John O. Cunningham’s definition of marketing is right on the money:  the art and science of what makes a firm’s cash register ring. What could be more important than a rigorous approach to revenue when times are tough?

While the swiftness and severity of the downturn caught most of us by surprise, by now everyone should be hunkering down for a long, deep recession.  For revenue, the buzz is that  “flat is the new up.”

I’m a Rust Belt native; operating in a rough economy comes as second nature to me.   Good-economy marketing won’t get a law firm through this recession.

To use a football metaphor, good-economy marketing is like a strong passing game that is overly dependent on the quarterback.  In a recession, your opponent is a team you’ve never played before and have no scouting reports on.  Relying on any one thing – be it a star individual performer, a sterling reputation, or a high-profile marketing initiative – is just too risky.

Recessions are all about the ground game.  You pull your team tightly together because they are the only certainties you can count on.  You discard the weak plays and focus on tight execution.  You improvise gradually, looking for an opening.  You increase morale to get high performance from everyone. You keep track of execution, confident that results will come in time.

Recession marketing, then,  is about strategy, teamwork, and execution – and commitment to all three.  Specifically:

COMMITMENT:  Now is the time for managing partners to reaffirm their commitment to marketing.  The commitment should be a source of encouragement and motivation for lawyers, not just another task added to their stress-filled days.  No long bombs (e.g., memos, one-time statements), but a more subtle restatement that the firm is moving forward, not backwards, on its commitment and that it intends to weather the storm with everyone’s help.

STRATEGY:  Now is the time to prune high cost/low reward marketing efforts.  Cutting costs without cutting activity is the key; it may not be clear, especially early on, what marketing activities “make the cash register ring,” so cost-containment is a good proxy.

Increasing clarity about the target market is essential to effective marketing.  It sets a firm up to use low-cost marketing tactics, such as Web 2.0 tools.  I predict that law firm adoption of these tools will finally catch on during this recession.

Now is also the time to strengthen the marketing infrastructure.  Activity targets, tracking systems, and regular evaluation are essentials in a recession.  That infrastructure will help a firm learn its particular pattern of activity that leads to cash-register ringing.

EXECUTION:  Strategy should flow through cleanly from marketing to business development according to a firm’s evolving understanding of “what works.”  Heightened visibility is useless without a sound process to get lawyers in front of prospects.  A sound BD “pipeline” is a must.  Friendly and effective support for lawyers is also must, from business planning to coaching on managing communications and meetings, to rewards for successful execution.  Tracking of activity is the underpinning of successful execution.

TEAMWORK:  In a recession where the firm’s future is at stake, everyone needs to pull together.  The best teams are those in which each person’s individual strengths are understood and blended into a high-performing whole.

Phil Jackson’s Chicago Bulls are my favorite example of that; even the idiosyncratic Dennis Rodman played an essential role in that storied NBA championship year.  There are so many facets to marketing that there is something for everyone to excel at.  Doing what you are good at is a source of motivation in and of itself.

Recessions are best used to improve the quality of the firm.  I’ve offered some strategies that not only will help firms survive the downturn, but also will position the firm to make bigger moves once today’s economic clouds dissipate.

They want to do business with someone they trust.  Creating trust takes time.

So that is what marketing can do for the lawyer – lay the groundwork that increases the presumption of trust.

Writing articles indicates that you have a concern for educating, not just getting paid.  So does teaching seminars and volunteering for nonprofit boards.

Networking gives you the opportunity to build relationships of mutual trust by offering help to others.  By helping others to succeed, one is repaid in kind, many times over.

Commenting on other’s blogs gives you an opportunity to help them be successful and build traffic.

All of these things, done repeatedly and consistently, increase people’s trust in you, and make the actual sales process go much more smoothly.

What differentiates the successful firms?  In an article on the Legal Marketing Reader Blog, lawyer and author John O. Cunningham argues that those who succeed shift from being firm-centric to client-centric, making marketing and business development the center of firm-wide strategy.

What is marketing in the law firm context?  I like Cunningham’s definition:

It is the study of why your clients buy your services, what services they buy, when and how they make buying decisions, what they are willing to pay for those services, what would make them buy more, what other products or services they want from you, what causes them to defect and what causes them to stay with you. In short, it is the essential understanding of how your cash register rings.

