Best Practice in Marketing: What Law Firms Can Learn From Other Industries

Article written by Melania Wenstrup

Today’s successful law firms have had to adjust to change and to an entirely new way of new thinking when it comes to building their businesses. Attorneys are trained to look for precedence, and are not comfortable with new ideas or new ways of doing things. To lead firms to think beyond the law firm sphere, it is important to look ahead by finding out what successful leaders in other industries are currently doing. Earlier this month I attended the LMA Capital Chapter Best Practices in Marketing: What Law Firms Can Learn From Other Industries seminar. The program included three leading marketers from closely related industries; Director of Public Sector Marketing and Communications at KPMG LLP; Director of Business Development at GeoConcepts Engineering, Inc.; and Senior Marketing Executive at Merrill Lynch. What can we learn from these related industries?

Marketing group skills rather than individuals enables service organizations such as KPMG stand out in a crowded marketplace. It permits the delivery of a consistent message about the firm, develop a systematic and goal oriented approach, and strengthen the firm’s brand. KPMG has created distinct differentiators by identifying selected group experience and capabilities.

Marketers as relationship builders with clients. At GeoConcepts Engineering, the Director of Business Development (“BD”) establishes key relationships with current and/or potential clients and makes the initial pitch on behalf of her engineers. As a marketer, the director provides significant industry expertise and environmental consulting to clients and has become the go-to marketer for clients and the firm’s engineers.

Building brand awareness is an important part of service marketing. A brand is more than a symbol, it is a warranty, a promise that the service carrying that brand will live up to its name and perform. KPMG’s yellow rubber duckies as table favors are a great example of creatively building brand awareness and brand equity. The idea began as a way to provide something visible and tangible at their annual conference held in New Orleans – concert duckies. KPMG seems to have created power brand awareness with a select audience with a cleaver and inexpensive giveaway. The results were unexpected and people were excited about the giveaway. The following year the conference was held in San Diego and KPMG produced the surfing duckies. Everyone wanted one.

6 clients in 60 minutes is a powerful technique used by Director of BD at GeoConcepts to prepare her internal “clients” to take better advantage of business development initiatives. This approach maximizes the opportunity for the engineers to learn about the firm’s strategically significant current and/or potential clients with a 10 minute power point presentation on each client.

Qualitative vs. quantitative. Clients tend to evaluate law firms more on quality of their relationships and services rather than on the fine points of legal knowledge. As with most service organizations, law is a profession built on close, trusted, personal relationships. At Merrill Lynch and KPMG, creating strategic client and industry teams ensures the quality of the service provided to the client. It allows the groups to develop closer relationships with the client through ongoing work, obtain deep industry knowledge, and reduce vulnerability by building many relationships at many levels.

Article written by Melania Wenstrup, Wenstrup@BlankRome.com. Ms. Wenstrup graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in International Business Management and Business Law. She has also attended the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, where she focused her studies on relationship marketing.