Last week for our latest Professional Services Growth Live Webinar I joined Passle’s Sam Page and Stefanie Marrone (along with her French Bulldog Lucy) to discuss Social Strategy at professional service firms.

We are just finalising the edit on the video to share later this week but in the meantime, I thought would share my prep notes.  I just noted all the things I thought I would try and cover to the Q&A.  The audience was mainly law firms BD and Marketing folk from the US and UK.  Hope these are of interest.  Excuse the grammar :)  

Q1. What should professional service marketers be doing every day, week, month on social for their firms?

• The bad news is that COVID has disrupted everything.  The good news is that COVID has disrupted everything.  As BD and marketing experts there is a chance to redesign how ‘things are done’.  A chance to take charge.  Understand and talk about the challenges, the fear and the worries fee earners have.  Show them how your expertise can help them right now.  In many ways BD and Marketing have never been more important.  The world just got a lot harder and you can help.
• In my opinion BD and Marketing must work together – whilst acknowledging their expert differences. Ask fee earners to outline specifically where the money comes from and where it is likely to come from in the next quarter, half-year and year.  Build wishlist of companies but more importantly individuals you want to target on social. Then build a marketing and BD plan around to target them - (Account-Based Marketing plan). Think Leading indicators – what actions now are most likely to lead to positive business outcomes in the future.  This means that your lawyers must connect with their clients, prospects and colleagues and then engage with them online
• Encouragement and feedback are crucial.  Experts (lawyers and consultants) love positive reinforcement like the rest of us!
• Join the dots with the technology, tools and processes you have in place. For example think about how you can provide Lexology analytics, Google Analytics, LinkedIn interaction, Passle feedback altogether.  Build buzz around the tech you have and really sweat every drop of advantage from the investments Your firm has made. 
• Deliver personal feedback to lawyers.  Not forever and fore everyone but put in hard yards for some of them so they ‘get it’.
• Empower the experts. Obviously I look at the world from a certain perspective but I believe content must come first otherwise your experts will not maintain their presence. Have a read of this post How to 3x the LinkedIn engagement of your firm

Q2: What strategies are you excited about right now?

• Acceleration of digital transformation
• Empowerment.   Fee earners are taking on responsibility for marketing. This frees up marketers for bigger stuff – reports, video, podcasts and delivering plans and feedback around fee earners activities. 
• Digital Transformation is not just happening to you.  Your clients are now more online than ever before.  You can interact with them
• Diversity and inclusion – Create the environment where those with talent get their voice heard.  Not the golf course that is important now. It is digital presence that is of great importance and there is an element of meritocracy this enables.  You can help build the environment for all voices to be heard in your firm.
• In 20 years we have seen the movement of power when it comes to web presence.  In the 1990s early 2000s it was the IT dept, then it was a separate Web/Digital department, then moved to marketing,  now online presence is everyone’s responsibility.  With COVID huge acceleration.  There is nothing else – no events, no tennis invitations, no posh offices to rely on.  If you are in Comms, BD and Marketing you are an advantage as you have been doing this for years.  Great opportunity to coach and mentor your fee earners.
• Paid social into organic   With so many things canceled there are a lot fewer things to spend on with the budget you have left. LinkedIn provides a perfect forum and all Prof Services firms should be looking at how they used Paid, targeted advertising on LinkedIn. You can be very very targeted with the organisations and people you want to showcase to. We are working with a lot of clients on how to start integrating their paid advertising with their LinkedIn content strategy. We have built expertise on how to do this and most importantly - you can measure it - so you can present some beautiful things back to the Partners.

Q3: When you report to partners or to the board what indicators or metrics are you focusing on?

• What is oxygen?  What tools, tech and assets do you have and how are we sweating them to maximise return?
• Link positive business outcomes to marketing efforts.  Bring in data from other teams.  You are in a good position as marketing to provide client reach.  Join the dots.
• Your job is not just to marketing externally.  You should be reporting internally all the time.  Not once a quarter.  Have a voice.  Create content yourself and showcase YOUR expertise.  Treat that as part of your job. 
• Always brand your own internal reports and run internal campaigns even if it is just you who knows it is a campaign!
• Focus on the smaller number of key organisations that are engaging with you online.  Go right down to the individuals. If you are a law firm 2 General Counsels from clients or potential clients engaging with you online is much better than 100 “impressions” of which you know nothing about.  Put clients’ faces, billable hours and potential growth against your ability to engage with them online.

Q4: What social media strategies have been most effective during the pandemic for law firms?

• COVID-19 has been a major catalyst for the adoption of digital technologies by employees, clients and customers alike
• Share of voice – was face to face.  Now digital.  Opportunity to have a disproportionate share of voice compared to competitors.  You do not need to necessarily need to spend big.  The distributed leadership nature of professional service firms means that you can drive BD and Marketing through your lawyers.
• Not the time to go quiet but you need to be focused
• Marketing messages will need to be better at addressing client needs and less about demonstrating how great we are or how many awards you have won
• Be authentic, caring, interesting, human

Last word:

To finsih I would like to paraphrase Linda Orton (CMO Alvarez and Marsal) from her blog posta couple of weeks back: 

"Spending money on our best prospects through targeted digital advertising is yielding positive results, while keeping EQ and humor in all our communications is proving crucial to staying effectively connected to employees and clients. Now is not the time to cut marketing budgets. We are spending more wisely and prioritizing the strategic initiatives that will help our firm globally. "