Marketing and BD teams sit at the intersection of client expectations and firm delivery – and the stakes have never been higher. According to BTI Consulting’s 2024 Client Service A-Team Report, only 35% of corporate counsel now recommend their primary law firms to peers, down dramatically from 69% just four years ago.
Yet according to Best Law Firms’ 2025 Legal Market Report, when asked how they market to law firms, far and away, the biggest channel was word-of-mouth referrals!
Do you see why I’m scratching my head?
Law firms often rely heavily, if not entirely, on word-of-mouth marketing. Yet the percentage of satisfied clients willing to offer a referral to a peer has dropped by half in only a couple of years.
“Well…we don’t only rely on word of mouth, Robyn!”
Mmmhmmm. Which is why when I suggest to lawyers that they create a content series to generate interest in their practice and new visitors to their website, the loudest retort I hear is unfailingly, “We’re not getting clients from our website! It’s only there for people who already know about us to validate who we are.”
This is not a zero-sum game, friends. Two things can be true simultaneously and not detract from each other. For marketing and business development leaders, this gap between aspiration and execution represents a chance to drive meaningful change.
Your clients and prospects are leaving breadcrumbs: signals of their needs, frustrations, and moments of delight. By mapping these journeys and aligning content to their pain points, marketing teams can transform random touchpoints – or even validation research you didn’t know was happening – into perfectly orchestrated experiences.
But, it requires developing and deploying touchpoints strategically across the client journey.
Understanding Your Client’s Journey: Beyond the Matter Lifecycle
The path from prospect to loyal client isn’t linear — it’s a complex web of interactions, decisions, and experiences. Each touchpoint shapes perception and influences decisions, yet many firms still treat these moments as isolated events rather than connected experiences.
Consider a typical journey: A general counsel at a Fortune 1000 company faces a novel regulatory challenge. They begin with discrete research, perhaps downloading your regulatory update or attending your webinar. They follow your analysts on LinkedIn, sign up for your newsletter, and gradually build familiarity with your experience. Months later, when similar issues arise, your firm is already positioned as a trusted advisor — not because of a single impressive pitch but through a carefully orchestrated series of valuable interactions.
This journey contains multiple critical “moments of truth”:
- The first impression: When your content either resonates with their specific challenge or becomes another piece of digital noise
- The validation phase: When they assess your credentials through thought leadership and peer insights
- The engagement threshold: When they move from passive consumption to active interaction
- The trust accelerator: When your proactive insights help them avoid a potential issue
- The partnership moment: When they shift from viewing you as a provider to a strategic advisor
Each of these moments presents both opportunities and risks. Missing signals of interest or failing to provide timely, relevant content can derail the journey before it begins.
Your content architecture should mirror your clients’ decision journeys, addressing specific pain points and questions at each stage because content without strategy is just noise. And you might not get that second chance to make a good first impression.
Start by building content pillars around universal client challenges:
- Risk mitigation and compliance navigation
- Business growth and market expansion
- Operational efficiency and cost management
- Innovation and competitive advantage
- Leadership and organizational transformation
Within each pillar, develop content that matches your audience’s consumption patterns:
- Quick-hit insights for time-pressed executives
- Deep-dive analysis for technical teams
- Strategic frameworks for planning sessions
- Practical tools for immediate application
- Case studies that demonstrate real-world impact
The key is modularity — creating content that can be repurposed and recombined to serve different audiences and channels while maintaining consistent messaging and quality.
With your journey map and content architecture in place, it’s time to optimize your delivery channels. This isn’t about being everywhere; it’s about being valuable everywhere you are.
Transform your website from a digital brochure to a dynamic resource:
- Surface relevant content based on browsing behavior
- Create clear pathways for different visitor personas
- Integrate interactive tools that provide immediate value
- Enable easy content sharing and collaboration
Elevate your email strategy:
- Replace generic newsletters with personalized content streams
- Develop trigger-based communications that respond to engagement signals
- Create nurture paths that guide prospects through their decision journey
Reimagine your events and webinars:
- Design formats that facilitate peer learning and networking
- Create content “afterlives” that extend value beyond live attendance
- Build engagement sequences that begin before and continue after each event
Implementation Roadmap: Your First 90 Days
Month 1: Foundation Building
- Audit existing content and map it to journey stages
- Interview 5-7 recent clients about their decision journey
- Document current touchpoints and their effectiveness
- Select one practice group for pilot implementation
Month 2: Quick Wins
- Optimize top-performing content for key decision stages
- Implement basic journey tracking in your CRM
- Create templates for modular content development
- Launch a pilot nurture sequence for one client segment
Month 3: Scale and Optimize
- Expand journey mapping to additional practice areas
- Develop cross-practice content pillars
- Implement engagement scoring
- Create dashboard for journey analytics
Remember: Progress over perfection. Start with one practice group, one journey, one pain point. Map it, measure it, optimize it. Then scale what works.
Your clients are already on their journey. Your role isn’t to create that journey but to understand it, support it, and enhance it at every opportunity. By mapping these experiences and aligning your content and touchpoints accordingly, you transform random interactions into meaningful relationships — and that’s where true competitive advantage begins.
