This is the third and final post in this series. The first segment can be found here, and the second post can be found here.

In the previous posts, I focused on how being too close to the business and how time/priority limitations both pose serious challenges for many legal service providers. In this final post, I’ll concentrate on the infrastructure necessary for measuring results.

Marketing is more science than art. In the legal vertical it’s not about winning awards for the best (read pretty) artwork, nor the company that throws the biggest party at a conference, it’s about strategy, executing the strategy, and the end-of-the-day results. Knowing what’s working (and doing more of it) and what’s not (and doing less of it) is the key to marketing success.

Why is it so difficult for DIY marketing to succeed?

1. Failing to build a proper foundation

Creating an integrated marketing strategy that is appropriate for your market segment is commonly overlooked by DIY marketers. Looking down the road through to an exit strategy makes good sense even for the earliest of start-ups. After all, how many races are won by runners who haven’t studied the course? Whether it’s a sprint or a marathon, you have to have a clear vision of where you’re going in order to get there in the shortest possible time.

Identifying the mid-points helps you keep a check on the results and adjust both your goals and strategies. Knowing what you want to achieve and when gives you the tools to analyze and improve your results.

2. Lacking the time and/or proper tools to measure results

One of my early mentors taught me to measure, measure, and measure. It was invaluable advice then, and it’s even more valuable now. Most DIY marketers I speak with have little or no knowledge of or access to the metrics they need to make sound marketing decisions. Without them, how do you determine what is a cost-effective investment, and what’s not. Understanding customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime values, and how those costs impact your marketing efforts is critical to reaching your goals.

You don’t necessarily need expensive or sophisticated tools, but you do need a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve. How many leads do you need to get one sale? What are the best tactics to achieve your goals? How does branding fit in to the equation? All are important questions to ask and answer before you spend another marketing dollar.

The science of marketing doesn’t have to be a full time job, but it does require the focus and market knowledge of an experienced marketing professional. If you don’t have the qualifications, it may be time to find one. Your company’s success depends on it.

This is the second post in this series. The previous post can be found here.

If you’ve got plenty of time on your hands to develop and implement your marketing strategy, this information doesn’t apply to you. But, in my experience most company executives and entrepreneurs suffer from a common malady…there’s only 24 hours in a day.

How does this limitation negatively impact your DIY marketing?

1. You’re not leveraging your resources

Building and managing a successful business is about leveraging resources. Many executives make the mistake of thinking that their college Marketing 101 course qualifies them to do the strategic analysis necessary to properly position their offerings. Or worse, they hire a low-cost recent graduate with no real-world or legal specific experience.

Marketing can become a revolving door. Executives hire a marketing person, expecting them to know their product and service offerings and ‘hit the ground running’. Most often the honeymoon period ends early and the company is back to square one. Marketing to the legal vertical is different. Using a legal marketing specialist to validate strategies and positioning and help create a logical plan is a wise investment in your business.

2. You can only handle so many #1 priorities

Most executives I meet are flooded with multiple priorities. They’re wearing lots of hats, filling several roles, and let’s face it; they haven’t got the time to dedicate to developing, implementing, and analyzing a successful strategy and plan.

Marketing planning is an intensive discipline. I personally recommend to my clients that they ‘start at the end’. By determining upfront what they want to accomplish over a given period, we are able to develop strategies and plans to reach their goals. Having specific goals allows us and them to monitor progress.

3. Your marketing becomes reactive rather than strategic

It’s easy to get sidetracked with marketing:

• Sales are off and you need to do something to fix it now
• A call comes in to sponsor a new event
• Your competitor is speaking on a panel or exhibiting at a conference
and you need to be there too

Now you’re reacting. Instead of developing a strategy, creating a plan, implementing the plan, and measuring the results, you’re all over the place. You need help filtering the noise and figuring out what actually fits into your overall strategy.

To be successful at DIY marketing you need to make it a priority, find the time to dedicate to marketing, and have the expertise and discipline to create and follow a strategic plan. If you can’t make these commitments, you’ll be hard-pressed to succeed in fulfilling your goals.

