Abandon Ship! Swashbuckling Adventures in Digital Marketing

Caribbean Patrol is a Channel 5 documentary series following the life and work of the crew on board Royal Navy Battleship HMS Manchester, deployed on drug busting duty in the Caribbean.

HMS Manchester is a 141m long Type 42 Destroyer equipped with every modern convenience to make life comfortable her 220 crew. However, Busy Bee (as Manchester is affectionately known to her friends) is no cruise liner and is armed to the teeth with enough missiles, torpedoes, and high velocity cannon to take on even the most formidable ocean-fairing foe.

It is interesting then that as soon as the bad guys show up, and the heat is on, those at the sharp end abandon the safety of the mother ship and take to the seas on board small, light, and very manoeuvrable motor-boats. Manchester is a big ship and changing course takes a long time – a destroyer is not designed for close combat.

If you work in a large law firm, your organisation, like Manchester, is not designed for the close combat activities that characterise modern digital marketing. If success online is important to you and your immediate team, you’ll have to abandon ship for a more agile craft and venture in to the unknown to find out what’s going on outside.

Pirate Prospects

Law firms don’t normally design marketing campaigns with the goal of catching pirates, but they do hope to attract prospective clients and bring them on board where they be nurtured and developed effectively in to profitable clients.

Like pirates, different prospects will respond to different tactics; a show of force for one, gentle negotiation for another, and if you’re very lucky some might surrender at the mere sight of you on the horizon.

The Marketing Mothership

Your firm is your mother ship. It carries all the facilities that make life easier and provides the back-up that lets prospects know that you mean business. The machinery and of the marketing department can deliver you safely, and in relative comfort to the right part of the ocean, but it can’t handle relationships for you, and this is what the social web is all about.

The Agile Craft of Social Media

Much of what happens online does so very quickly – instantly in many cases – and the task of keeping up with all that activity is simply too much ask of a marketing department responsible for representing the collective view of hundreds of stakeholders who each have a slightly different idea of how the organisation should be presented to the outside world.

To really get a handle on digital marketing, and particularly the social web, it is down to individual lawyers to discover which tools are available, practice using them, then engage with prospects directly in highly personal close range contact.

Don’t stand aboard waiting for your firm to get social media right. Abandon ship and see what you can find!

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