Business development, then, is

the means by which you capitalize on your marketing information and knowledge. …business development is coming up with a plan to win those customers and get more of their business (a specific strategy and tactics for winning the war). [I would add, implementing those strategies, tracking results, discussing what has been learned, building out success and cutting off failures.]

The business development plan provides a suggested road map for how to reach clients and prospective clients, how to win them over, how to build intimacy and expand relationships with them, and how to keep them amidst the turbulent seas of change.

What I like so much about Cunningham’s formulation is that it places the emphasis on action.  Transformation isn’t something that happens in conference rooms or meetings in the firm – that just continues the firm-centric culture.

Transformation happens at the nexus of the firm and the client or potential client.  It’s where the rubber meets the road, where ideas and theories are proven — and where the work is most challenging, because it is most out of the comfort zone.  The important work done in the firm to set strategy, build support, and create structure for business development meets its “moment of truth” when lawyers actually find themselves using the tools and getting results from them.  Those are the pivotal moments that create excitement and results.

Great rewards accrue to firms that embrace a marketing and business development-driven culture, Cunningham argues.  Success is motivating, and builds the camaraderie that holds teams together and prevents defections.  Success also helps move law firms beyond a collection of specialists going it alone to unified firms with a clear identity:  mission, industry focus, specializations.  That kind of identity stands out from more individualistic competitors and appeals to clients.

The shift – from what matters to the firm to what matters to the client – is at the forefront of what Cunningham sees as the creation of the leadership culture that will determine the best firms in the future.  The metric won’t be size, but fit to market:  The firm and its clients are partners and have an excellent working relationship.   Cunningham adds:

As clusters of law firms start to grasp these marketing and business development issues ahead of others, they will stake out a growing share of market and attract more and more attorneys who want to be part of winning professional teams that are loved by their clients rather than resented as necessary evils. These firms will conquer the legal playing field and reap the rewards of serving others.

The forces that are upending the structure of our economy are upending law firm management as well.  The tools to respond have been road-tested in business; now it is time for law firms to apply them to their own unique cultures and issues.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business of law.

Note:  See another great article from John O. Cunningham:  The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Law Firms

His research found that the essential skills and beliefs that make a successful change agent are:

• Patience in achieving their objectives;

• A strong work ethic;

• Strategic thinking and staging of priorities;

• An ability to understand [and, I would add, integrate] multiple perspectives in the organization; and

• An ability to build consensus and energize others.

Julia’s advice for a successful marketing effort emphasized a combination of top-down and bottom-up strategies.  From the top, two things are essential:  relationships with and active support from key decisionmakers, and a clear strategy.

But proving that the ideas will work is also essential.  He recommended starting with small, focused changes, because they are often successful.  Then, communicate transparently, openly, and in a regular and structured way, about the results.  Such a pilot program is essential to encourage broader adoption.

For greater detail on just how organizations change, Julia suggested running a google search on “the science of organizational change.”

The place to start is with the question, “How do your clients get information?”  It is a lot more efficient (in terms of time and expense) to use an existing communications vehicle (such as an established conference, publication, or seminar) that to launch your own.

Moreover, using a communications vehicle that is branded with the client’s brand, or their trade association’s brand, positions you as a friendly insider, not someone with “hire me” branded on your forehead.

So what does this have to do with integrating traditional and social marketing?  The point of integration is the client.  You want to ensure that you don’t just give a seminar, for example, but that the seminar content is available in the multiple ways your potential client accesses information.

Some of the tools:

SEO – search engine optimization – using keywords and tags that correspond to words your potential clients use and are likely to search for.

Web publishing – identifying the web sites your client uses and seeking out opportunties to publish there, including the opportunity to get and respond to comments.

Webinar promotion – offering ongoing presence through a combination of scheduled webinars, downloadable recordings, and live replays with questions.

Blogging – See Real Lawyers Have Blogs

Press releases – shifting to social-media optimized press releases that allow you to embed audio, video and graphics.

Twitter – Microblogging plus social networking, an up and coming tool.*

Plus the research to underpin your efforts:

Web analystics to track your audience, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reporting through Feedburner, Google, Technorati.

Engaging bloggers as a media source.

