Thought leadership is the hardworking core of a firm’s online marketing presence. It showcases the expertise your firm brings to the table and through email, social, digital publication and 1-2-1 email, thought leadership powers nearly all the client-firm interactions that happen online all the time.

But when a firm has dozens, hundreds, or thousands of busy thought leaders, how can you possibly show the true capability and knowledge of the firm? A team of marketers would have to work around the clock to publish all those insights one by one to the CRM, and you’d need teams of people to train, edit and administer that content in different workflows. If this process isn’t right, busy professionals will find they don’t want to create content.

So a gap grows between what your firm demonstrates online, and what it brings to the clients once people are in the room. This gap, between what your firm can deliver and how your firm is perceived by clients is what we at Passle call the ‘eminence gap’

It isn’t really the fault of the CRM. A CRM is designed for a relatively small group of website administrators to publish and manage content. But CRMs aren't made to enable thought leadership programs at a large scale. Specifically, they lack:

• Tools that make it easier for authors outside the admin group to create content, helping them avoid starting from a blank page.
• Self-service capabilities allowing large groups of authors to publish content easily, enabling marketers to manage content at scale as reviewers rather than simple uploaders.
• Systems for publishing content across multiple channels, ensuring content is created once and distributed automatically to all relevant places.
• Feedback mechanisms that inform authors about the impact of their content, including readership and performance metrics, encouraging ongoing content production.

It is these processes and features that adapt a CRM into being fit for purpose. While a CRM runs the brochure component of your website, there needs to be a platform that powers thought leadership to make that website suitable for a professional services firm.

Why closing the gap matters

I was on a call last week with a general counsel whose opinion on lawyers marketing themselves was: ‘You’ve got brilliant lawyers out there, but nobody knows what they do.’

She may not be the only GC who thinks like that. Last year we surveyed GCs from large firms all over the world. We found that 90% of GCs reviewed a supplier's website as part of the contracting process. What’s more, 76% of GCs come to your website monthly, weekly or daily, as opposed to the 24% who review it less frequently. (Get the full research here)

Of those GCs, only 1 in 12 thought that law firms were working hard enough to keep their clients and prospects informed with thought leadership.

Lawyers are busy, their time is valuable, billable and scarce. But their insights are what your clients and prospective clients want to see before they buy from you. 

How Passle closes the gap

This is where Passle comes in. Your CRM still maintains the brochure parts of your website, but Passle seamlessly provides the engine that makes showing the firm's true expertise possible online.

Passle delivers the four pillars needed for a successful thought leadership program, (self-service publication, clear governance, create once publish everywhere, and relevant feedback), making thought leadership simple, scalable and effective.