This post is the first in a series.

For nearly 10 years I’ve worked with companies that sell products and services to lawyers. In that time, I’ve spoken with many executives that decided they either couldn’t afford outside marketing/business development assistance or they knew enough to continue tackling their marketing challenges internally.

Early in our conversations, when discussing their goals, they most often cited a desire to build their revenues to a size that would allow them to attract acquisition partners, or they wanted to increase profitability. And yet today, most of those DIY companies continue to struggle to grow or survive. They do so without a plan, and often market by the ‘seat of their pants’.

So, here are 3 reasons why DIY doesn’t work in the legal industry:

1. You lack objectivity

Let’s face it. For many legal entrepreneurs, your product or service isn’t just your business, it’s your baby. You’ve developed it because of a void you identified in the market…and if it works for you, it must be good for others. But successfully marketing and building a business takes more than good ideas and passion. It requires the ability to evaluate market forces with neutrality

2. You’ve become your own focus group

You’re the expert; nobody knows your product/service as well as you. Time and again, I’ve encountered companies that are so convinced of the benefits of their product/service that they fail to listen to their market. Plus, in an ever-changing communications landscape you may not be connecting with your prospects using the channels they prefer. Successful companies find a way to involve their customers and their prospects in both their product development and their communications.

3. Your personal preferences

An early mentor taught me that the only personal preferences that ever matter are those of your customers and prospects, not your personal preferences. Everything from messaging, to marketing channels, to imagery, to the use of color and type style must be geared to your buyer persona(s). Take yourself out of the equation and put yourself into the shoes of your prospects. Will your marketing appeal to them?

To summarize, DIY marketing won’t work if you’re too close to your business. You’re the expert at what you do, but can you honestly stay abreast of all the changes to the marketing mix? And can you afford to take your own advice?

In the last month Charlie Sheen has been grabbing headlines and airspace at a dizzying speed, and not necessarily for the best of reasons. Yet, his stock has likely never been higher. Consider that Mr. Sheen logged a Guinness World Record for amassing more than one million followers on Twitter in less than 24 hours. No less than a week after starting to post, @charliesheen already has exceeded two million followers.

It’s no matter whether you agree/sympathize with him or not, he is yet another example of how our society continues to become more and more social. In fact, I doubt he cares one bit whether his followers agree or disagree with his outlook or life style.

What Does This Mean for Legal Vendors?

Communications and marketing as we’ve known them for decades (including the evolution of email) is changing faster than we may want to accept. Mr. Sheen’s motivation/strategy for joining the Twittersphere isn’t important, but you can be certain that his future/former employers are absolutely taking notice of his following. I for one won’t be surprised to see his sitcom return to production.

The message here…if we don’t get onboard, we’ll be left behind. While it may feel comfortable to doubt the validity of social communication, particularly in the legal community, the world has changed and lawyers and the companies that provide products and services to them need to change with it.

If you haven’t yet embraced social communication, you need to join the new world order. But do so with a strategy…you can bet Charlie Sheen has one.

A recent post on BtoB Online reports that despite an initiative by the CMO Council to close the chasm between sales and marketing, it continues to exist. For example, a senior VP of product marketing at one financial software company was recently quoted as saying:

“Sales and marketing are typically out of sync or—at worst—are undermining each other. Even at very senior levels where there is a deeper ownership, there can be a less-than-collegial environment.”

It’s the same old story, marketing complains that the sales team isn’t doing enough to close good leads, and sales complains that marketing’s efforts result in poorly qualified leads or inadequate materials/support. Even in smaller companies where the organizational lines are blurred the tendency is for one group to lay blame on the other.

In BtoB’s article, it is suggested that marketing staff accompany salespeople on sales calls. I couldn’t agree more…there’s nothing like live interaction to help define not only the prospect’s needs, but also clarify in the marketer’s mind the supporting information the salesperson needs.

