This week law firm leaders gather at GroPro 20/20, hosted at Lowenstein Sandler in New York City, to "uncover the latest advancements disrupting the industry while engaging in proven strategies for leveraging thought leadership, talent, data and technology for retaining clients and increasing revenue."
We checked in with Mike Mellor, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Pryor Cashman, who presents an afternoon session on law firm content marketing with Sarah Kulka (Global Chief Marketing Officer, L.E.K. Consulting) and Greg Fleischmann (Global Director, Business Development and Marketing, Sidley Austin) titled Profiting from Thought Leadership- Transforming Content into Sales.
In Mike's talking points for GroPro 20/20 we found four excellent best practices for anyone charged with managing a successful thought leadership initiative within their firm:
1. Find a Niche
The notion that you can't be all things to all people comes up a lot in law firm marketing. With regard to your firm's thought leadership, Mellor makes the point that if your team runs lean, niche specialization can make all the difference when it comes to the bottom line (increased revenue). Also of note, a niche focus can transcend issues and industries:
"At the end of the day, it comes down to specialization and niche marketing. One can’t be a thought leader in litigation, or in all corporate-- and that starts with the planning process in picking specific issues and topics to own that are narrow enough.
It’s an important distinction to make, as it is those who plan that are ultimately successful not only in thought leadership but in using it to drive revenue. At Pryor Cashman, we aren’t a machine with tons of associates; in fact, our leverage ratios ensure that we run lean, so that specialization or niche often something discovered by a partner/created during an engagement that comes to life quickly and that we then tailor across an industry or issue."
"We hope that these pieces spark conversation, and that they hang up in offices..."
2. Customize to Specific Audiences
Mellor: "We like to employ thought leadership as a customized business development strategy, and highly customize these pieces to add value. We take a unique issue, say in restaurants, then we think about who could benefit. Then we develop something specific to them.
For example, we have taken Real Estate ideas around fashion/retail and thought about how they could be used for other food/food hall clients (think pop-ups and temporary spacing)….
We hope that these pieces spark conversation, and that they hang up in offices, whether they are checklists, roadmaps, risk quadrants, or anything else."
3. Scale Your Successes
Hand in hand with customizing to meet specific client need(s), Mellor's firm also focuses on internal communications to scale their best ideas and successes:
"We are trying to improve our internal avenues of communication to tell better stories. We have created weekly roundups and now have frequent meetings around key issues and practices that enable us to bubble/cascade ideas more effectively throughout the firm.
We are also trying to instill ideas into the partnership around how we can scale client solutions in very targeted ways to other targets or clients who may be in the same situation or may be facing similar issues in the future. We end up doing a lot of that analytical research in marketing about scaling effectiveness (as opposed to associates doing it)."
4. Use Analytics to Fine-Tune Your Approach
Mellor: "At Pryor Cashman, when we do send around thought leadership widely, we use read and forward/share rates, reporting from syndicators like MONDAQ and JD Supra, and web behavior metrics through cookies to understand topics of interest and potential secondary topic areas.
"We like to think that these thought leadership tools are living..."
We also use the feedback from these initial meetings with clients/targets to bake ideas back into the document. We like to think that these thought leadership tools are living- and we adjust based off recent developments, intelligence and client insights."
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For more information on GroPro 20/20, including Mike Mellor's program and others, visit the conference website here.
Connect with Mike Mellor on LinkedIn.
