I often receive the same questions from the partner or solicitor charged with responsibility for marketing which says:
How do I persuade the partners to let me try new marketing initiatives when they say that everything they have tried before has failed and they do not believe they should be doing any marketing anymore.
Answer
First, I see and hear this all of the time, so if this applies to you, you are certainly not alone. It usually comes from many years of being ‘hard sold’ last minute advertising or schemes without any tracking or measuring of results (no treasure without measure). So it is not really a surprise that everything has failed. This is not proper marketing where you plan your target audience, choose the media and then ensure you hit the right message.
Therefore, the method I have used in these situations is to seek a relatively small budget to test two or three initiatives on the understanding that the partners will not intervene until all results are in. Ensure you have good tracking in place and let the campaigns run. If they work, go back and ask for a bigger budget to go again and keep going until you have autonomy. It takes time, is not my ideal method but it ALWAYS wins the partners round eventually as the results on paper cannot be denied…
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Your point is well made as usual. However I would say the real problem with these sort of firms is much more fundamental. It’s a combination of the inherent conservatism of most law firm partners, allied to their inability to grasp the basics of business and the partnership structure itself. A quick fix – delegate responsibility, within predefined limits, for all marketing decisions to what our marketing partner or marketing committee. The long-term solution — ditch or sideline the partners who don’t understand business. I didn’t say it was easy!