And What About Those Leads?
Are the leads produced by your marketing efforts the right ones? It’s not about the quantity, it’s about generating quality prospects for the sales team. It’s all about working backwards, starting with results:

• How many ‘qualified’ leads must you produce to generate the desired close-ratio?
• What is the persona of a qualified lead?
• Where can you find qualified leads?

Are the numbers realistic and achievable? If not, revise your projections…don’t pad the numbers with inappropriate leads just to make the first part of the equation work.

After days, weeks, and months of developing a new or updated web presence most of us think we know exactly the message we’re sending to our visitors, but do we?

Typically, internal groups are so involved in the process that it becomes difficult to maintain perspective. And then there are the other influencers (including senior management) that want to be certain their opinions are incorporated. What if you had a low-cost method for validating your messaging?

Problem Solved

In a post last week, Entrepreneur Daily Dose identified a new app that allows you to get the input you need to verify visitors are receiving the proper messages. This new app, called Clue, lets you quickly set up an interactive test, creating a unique URL that you can share with customers, clients, employees, and other influencers. It’s simple and easy for everyone. You’ll ask them to take a 5-second test, you’ll receive valuable feedback about the site…and best of all, it’s Free!

I tried Clue on the LVS website with a very limited sampling just to make certain it worked, and it does. The test is live for 24 hours, and takes just seconds to set up. You’ll be assigned a unique URL for both the test and the results. Simply send the test link to a group of contacts and monitor the results. One caveat, the test captures a static image, so if your page contains flash or other animation, only the initial image will be included in the test.

The Results

While Clue can’t help you develop your messages, it can certainly confirm whether or not they are being received by your target audience.

Creating or updating a website is often the catalyst for an in-depth analysis of your positioning.

Earlier this year, we wrote about our experience updating our website. Take a look at When is a Website More Than a Website? for the process we used (we treated ourselves as if we were clients) and some of the issues we faced. If we’d known about Clue then, we could have used it to help speed our efforts.

Planning for LegalTech New York is in full swing at many companies. The 2011 event promises to kick-off a year full of innovation as the legal industry continues to grapple with changes to its business model.

Practice efficiency, alternative billing, and cloud computing are just a few of the topics on the table. New technology companies are teeing up their product launches and long-time industry leaders are revisiting their offerings to assure they remain competitive. Where do you fit in?

Something for everyone
With 50% of the attendees representing small and mid-sized firms, and the balance large and mega firms, there’s plenty of attendees for everyone. Small and mid-sized firms are receiving more attention from companies that just a couple of years ago were chasing large law firms or corporate legal department clients.

Will you be ready?
Every year, I hear a handful of exhibitors complain that LegalTech is too expensive and they just didn’t get enough value from their participation. Inevitably some of them drop out and don’t return. Almost without exception, they are the companies that show up, set up their booths and wait for an onslaught of new business…that’s their mistake. Like any marketing effort worth doing, planning needs to go beyond designing and shipping your booth and ordering ‘chotchkies’. The most successful companies start at the end…defining success. They ask themselves:

• At the end of the show, how will we quantify our success (i.e. # of new prospects, # of meetings, client meetings, new business partnership opportunities, etc.)?
• What pre-show activities do we need to undertake to assure success? Plan your outreach to accomplish your goals…don’t expect LegalTech to do all of your work for you.
• What’s our post-show plan? Know before you board the plane exactly how you’ll follow-through on your new business opportunities.

There’s no better time than now to start working on LegalTech 2011
If you haven’t started your LegalTech 2011 planning, or you haven’t committed to your space yet, there’s no time like today! January 31^st will be here sooner than you think.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about how few organizations really commit to or trust their marketing efforts. Regardless of the size of the organization, marketing typically comprises a significant portion of the budget, but it is not well understood or respected by other members of the organization.

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard a sales executive lament that marketing “isn’t particularly helpful’, or a financial manager complaining about marketing expenses, I’d have retired to a sandy beach (with a case of Zinfandel)  a long time ago. At the same time, marketers complain that we’re misunderstood and nobody appreciates what we’re doing.

