Posted on 3 August 2011
Integrated Marketing, Practice Groups, Social Media, Thought Leadership
This is the second post in a six part series which looks at how success in digital marketing for law firms is achieved by matching tools and techniques to the personality of each individual in a team.
For me the law is more a calling than a job. I love the intricacies and details of my practice area and although I enjoy clients I have to admit that I often study just for the love of it. The book I wrote on my practice area is considered the leading text on the subject and you would find a copy on the desk of all our competitors - a thought that always make me smile!
My opinion is sought far and wide and I am regularly published in the leading publications for our industry. Although I am not a natural networker, I am well-known within my specialism and at conferences people often come looking for me. Because of this I’ve built quite an extensive address book.
Although I have a lot of contacts, I would feel quite uncomfortable reaching out to people I don’t know well without a good reason. I see marketing as a necessary evil rather than something I really want to engage with, but I do get an enormous sense of achievement when my work spreads. If marketing can help my work reach a wider audience I would probably put a bit more effort in.
Strategies for Thought-leaders
Newsletter
Newsletters are the primary tool of the thought leader. Start by emailing your extensive contact list explaining that you are going to start publishing a monthly newsletter and ask if they would like to receive it. Create a mailing list from all those that say yes. In marketing we call this a “permission asset” but you might like to think of it as a nice way to ensure that those you send your newsletter to really want to read it.
Try to plan your newsletters for the year ahead and write them in your diary. Include the topic of each article and give yourself a target word-count. You may like to write a skeleton outline for each newsletter too, this will give you a head start and help you keep to your schedule even if you find yourself suddenly busy with client work or other responsibilities.
Blogs
Many of the thought leaders we work with have trouble making the transition from writing books and long articles to the typically shorter form of a blog post. We encourage you to think of a blog as a form of sketch book. It is a place to write and develop ideas which might later become full articles, perhaps combined with several other post on a similar topic. They are a great way to get feedback on you thinking and they a very effective way of optimising your website for search engines.
Social Media
Thought leaders can make good use of social media as a broadcast medium. Don’t worry about engaging you followers too much initially; you are an expert and it is OK to be a little aloof. Focus on creating compelling content that other people will want to spread. If you have conversationalists or avid networkers in your team, ask them to help get your material out in the wider world. Services like Twitter can also be useful for monitoring your industry and providing ideas to inspire your writing.
Working with Others
If you are marketing a firm alone, choose the tools that suit your personality and pour your effort in to using them the very best way you can. However, you can multiply your own efforts and those of members of your team by working together.
Working with Presenters
Presenters need material and thought-leaders produce material. Share your content with presenters in return for subscriptions to your newsletters and credit that will help to raise your profile. Presenters can also be a good source of customer feedback that can help you write material that meets customer needs.
Working with Conversationalists
Of all the personality types, the conversationalist is closest to the customer. Conversationalists can use your content to start a discussion and can return valuable client feedback and ideas for new content based on the real concerns of the market.
Working with Veterans
Veterans are a rich source of contacts and can usefully help to build an audience for your material. Someone who has been around for a while may also be able to give historical context, adding richness to your work.
Working with Rainmakers
Rainmakers are always making contact with potential clients and your content gives them an excuse to pick up the phone. Opportunities that don’t result in an immediate sale can be added to your mailing list, increasing the likely hood of future in-bound enquiries.
Posted on 2 August 2011
Integrated Marketing, Practice Groups, Social Media
As an individual lawyer the secret to choosing the right digital marketing tactic for your legal practice is to choose a tool that suits your personality, commit to it, and sustain it over a long period of time. The merits of any particular digital marketing or social media tool matter less than the degree to which it plays to your own particular strengths.
We’re writing profiles for five kinds of legal marketer, and we’ll be publishing them every so often. Watch out for the posts over the next few months and see which one you identify with most. Once you’ve chosen a profile, follow the advice to choose a digital marketing tactic that best suits your personality.
So who will you be:
We’ll link this list up to the corresponding post as each profile goes live.
Posted on 22 June 2011
Integrated Marketing, Mobile, Practice Groups
North East law firm Dickinson Dees has just launched a new iPhone app aimed at HR professionals. Although several firms have launched iPhone apps over the past year or so, we believe the new app from Dickinson Dees is the first from a large firm to be aimed at a commercial audience.
Downloading the App
The app is available free from the iTunes store here or by searching for “HR Alert” on the App Store.
Features
The app splits content into three categories:
Calculators
A calculators section provides tool for working out maternity, paternity, and adoption leave, and statutory redundancy entitlements.
News
The news section delivers a selection of news articles by the firm as well as links to news stories of interest on third-party websites.
Directory
The directory gives gives the contact details for partners and directors in the employment team. There is also a directory of all the firm’s heads of teams and a third one giving easy access to maps and contact details for each of the firm’s five regional locations.
First Impressions
Resources in any business are finite and there is a lot to be said in reducing a features set to the point where a high quality product can be delivered. It seems that Dickinson Dees have taken this approach with their HR Alert app and the results is a fairly well polished app for the iPhone.
Closer Inspection
We tried the calculators first and were greeted with a sure-fire sign that we were using a law phone app - the obligatory disclaimer - which requires you to scroll through two screen of text and then click a button marked ‘I understand’. We do indeed understand that an app is no substitute for professional advice, but we’re pretty sure this information could be brought to our attention in a more elegant way.
