Law Firm Marketing and Business Development — Working as One Team

Lastest feature article on Legal Marketing Reader is a good one:

Getting Marketing and Business Development on the Same Page

Are your marketing and business development teams playing from the same game plan? For the majority of professional firms, our research and experience tells us the answer to this question is "no." Despite the fact that marketing and business development people are both charged with expanding their firm's client base, at any given time they may be promoting different services to the same companies or speaking about the same services in quite different ways-thus confusing their clients. They rarely know which side has interacted with each prospect, or when and what happened. This leads to poorly timed and inappropriate pitches. And many marketing and business development groups within the same firm use different metrics to gauge their respective performance. That can put them at cross-purposes. It also usually fails to give firm leaders a solid indication of whether revenues are poised to grow or shrink.

A survey The Bloom Group completed in late 2007 suggests that when marketing and business development are on the same page, a professional firm has a significant competitive advantage. By working in concert, successful firms' marketing and sales activities create many more viable leads. A much higher percentage of those leads turn into work, and much faster: they accelerate the sales process. And, our experience tells us, these firms sell bigger and more profitable projects.

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Law Firm Marketing Spending Is Up

Among the many findings of the BTI Consulting Group's latest study is that budgets climbed in law firms of all sizes in 2006. The largest law firms are dedicating a steadily increasing percent of firm revenue to marketing activities. AmLaw 200 firms are seeing a sharp spike in their marketing budgets as a percent of revenue. Additional staff is driving the bigger budgets. Over 50 percent of the marketing budget at the largest law firms goes to salaries and business development. Top marketers are making critical changes to staffing including: Redefining or creating new, discrete roles, and hiring practice-specific specialists to boost the firm’s profile in targeted areas.