Aug 22, 2023
Before stepping into my role as Director of Client Success at Pitchly, I worked as a legal marketer. Since a significant part of our clientele is comprised of prominent law firms, I've had the privilege of experiencing legal marketing both from within and as a collaborator.
This unique background has given me valuable insights into what it takes for legal marketing teams to thrive and achieve successful client outcomes. Today, I'm excited to share the 4 essential practices that I believe can make a significant impact on your future success.
Breaking Down Data Silos Across The Marketing Department
Data is critical to legal marketing success, and every team member across the department should feel empowered to capture it when it comes across their desk. Often times experience management is relegated to the Business Development (BD) arm, which is understandable since it’s a critical component of pitches and proposals.
However they aren’t the only team that interacts with key data.
Meaningful data can be captured during a number of workflows that require teams to collaborate across the firm. Several potential opportunities include:
- Creating press releases
- Processing biography updates
- Preparing thought leadership
- Onboarding new attorneys and clients.
Another strong ally and resource is the Knowledge Management (KM) team. In addition to being a rich source of experience data, the KM team will likely find the relationship mutually beneficial if they are provided access to search and retrieve data from BD’s experience management system.
Establishing a process to ensure various teams across the department are funneling this information to BD, or they are comfortable entering key information into your data mangement system themselves, will increase the breadth and quality of your experience data.
Key Strategies
Consider arming your team with suggested ways to make the ask that quickly explains what’s needed and why it’s important. For example, “So that you can easily find all references to this work in the future, we’d like to tag the client matter number. Do you mind sharing?”
The key is to ensure all re-usable data points are collected and cataloged for future use. These data points create the deliverables that serve as your firm’s highlight reel, so you can never have too many. That’s why it’s paramount to empower every team to gather them.
Prioritize Efficiency and Relevance for Precise Data Collection
Time is the most precious asset anyone has, so it’s vital that you get rid of any redundant data collection from the start.
Only ask stakeholders to provide the essential data. Long forms and questionnaires often dissuade stakeholder participation because they won’t know the answers to many of the questions or may have provided the information already via another system. Because their time is valuable, they’ll eventually make the decision that it’s better spent elsewhere.
This goes hand-in-hand with our first point, if they’ve already spoken at length with someone on the PR team about a newsworthy case, they won’t been to keen to speak with someone in BD about the same case the following week. In their mind, they’ve already spoken with the Marketing Department and moved on.
Avoid stakeholder fatigue by auditing your systems to identify what data points can be sourced from existing platforms beforehand. The less often they have to provide redundant information across various systems and teams, the more they can focus on providing only the most relevant data points, as well as increasing the likelihood of their participation.
Celebrate and Amplify Your Team’s Impact
Legal marketing often doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, with all of the glory typically going to the lawyers. As a leader, it’s important to give your team their well-deserved praise for the work they do. But in order to do that, you must track what’s being done. That’s right, your internal data also matters.
To prioritize what’s important to track, consider the high-demand requests most frequently received from your internal clients, activities that contribute to revenue-generating opportunities, and projects that are most impactful to your department and/or firm goals.
Key data points that you gather about activity should enable you to analyze resource allocation (i.e., what people or systems contributed to the effort and any associated time or monetary costs), and compare that to realized outcomes. Not only will this data help to express gratitude to individual contributors, but it will also assist in highlighting the value the entire department brings to the firm.
Showcase this activity at opportune times like department meetings, internal newsletters, or firm retreats so that stakeholders throughout the company understand how your involvement leads to meaningful results. Positive reinforcement goes a long way towards energizing your team, so toot your team’s horn whenever you get the chance.
Leverage Automation for Every Manual Process You Can
60% of sales professionals say that AI/automation tools are important to their overall sales strategy.
Despite this, most legal marketing teams struggle with a heavy load of tedious tasks, not taking full advantage of technology that can give them back their valuable time.
In my experience as a former legal marketer, most organizations struggle with connecting their data points to their customer-facing content – such as tombstones, biographies, or firm and practice overviews.
Usually, teams are asked to provide complete pitches and proposals on short turn-around times (some with same-day deadlines), so having a system that integrates your data with your design preferences can save a lot of hassle and free up time for the more detailed work.
Lean organizations especially would benefit from a platform that eliminates the hours it would take to manually copy, paste, format, and organize data that must be transferred across multiple systems, teams, and design tools. In fact, business development professionals waste a minimum of a quarter of their week on these repetitive tasks. Eliminate everything unnecessary, and watch the results roll in that much faster.
Empowering Your Legal Marketing Team for Excellence
With these five essential practices, you'll be poised to transform your legal marketing endeavors. These principles collectively pave the way for a more united, efficient, and impactful team.
By breaking down data barriers, prioritizing efficiency, celebrating achievements, and harnessing automation, you're not just optimizing; you're enabling meaningful progress.
As Director of Client Success at Pitchly, I'm here to guide your journey toward success. We're dedicated to providing tools that seamlessly complement these practices, enabling you to unlock your firm's potential. Embrace these strategies, and propel your legal marketing team into a future defined by excellence and innovation.
Boost your team’s efficiency with Pitchly’s streamlined data enablement and content automation.
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