Making Data Part of Your Marketing DNA
Presenter:
Jason Kennedy, Operational Excellence Consultant, Calibrate, Inc.
Reasons for Presenting:
There is an adage in the data community that I love: “Analytics will not tell you the right answer; it will tell you the right question to ask.”
For too long in legal marketing, we have been asking questions concerning marketing’s indirect impact on the business. Questions such as, “How many likes are we getting on social media?” or “What kind of traffic is the website getting this month?” These are important questions to ask at a tactical level, but when it comes time to determine how marketing and business development efforts contribute to the success of the firm, deeper analysis is needed.
Program Points of Emphasis:
The good news is that most (if not all) firms already have the data needed to put together a data-driven marketing strategy. A key component of this strategy (and one often missed in legal marketing) is making sure that marketing’s efforts and goals are aligned with firm/practice objectives. Knowing what the firm and practice goals are creates a “North Star” for the marketing team to follow as they both plan for and react to the coming year.
What does that mean, realistically, for legal marketing teams? It means your approach and focus could be very different depending on the goals of the firm.
For example, is the firm looking to enter a new geographic market? You might segment out your CRM contacts in that market, run “who knows whom” reports for relationships in that market, assist the HR group with lateral recruiting needs in that market, and even put together web/social analytics about the types of content that are resonating in that market currently.
Another example: how can the firm take advantage of organic growth, or growth from your existing client base? This time you would be segmenting your CRM by client contacts, then combining billing data with who knows whom reports to find cross-selling opportunities. You could look at email marketing engagement for client contacts to identify any areas of interest outside of the practices with whom they are currently working.
These are but a couple of real-world scenarios that legal marketers are working through today. To go back to the adage at the beginning, these examples didn’t surface the right answers, but rather presented the right questions: Who are the people we should be targeting, and how do we reach them?