Miguel works for a law firm that employs 10 lawyers. He has been tasked to run communications on behalf of his firm. During team brainstorming sessions they often come up with many new marketing ideas. 🤯

Although this is nice and he feels energized after each brainstorming session, the challenge he faces most of the time is that these ideas end up not being implemented. When he presents a concrete plan to invest time and money in one of those ideas, there is rarely a green light from the board. There is always an excuse to delay the action for another time.

One cause of this problem is the natural governance process inside law firms having many partners in the top (not a single boss) & thus having different views on how to communicate and do business development.

I somehow empathize with Miguel’s law firm, I understand the situation. In today’s volatile and uncertain world it is really difficult to choose an appropriate communication channel or strategy. It’s a tough decision. This post is about helping you to make the decision making process a bit less difficult, based less on intuition, but rather on data.

Try to be different

I was once told by the Eubelius‘ head of communication that when it comes to law firms’ communication, they are all copying each other = They lack creativity.

This is the opposite of what you should be doing. You should start thinking about true difference – finding the tactics and spaces where not some many firms are yet present.

Looking at that empty white spot might give you a predatory advantage over the competition.

Far too many law firms focus on the same channels (see table at the end)

What are the channels that are the most saturated or used by your competitors? Try to be different

Try to focus on fewer channels

You should never try to do all. The challenge is to find the one that will work the best for you and, once you find it, put 100% of your resources on it. It’s all about doing what works – not what you think should work, or what your peers approve.

A method to find what works

Start with a table like this, select all the ideas that come to your mind and list them in a table asking yourself questions like the probability that this idea works, how much will it cost, how much results you think it can bring and how much time you would need to run an experiment.

In the example of Miguel, he has 6 ideas in mind:

• newsletter
• videos
• podcast
• direct letters to potential clients
• publication in specialized legal journals
• LinkedIn posts with updates from the firm

Testing and experimenting are the only ways to find what works

Choose two out of the list and start to run an experiment. An experiment is an action that takes you little effort, but can get you far in learning and succeeding.

An example:

If you choose letters, count more or less 4 weeks: one week to create, one week to print, quite some costs for distribution and one week to evaluate how many people signed up digitally to your call.

If you choose newsletter, send an email to 10 people asking to subscribe to your newsletter. Wait and see how many of them finally subscribed.

These tests should be designed to roughly answer the following three questions:

1. How much will it cost to acquire new customers through this
   channel?
2. How many customers are available/reachable through this channel?
3. Are the customers that you are getting to through this channel
   are the kind of customers you want to have right now?

Once you have undertaken a targeted experimentation with a few of these channels, you need to choose one (1) laser focus on the core channel is more promising according to the data you collected through the experiments you made.