Once past the disclaimer, the calculators ask you for some basic information about the employee’s situation. After clicking the calculate button, a timeline of important dates is display on screen. Interestingly, there is a lot more useful information available but users need to click a very small button in the top right of the screen in order to access it. Clicking the button flips the screen over to reveal a few pages worth of guidance relating to the way the calculation were made. The is useful information and we are surprised it isn’t made more prominent.
The news section presents headlines in a list format and is easy to use. A marker to the left of each headline indicates whether the story has been read yet on this device, making easy to identify new stories. Clicking on a heading takes you to the full story, or in the case of third-party articles, links through to the article elsewhere on the web.
At the time of this review, the most recent article was published over 2 weeks ago. Apps of this nature are most valuable when they are regularly updated, and we’d advice Dickinson Dees to ensure they have an effective content strategy in place to stop the app going stale.
The directory section is a useful addition and may help to drive some leads to the firm. We would like to see the app make it easier to find lawyers by specialism as those who are new to the phone would find it difficult to pick an individual to find their needs. This would not only help potential client, but organising lawyer by specialism also helps to demonstrate the range of issues the firm can help with.
Further Development
Dickinson Dees have made a good effort at building a simple iPhone app with high production values and useful content. Given that the firm has just relaunched it’s we’d like to see tighter integration and opportunities for generating leads and building a relationship with users. An example would be to offer an enhanced set of calculators to users who sign up on the firm’s website. Building a fan-base of anonymous users may well help to build brand recognition and get the firm on to client’s short list, but building direct relationships with named individuals is likely to results in a higher conversion of users into paying clients.
Posted on 23 February 2011
Branding, Practice Groups
Law firms almost always structure their identity in the same way - using one name and a single visual system throughout. Amongst large firms I can’t find a single example where this isn’t the case.
It strikes me as odd that nobody has tried an alternative structure, especially given the convention for organising firms in to departments and practice groups. These self-contained business units tend naturally to develop a culture and identity quite separate from that of the firm as a whole and perhaps there is an opportunity to capitalise on those difference by developing alternative ways to structure their brands
In Wally Olins on Brand
the author gives us three structures that large organisations typically use to organise their business units. We’ve redrawn law firm specific versions of his diagrams below.
Monolithic Identity
A monolithic identity structure is the status quo for law firms. Businesses use one name and a single visual system across all business units. Monolithic structures are perhaps the easiest to manage and each business unit contributes toward the value of the brand as a whole. The converse is also true where a failing in one business unit can have a substantial impact on the whole group.
Endorsed Identity
Companies forming a group are perceived either by written or visual endorsement to be part of that group. We occasionally see this approach taken in relation to marketing and information products produced by law firms, but rarely is anything other that the firms main identity used in relation to service delivery.
Branded Identity
In organisations that take a branded approach the identity of the parent organisation is dispensed of completely and each business unit has a visual identity designed to appeal to its own target market specifically. It would be very interesting to see a large law firm move towards this model. Given that PEP is often very high among small specialist firms, I think there is strong potential for individually branded practice groups to become little profit power-houses, especially given the reduced overheads and resource sharing that comes with being part of a large organisations.
Posted on 11 January 2011
Branding, Integrated Marketing, Microsites, Practice Groups
Yesterday saw the launch of yet another tech law microsite, this time by international law firm Taylor Wessing. The site is part of an integrated campaign that includes a dedicated Twitter account and sponsorship and content syndication to a new section of The Guardian newspaper’s website.
DownLoad, the name Taylor Wessing has chosen for it’s new site, is entering a crowded space and the firm will face stiff competition. Notable examples include Pinsent Mason’s OUT-LAW.com service which, having been established for over 10 years, has grown beyond all reasonable definitions of a microsite.
The launch got us thinking about what it takes to launch and profit from a practice group microsite. The following post is our thought on the steps firms need to take to ensure they get maximum return from their investment.
1. Stay Focussed
The aim of a practice group microsite is to promote and stimulate interest in a single area of the firm’s expertise. It is, by definition, and exclusive activity and that is the precise reason that such sites are effective. Don’t be tempted to let other practice areas encroach on your patch. Unless the content is directly related to your subject area, it belongs elsewhere.
2. Think like a publisher
Most lawyers are experts at producing content. Many can rattle off a briefing here and a summary there without even breaking a sweat. The problem is that, left to their own devices, lawyers often produce content that is skewed toward personal preference or the educational imperative of whatever matter they happen to be working on at the time. Publishers approach things differently. In order to stay in business a publisher and turn a profit he must asks the market what it wants and then produces content to meet that need. Think like a publisher and ask what your readers want before you sit down at the keyboard.
3. Work hard on the branding
The branding of a practice group microsite is a delicate act. Balance must be struck between the competing requirements to be in keeping with the brand of the firm while developing the microsite as a destination in it’s own right. Even grass-roots efforts built by lawyers themselves should seek advice on how the design of the microsite will impact the brand of the wider firm.
4. Integrate campaigns
As a rule, marketing campaigns have a multiplier effect on each other. That is to say that two or more campaigns run in support of each other will almost alway out-perform the same number of campaigns run in isolation. Microsites are the perfect tool to put at the heart of an integrated campaign being both a destination and a source of referrals. They should provide a landing site for press adverts, social media activity, and pay-per-click advertising and refer visitors to your branded research, events and main website.
5. Provide next steps
The purpose of a microsite is not to build a readership for the sake of the numbers. Every single page should have clear next steps that visitors can take in order to develop a deeper connection. Commonly called ‘calls to action’ these next steps might include: tools to share content, an email subscription form, event registrations, links to sponsored research, and invitations to make contact.
