Meet the Marketer: Bridging the Trust Gap
By: Michael Bond
Vice President, Media Relations, Blattel Communications
To riff off the Gipper, sometimes it feels like the ten most terrifying words in the English language for attorneys are, “I'm from the marketing department, and I'm here to help.” Why? Maybe it was a bad experience with a different marketer or a marketing director who promised the world and delivered little and was abruptly shown the door. The reality is that for lawyers at all levels, there is often a trust gap with marketers – and this can hold the attorneys, the marketing department, and the firm back from acting on marketing plans and driving business development forward.
Starting Fresh
If you’re the newly installed marketer at a law firm where attorneys have had a bad experience, how do you begin the process of rebuilding trust? First, start by being human. Introduce yourself at every opportunity you get and to every attorney and business professional you meet – whether virtually or in person. From there, be curious, ask questions, and really listen. Most lawyers are willing to talk about their practices, and teasing out professional goals is a small stretch. Key business professionals and support staff hold a wealth of insights and often crave opportunities to demonstrate their value. As you gather these nuggets of information, you will get a better sense of the firm, how its functions are integrated, and internal politics that may be at play. Take good notes.
The Difficult Ones
As you get familiar with the firm, inevitably, you will come across attorneys who are standoffish. Maybe they’re “sales averse,” or maybe they are self-assured and just want to DIY all day. And often these folks are rainmakers or otherwise VIPs – meaning it’s part of the job to get them to play in the sandbox with others. Regardless of how self-sufficient a lawyer believes they are, they will need support. It could be marketing managing a registration table at an event, providing a needed bio update, or completing a Chambers submission. Seize these moments and over-perform. If you take these small openings and do great work, the trust deficit will slowly start to reverse. Hang tough, you are a professional, and challenging attorneys (I’m looking at you, litigators) respect self-assurance and reward excellence.
The Time Sinks
The TV show What We Do in the Shadows features an “energy vampire,” a character who drains, well, your energy. There are lawyers who are super willing to chat and go into all the minutiae where there is little useful function for marketing. Beware these individuals as they will pull you away from your higher priorities. Be polite. Be kind. Move on.
On the other hand, you have a class of attorneys who are “Steve Jobsian,” without being Steve Jobs and possessing his vision. They have elaborate ideas and are always looking for marketing to take on labor-intensive projects. With these folks, it’s important to lean on practice group leaders (assuming they are not one-in-the-same) and other leadership resources to manage expectations. Marketers can get trapped in “Yes Cycles,” endlessly taking on tasks until time is so strapped that failure and burnout are inevitable.
The Established (and Busy) Partners
Some lawyers, upon laddering up from associate to equity partner, lose interest in marketing. This mindset creates a rot in the firm that can significantly hamper a practice area’s success. It’s often true that these attorneys have robust books of business and their appetite for new clients may be scant. They may even bluntly say that they are just too busy to market. It’s important when this happens for the marketing department to serve as the connective tissue between the equity partner and the hungry associate. The associate has time and energy but often needs ideas and direction for things like client alerts, blog posts, byline articles, and business development activities. Marketers can help be BD matchmakers and tap into the equity partner’s hidden or expressed desire to be a mentor.
The Associates
Associates, particularly those on the verge of going up for partner, are eager to market and prove themselves. Tap into this energy. Build personal relationships with this next-generation leadership group. Share your knowledge and espouse the gospel of marketing. This is an impressionable group (in a good way).
Have a Short Memory
Marketers, particularly in law, can take a lot of emotional body blows. Sometimes these are out-of-line and totally undeserved; sometimes they are fair but still super painful. A lot of legal marketers flame out and seek careers elsewhere. To succeed, whether as a new marketer or a firm’s new marketer, you must be human, acknowledge the humanity of the people you are working with, and above all, have a short memory when it comes to mistakes. (They will certainly happen.) Attorneys are trained to jump on little mistakes and exploit them for client gain. This mentality can be toxic at times, which is why marketers need to contextualize it (but also differentiate it from and never accept abuse or harassment). The marketers who succeed are poised, have strong voices, and stay in the arena. Doing so helps keep one motivated and ready for challenges.
Reinvent Yourself
If you feel attorneys at your firm perceive you a certain way as a marketer, and you aren’t pleased with it, change the narrative. Work to inject new ideas into the conversation, engage with lawyers who may have written you off, take chances and look for opportunities to impress – with work and knowledge. Professional growth requires a vision, intention, and actions but takes place all the time.
Study after study validates that marketers are a vital resource at law firms, and collectively, we need to operate with confidence. Marketers are not simply “non-revenue assets”; we’re people, business development facilitators, and often a driving force behind a firm’s sustained success. We’re from the marketing department, and we’re here to help. Really.