The mix of tools can seem overwhelming, but they really fall into two categories:  (a) what are the technologies involved, and (b) what is the potential client looking for?  Answering that latter question is what makes the rush-rush-rush of emerging technology into something strategic and doable.

The lines between advertising, marketing, and PR are blurring because all three now share a common platform — the internet.

The advantage to firms is the potential for a much higher profile by being visible in where your potential clients are.  The requirement to play cost-effectively in this game is an investment in identifying a target market and in the research needed to find that market online.

Existing clients should be the centerpiece of client acquisition.

The highest cost in business development is actually getting in front of the right person to have a conversation about their business.  With existing clients, you can just pick up the phone and you area there.

Many studies show the value of offering a free consultation with existing clients (on a regular basis) regarding their business challenges?  This may provide a way to bring others from the firm along, but that is not the major value.

You deepen your relationship with the client, inoculating yourself against being thrown over for another firm down the road.  You show that you know and care about the client’s business.  And you position yourself for referrals by showing how trustworthy and client-centered your business practices are.

This is business development — not sales, not providing legal advice.  Mastering that subtle difference opens up dialogue and is an important technique in any firm’s arsenal.

Chart by Jeff Dionese, ABA Journal Law News Now, September 2008

For business development, this is the wrong technology question.

Business development isn’t about how lawyers get information — it is about how POTENTIAL CLIENTS get information, and what you can do to get your message in front of them.  That may require learning some new tools.  Because Web 2.0 is about interacting online with clients, potential clients, and referral sources.

Take a look at ongoing research on social media adoption. The ladder describes a hierarchy of relationships to getting information online (note:  the ABA survey places lawyers at the bottom, “inactives”).

Downloaded from http://blogs.forrester.com, blog post dated October 20,2008

The ABA survey affirms that lawyers are “inactives” in this schema.  In 2007, 47% of American users were too.  But in 2008, inactives dropped to 25%.

Where did those former inactives go?  They became “spectators,” reading blogs, listening to webinars and podcasts, and interacting with company web sites.  Spectators rose from 48% to 69% in just one year.  Here’s the full picture:

Downloaded from http://blogs.forrester.com Blog post dated October 20, 2008

The interesting thing about this research is that it can be drilled down for specific industries and age groups.  One would think that all this activity is coming from Generation Y (as the ABA report suggests) but that would be wrong.  To quote from the Forrester Research blog post:

Where is the growth in consumption of online content coming from? From older people – the group my young colleagues who manage all this data call “middle-aged.” (Ouch!) Social activity is way up among 35-to-44 year-olds, especially when it comes to joining social networks and reading and reacting to content. Even among 45-to-54 year-olds, 68% are now Spectators, 24% are Joiners, and only 28% are Inactives.

Most law firms — your competitors — are not moving into social media.  But your potential clients are.  The use of these tools offers a way to gain competitive advantage and develop and hold on to a client base.  Early adoption still means something in the technology world.  The opportunity is there for firms where the culture is open to innovation in client acquisition and development.  Of particular interest to boutique law firms is the ability to drill down into online usage statistics to identify niche opportunties.

SWOT is a pre-Internet tool. It was developed at a time when the world moved much more slowly. It is a creatur of large corporations that had entire departments to study the corporation’s market position in depth.  Their recommendations became strategic plans that often sat on the shelf.  No surprise that in the recession of the early 1990s most of those departments were eliminated.

The changes which strategic planners saw at a distance back in the 1970s and 1980s are now our everyday reality: rapid communication, more small firms, a less stable economy due to globalization.  SWOT analysis captures only a portion of the information needed to steer a firm in a sound direction.

SWOT is not, and never really was, the magic bullet to success. Neither is branding, nor a clear value proposition, nor any of the other tools that populate the marketing and business development landscape.

As a football great once said, success isn’t any one thing, it’s paying attention to a thousand little things. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are four of those thousand things.  And they are four that need to be updated constantly, not just studied once and put on a shelf.

Listen to the client’s problem.  Restate it.  Be authentic.  See how and if you can help.

Whoever talks most enjoys the meeting more.  Let that be the prospective client.

Step out of your accustomed role of giving advice.

In this case, less is more.

And it gets easier the more you do it.