Marketing departments and budgets are usually the first areas cut during difficult economies or sales slowdowns, and they often take the blame when revenue expectations fall short. In order to succeed in the long term, marketing needs to be unified with every other department within the organization.

So how do we align marketing with sales, business development, finance, and even customer support? We find out what they need and support them. It couldn’t be easier! Treat the departments within the company as valued clients and partners and before you know it, they’ll be your allies and advocates.

One of my first challenges after being hired at Law.com, was to identify and then support the best revenue opportunities. After evaluating several products, I determined that Online CLE offered significant short and long term revenue potential. The problem was, Online CLE wasn’t selling and in an effort to reduce expenses, the product was on the chopping block. Not to be deterred, I worked with the manager of the department, corporate executives, and the financial managers and convinced them to test a different approach to how we packaged our CLE products. With everyone’s buy-in and a small test budget we set out to repackage CLE and market the new offering. Our first test returned such a positive result that everyone quickly got onboard and we were able to efficiently scale-up the offering.

Every day, we marketers write content for our organizations preaching how the company listens to its customers, it’s time we take that message to heart and take our own advice.

The definition of vendor – one that sells something*, is not a negative implication. Let’s face it, we all sell something! Legal Vendor is a broad category and I would argue one that includes consultants. Consultants are selling their services and expertise, but they’re still selling. And lawyers/law firms are selling whether they like to think so or not. If you’re not selling, you’re probably about to fail.

For over 18 years I have worked for or with legal vendors. In the early 1990’s we were often called on to educate audiences about the benefits of technology or conduct product ‘shoot-outs’, and then seemingly overnight vendors got a bad name in the legal industry. We were viewed as the bad-guys or hucksters. The how’s and why’s of how we got here are worth examining, but they’re probably not as important as what we do to change relationships between customers and providers.

How can we find a way to swing the pendulum back and should we even try?

I believe we must work together to create partnerships that are mutually beneficial. Every vendor needs to take an honest look at what they promise and how they deliver on those promises. How is it possible that every company is the ‘industry-leading’ or ‘insert your rhetoric here’? Attorneys and the other professionals working in law firms are a cynical bunch, they’ve been burned, their expectations haven’t been met, and they’re tired of the rhetoric…it’s time to deliver.

Can law firm clients and prospects be turned around to think more positively about legal vendors? I think so. When legal providers wake up and realize that their primary competition is internal and not external, they’ve taken to first step to success. Ask the hard questions:

» How can we meet expectations?
» Are we delivering on our promises?
» What can we do to improve?

The legal profession is dynamic and the changes we’ve seen over the past 24 months are enormous. Now is the perfect time for vendors to engage with clients and prospects to forge truly meaningful partnerships. If we start now, we can begin to change how we are perceived.

*”vendor.” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 14 Jul. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vendor>.

A few years ago while visiting my friends Jeff & Sue Pavone (yes, that Jeff Pavone) in Scottsdale, I was intrigued by a Zinfandel labeled ‘7 Deadly Zins’. Knowing nothing about the wine and unable to sample it at the wine store, I took a chance, rationalizing that if the winemakers could have fun with their wine, maybe we would also. At the time, I believe I paid about $25-30. We drank it and enjoyed it.

After my first introduction, I searched high and low, but was unable to find this California wine in my home state. A couple of years later, while crawling the wine section of Costco, I stumbled upon my old friend…7 Deadly Zins! It was the same wine I’d previously enjoyed, and due to its commercial success, it is now available in larger quantities, and at a much lower price. Now it’s my everyday vintage, I buy it by the case (for under $12/bottle), recommend it often, and gift it regularly.

It turns out, the name of the wine is really a tribute to the blend of Zinfandel grapes from seven different vineyards. It’s a big wine that is great with anything grilled or by itself on those evenings when a glass of wine is a deserved reward for a day well done.

While my selection method isn’t scientific, and certainly not recommended by wine connoisseurs, it works for me. On that day in an Arizona wine shop, I met a wine that was memorable because of its label. What has 7 Deadly Zins taught me?

What’s inside should be good, even great…but presentation is just as important!