So you want to catch a whale of a client, huh? Don’t we all.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to land a big one, a Fortune 100 company, as a client? How would that change the game for your law practice, and even your career trajectory?
Well, Big Law lands these large clients all the time and does so consistently and regularly, and it’s not with some mystical powers. It’s the law firm marketing strategy.
What if we told you that you, too, could land the big clients like Big Law, and do so without spinning your reels or losing a limb!? Yeah, that was a Moby Dick reference. Our apologies for the cheesiness… moving on.
As a firm with rich experience working in-house at large global law firms that currently has a robust list of Big Law clients, we’re going to explain the approach Big Law takes to marketing and the differentiators you can leverage for yourself to improve your marketing outcomes and land your big fish client.
We’ll try to dial back the nautical word play. Let’s dive in! We said we’d try, ok.
Building Relationships
The first and foundational strategy we see Big Law employ differently and more effectively than smaller firms is the way they focus on relationships.
Big Law places enormous emphasis on deepening relationships with their contacts, often capitalizing on past connections like law school, business school relationships, or former firm experience. Lawyers at big firms are encouraged to bring their past clients and contacts list with them everywhere they go.
In fact, some firms intentionally and openly seek candidates with connections, even if it’s just to prospective clients – the heftier the Rolodex, the heftier the salary and position.
Why? Because often times, who you know is just as important as what you know.
We know, that sounds unfair. For many young associates starting out, it can be difficult to build those connections outside of law school, which is why Big Law places a great deal of importance on business development in their mentorship process with young associates.
Inviting green attorneys to be part of meetings, networking events, and highlighting opportunities to cross-selling services across their practice groups not only emphasizes bringing in new business to increase the bottom line of the law firm, it shows the next generation of lawyers how to do it and mentor others to do the same.
This is the perfect opportunity to mention the whole “if you teach a man how to fish” trope, but we promised we’d try to stay aways from those types of… dangerous waters.
It’s not groundbreaking news to read that spending time developing relationships, getting involved in associations and organizations within your client’s target industry, and showing up to events after working hours is key to a lasting career, but making those actions a pillar of how you and your firm approach mentoring your newer attorneys is. That’s where Big Law’s law firm marketing efforts differ from small law firms.
Big Law pushes the importance of making strong connections in their approach to cross-selling, too. Law school is competitive, even cutthroat. New attorneys don’t often realize that the jump from law school to the real world provides a shift in resources and on whom they can rely for getting ahead. Colleagues.
Big Law regularly encourages attorneys and lawyers to cross-sell to clients of other practice areas, expanding the footprint of the firm with every interaction. What’s this look like in practice?
A business transaction client who comes in for an agreement might also then be cross-sold to the commercial real estate group since they are looking to purchase new office space. This interconnected cross-selling network is what makes big law firms thrive.
Maximize Thought Leadership
In addition to lead generation and bringing in more clients, all lawyers are encouraged and expected to regularly produce for content marketing in some form or fashion in a Big Law environment.
This means producing client alerts, drafting memos to existing clients, creating and developing publications, and producing webinars and/or presentations for the firm.
Big Law demands of its attorneys a robust social media presence and articles to enhance the law firm website. Sound like a lot? There’s a reason they pull in the big fish. The result is that Big Law has a consistent and regular source of on-going thought leadership that it can leverage on all it’s social platforms, including LinkedIn.
Yeah, we said LinkedIn. Setting up your LinkedIn resume while job-hunting and then abandoning the entire platform once you land a gig may be standard for some, but those folks can expect standard results. Making LinkedIn and other social platforms an integral part of your marketing strategy means speaking directly to your target audience.
There’s a reason our Big Law clients clamor for our LinkedIn for Client Development Program.
Essentially, every lawyer in Big Law is expected to keep their clients informed of the latest trends, updates, and issues that may affect their clients’ business, and this results in a consistent and regular stream of high-quality content that positions the firm as an esteemed expert in all things legal.
In practice, this means you as a lawyer should be spending at least four to six hours each month focused on putting together some form of content. It can be a presentation, a white paper, checklist of best practices, attempting to publish articles, posting a video, hosting a webinar, or performing an in-depth analysis of how a particular law affects a potential client – whatever it is. You just need to do it and do it consistently.
Leverage Marketing Support Strategically
Every global law firm has a team of experienced marketing professionals supporting the lawyers in the various marketing and business development efforts they are seeking to achieve.
Having a department stacked with a Chief Marketing Officer overseeing a team of graphic designers, copywriters, videographers, and assistants leads to creative marketing ideas. Another way of putting this is: They have the right people sitting in the right seats on the ship.
Marketing is actually typically broken down into two segments in Big Law: business development and marketing.
The business development team is responsible for working on effective marketing strategy to build pitches, proposals, and help with strategic outreach in the form of sponsorships, events, and prospect research.
While the marketing team is focused on managing the communications side of the firm, they craft messaging, manage the core channels of the firm, such as their email lists, social media accounts, website, YouTube channels, and podcasts, and typically they are also in charge of managing the firm’s brand and overall collateral development, like brochures and marketing materials.
These are two distinct teams that serve two different purposes in large law firms, but are core to ensuring the lawyers are focused on doing legal work and the marketing professionals are focused on marketing.
Invest in Targeted & Purposeful Marketing
Because Big Law has decently sized marketing teams, to say the least, they are able to take all the thought leadership and digital marketing content they produce regularly and purposefully convey their messaging to their target audience at the right time.
By leveraging CRM systems, email marketing tools, and robust law firm website analytics tools, these Big Law firms can quickly identify what prospective clients or contacts are on their site, what they are reading, and what stage of the buyer’s journey their target audience and contacts may be in. This helps the lawyers be more strategic in their outreach approach and gives them the ability to reach out at the right time and right moment.
But these tools aren’t reserved solely for Big Law. These tools can be easily accessed and used by everyday humans with the right setup and configuration and can be found with a simple Google search.
For example, Google Analytics configured with Google Tag Manager can help you better identify and track how people find your website, what stage of the buyer’s journey they are in, and if you should be developing more targeted messaging – and these are free tools!
So, don’t think this is only something reserved for law firms with Big Law budgets. Install Google Analytics, and start making the Big Law moves.
Give More than You Expect to Receive
We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: Big Law knows the importance of touting and proving their value and doing so without expecting anything in return.
This means that Big Law and the lawyers that work there are taught early on in their career that investing in relationships, contacts, new prospective clients, and previous clients comes back tenfold. Those who are unwilling to share their expertise and humanity via social media posts, email marketing campaigns, and in-person meetings are those who lose in today’s value-driven environment.
Focusing on how you can help and serve others is an important mindset many Big Law attorneys have that you should be leveraging, too.
Now you know how to market like a Big Law lawyer, and it’s as simple as a shift in mindset that will change the efficacy of your law firm’s marketing strategy.
Still unsure about the best marketing strategy to generate leads that land you the big fish like a Big Law firm and know your law firm marketing strategies need to level up? Well, our team is here to help. We’ve worked with so many small boutique law firms and helped them shift their focus from small marketing tactics to big marketing initiatives.
Reach out to one of our By Aries digital marketing gurus and start reeling in the prize prospects!
