By Edward Poll
The Daily Record Newswire
Marketing is about momentum, not perfection
Or so Ari Kaplan believes.
Kaplan, who has been dubbed the “Tony Robbins of legal conferences,” gave the keynote address at the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management Section’s LegalTech Show in Chicago.
His mantra sounds very familiar to me, since one of my mentors, Alan Weiss (author of “Million Dollar Consultant”), preaches that life is about success, not perfection.
As lawyers, we are taught to think in terms of perfection. In my own career, I can remember two instances involving that principle. One was my own lawyer, whose staff would produce documents that I thought were less than perfect, technically and substantively. Yet he always knew where the jugular was and always focused on achieving my objectives, not the legal niceties of the situation.
The second example was when I represented a debtor, while a former classmate of mine represented the creditor. I was excited because I thought our friendship would produce a result reasonably crafted for the benefit of both parties.
Welcome to the real world. His only concern was demolishing my client and getting the premises returned rather than structuring a payment schedule that would produce a revenue stream for his client while allowing my client to restructure and stay in business. He won. But neither his client nor my client walked away healthy.
Back to Ari. Marketing is about being authentic, showing your own persona through your efforts. Speed and frequency of your efforts are the keys to marketing, according to Kaplan, not perfection. He suggests that you should know who you want to reach or, said another way, who you want to call you back.
One specific tactic he suggested that resonated with me because of my extensive travels is that you should contact the press in the areas where you travel. Send them an e-mail or pick up the phone and call them; tell them you’ll be in the area on such and such a date and that you’d enjoy talking or meeting with them should they desire. That’s how Kaplan has been quoted in papers all over the country. A simple, yet very effective technique.
And Weiss goes further by talking about “marketing gravity.” That means having enough material in varying media in order to become perceived as a thought leader in your field.
In other words: Write articles for local and national publications in your field; write a commercially published book (the gold standard of marketing success) for the equivalent of third-party endorsement (only someone important would appear in a commercial publisher’s venue); speak at conferences; create teleseminars; create a video; do podcasts; refine and improve your website; and send out an electronic newsletter.
Those are only a few of the channels of communication. The channel of ideas distribution is not magic; you must be all over because you never know from whence that phone call to engage you will come.
Lawyers too often find marketing daunting because there are so many potential clients, so little time to reach them and so many options for pursuing them. The message here is that there is no one tactic to cover all communication opportunities with your marketplace.
Clients seek information about matters of concern to them. When your efforts strike a chord with them, they will engage with you. How much you do in creating your “marketing gravity” is ultimately a question of your comfort zone, creativity, time and pocketbook.
Attorney Edward Poll is a speaker, author and board-approved coach to the legal profession. Readers with questions for the Coach’s Corner should e-mail edpoll@lawbiz.com or call (800) 837-5880. Also visit his interactive community for lawyers at www.LawBizForum.com.
