right for your firm depends on your “marketing culture” and objective factors like size, budget and
market position. But here are five things to keep in mind
as you build your committee or consider how to improve
the effectiveness of a current committee.
M
[1] Right-Size the Group
A marketing committee should be large enough to allow
for reasonable delegation of duties and division of labor,
but small enough to be nimble and relatively easy to
assemble or poll for quick decisions. Our firm’s marketing
committee was originally made up of our managing partner, director of administration and marketing coordinator.
That approach worked for a while, but it soon became
clear that we needed to overhaul our Web site, ads and
collateral materials. We also needed to expand our marketing efforts overall in response to developments in our
local market and in anticipation of a planned strategic
expansion into a new geographic market. More hands
were needed on deck.
Shortly after I joined the committee, we significantly
expanded the budget and expectations for the firm’s marketing activities.We hired a director of marketing, and we
engaged a legal marketing consulting firm to help us with
our strategy and Web site redesign.With the added horsepower of our consultants and a senior-level marketing
professional on staff, we elevated our overall marketing
program both in terms of quality and capacity. Clearly, we
were moving forward.
More recently, we realized that the committee needed
broader representation from our stakeholders. So we
added two more partners to our committee: one from our
relatively new Boston office and the other from a successful, specialty practice group, which brought our total
lawyer count to four. For now, we think the committee is
the right size for our 100-lawyer firm. Any smaller, and
we’d feel even more overwhelmed by the task and not as
connected to the firm; any larger, and the group would
become unwieldy.
[2] Get the Right People (No Experience
Necessary)
As organizational hierarchies go, law firms in general are
relatively flat, and that’s the case for many reasons. For
one, partners – even those in large firms – view themselves
as owners, and there’s only so much authority they’re
willing to cede to management. In addition, lawyers are
notoriously difficult to manage: They simply don’t take
direction well. Even the positional authority of the managing partner may not be sufficient to get lawyers to buy
into the firm’s marketing efforts.That’s why it’s critical to
include opinion leaders and/or “connectors” on your
marketing committee.
Also, the lawyers you want on your committee are probably the ones that get out of their offices during the day,
know people in the community and remember the names
of the summer associates. They are also the kind of
lawyers who help provide the organizational glue that
keeps the firm together from a social standpoint.They are
likely to be very effective carriers of the marketing message, because of the status they enjoy in the social strata
of the firm and because they have natural inclinations
toward marketing activities. So if you are building your
committee or looking for someone to fill a vacancy, start
Reprinted from Strategies:The Journal of Legal Marketing. Permission granted by Legal Marketing Association, Glenview, Ill.
by making a list of the lawyers who go out to lunch a few
times a week, as opposed to those who eat at their desks
every day. If you have to, choose energy and spirit over
experience and gravitas.
[3] Measure and Report Progress
Lawyers are skeptical by nature. In most cases, they want
proof of a proposition before they are willing to accept
it, particularly if efforts must be sustained over time to
bear fruit. But there’s no use trying to persuade a lawyer
that marketing is a process that doesn’t really end, and
that it might take months–if not years–for the firm’s
marketing or business development efforts to prove valuable. After all, what’s the point of having a process if it
doesn’t produce a tangible outcome? Lawyers, like most
people, want to see results and want to feel that the
efforts they personally expend, not to mention the costs
they incur, are worthwhile.
That’s why a marketing committee should report both the
process – where successful marketing events could be
given simi lar attention to significant court room victories
or closings – and the outcomes (namely, significant new
clients). Specific and measurable activities such as Web site
hits or the growing number of attendees at an annual
seminar can help build the case that a firm’s marketing
efforts are a worthwhile expenditure.
[4] Don’t Get Stuck in the Weeds
Lawyers who serve on marketing committees typically
want to be involved in the development and implementation of marketing strategies (i.e., the fun part). Yet, ironically, the lawyers are the ones most likely to get the committee bogged down in dealing with routine tasks. (Just
ask any lawyer to review four lines of ad copy.) One way
to reduce many of these tedious marketing tasks, from golf
tournament sponsorship requests to routine ads, is to use
a consent agenda. Our committee now uses templates for
routine ads, press releases and smaller sponsorships to
reduce time spent at committee meetings reviewing these
kinds of items.
[5] Delegate Responsibility
The inherent value of committee work comes through
the exchange of ideas and integration of input from committee members, but that doesn’t mean that every aspect
of each project must be dealt with as a group. A wellstructured committee will delegate projects to individual
committee members or a task force. This can make for
more expeditious progress on certain projects and assure
that committee members stay fully engaged on an individual level. A project identified for task force work (such
as the development of a crisis communications plan) may
even create an opportunity to get non-committee members involved, which in turn will get more people within
the firm directly engaged in the marketing effort.
Business development efforts at any law firm are likely to
be an evolving process sustained over time, and a dynamic marketing committee is clearly a key component of
that process. With patience, persistence and the right
chemistry, your marketing committee can realize its full
potential and deliver results. ■
Eric D. Altholz is a partner in the Portland, Maine, office of
Verrill Dana, LLP. He practices in the firm’s employee benefits
and executive compensation department and is a member of the
firm’s marketing committee.
Reprinted from Strategies:The Journal of Legal Marketing. Permission granted by Legal Marketing Association. Glenview, Ill..