Last week we discussed how, when it comes to ascertaining
the return on their marketing investments, law firms rarely, if ever, obtain
useable information Much of this has to do with the nature of selling services,
the role of word-of-mouth, the difficulty in measuring certain types of
marketing tools (e.g., brochures, articles) and the cost of the time involved
in implementing marketing programs.
However, much of this also has to do with some faulty
premises law firms make in attempting to get a true picture of the
effectiveness of their marketing initiatives.
The first of these lies in the manner by which law firms go
about interpreting results. Typically, law firms will decide to implement a
marketing initiative and then at some later point, assess whether this activity
“succeeded” or “failed” in generating new revenue for the firm. For example,
they will look at how much money was allocated for a seminar or an advertising
campaign, see how many new clients came of it and how much new revenue these
clients brought in. The calculations are easy to make. How much money did a particular
initiative cost and how much did it bring in? If the numbers don’t meet the
firm’s anticipated projections or goals, the effort is declared a failure with
the odds of ever implementing a similar, second attempt dramatically reduced.
What is the mistake these firms are making? They are assuming that each and every
marketing initiative they undertake exists in a vacuum – that the seminar is
the only exposure the prospect has to the firm, that the television viewer’s
only contact with that firm comes through the viewing of its commercial, etc.
In truth, most communications, and certainly most successful communications are
in fact successful, because the prospect has been exposed to a message a number
of times and in a variety of ways.
An individual who registered for a seminar may have seen an
ad or a press release for the event or perhaps even been told about it by a
friend. He or she then attended the seminar and came away with a positive or
negative impression of the attorney who made the presentation. After the
seminar, that individual went home, and in wanting to learn more about the
firm, decides to check out the firm’s web site. Then, at the first appointment,
while sitting in the waiting area, that potential prospect starts to read one
of the firm brochures strategically placed upright on a credenza in the
room. Thus, prior to actually
retaining the firm, that individual has been exposed to a representation of it
somewhere between 4 and 7 times.
It’s no different for the television commercial or the
direct mail piece or the press release or the Facebook page or any other type
of vehicle – including personal referrals from friends and associates.
Individuals can be and are exposed to a law firm any number of times. This can
work either to the firm’s advantage or at times, even to its disadvantage. Consider
the individual who meets an attorney at a networking event in which they engage
in a long discussion on a matter of particular interest to the prospect (first
exposure). When that prospect goes home, he visits the firm’s website, only to
discover that the firm makes no mention whatsoever of the kinds of services in
which he is interested. Here, the potential of a second quality exposure has
been lost. The prospect now may have some doubts as to the credibility of that
attorney simply because the firm’s expertise on the issue has not been
adequately conveyed in the site. In this particular case, the web site would
not have been the factor that generated the
case for the attorney (that being their meeting at the event), but it might have
been instrumental in turning that prospect into a client. The attorney’s
probable take away from this sequence is that their encounter didn’t go as well
as he had thought (and thus either that face-to-face networking is not his
strength or that the prospect was not a serious lead), when in fact it was the
lack of rich content in a non-awareness
generating vehicle (the web site) that was responsible for the failure to
close the sale.
To fully appreciate the importance of how marketing tools
are intertwined, consider a situation in which one is solicited on the
telephone to apply for a credit card the name of which is not well known.
Chances are the response rate will be relatively low. Now consider a telephone
solicitation effort for a highly branded card such as Visa or Discover. The
response rate will in all likelihood be considerably higher. Why is that? It’s
because the advertising has built awareness (and credibility) for the product even though it may have
not have directly spawned any direct leads on its own. In this case, the branded advertising
campaign served as a facilitator for the telemarketing effort.
Because of the misconception of measuring only direct
leads/clients, law firms then make a second crucial mistake. They ask that new
prospect “Where did you find out about us?” The individual then says something akin to, “I saw your ad,”
“I Googled you on the web,” or “I attended your seminar,” etc. The response is
duly noted and the revenue from that new client is credited towards whatever
activity was cited in the response.
What the law firm should be doing instead is prompting the new
prospect/client to, as best as he can, name all
the areas in which he’s seen, read, heard, learned about the firm. By
“all,” we are not just referring to outreach vehicles such as ads, mailings,
seminars, articles, pay-per-click campaigns, etc., but also to referral sources
– other firm clients or associates of the prospect, who may have mentioned the
firm. By capturing this data, we
can begin to get a much better picture of what is working and what is not and
as important, what combination of activities is working most effectively
together.
To implement such an intake process is where we come to the
third mistake that law firms make – and that is failing to actually have an
intake process and/or requiring strict adherence to one. The objection to
adhering to what really amounts to a one-question survey (i.e., “Check all the
ways in which you’ve learned about our firm”) is usually one of logistics as
though adding this extra burden to the originating attorney, administrator,
paralegal or clerical person would be unfair and cumbersome.
The net takeaway? We should not assume marketing activities
work in a vacuum or that new business is generated in a single direct way. Second,
ask the one right question. Finally, demand strict adherence to this process.
Next Week: The
Problems with Current Return on Marketing Investment Models
