Builden Partners’ Founder Jocelyn Brumbaugh and Marketing Operations Manager Devon Pine share insights on the best marketing and business development strategies to use when launching a new legal practice group or industry team in the latest installment of Brand Building in 15 Minutes.

In the presentation “Marketing a New Legal Practice,” Jocelyn and Devon shared the importance of finding a niche practice and provided useful tips for how to do so. They also outlined a step-by-step guide newly developed practice groups can use to implement sustainable marketing outreach.

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Video Transcription:

Jocelyn Brumbaugh (00:01):

Welcome everyone. You are our special guest at today’s Brand Building in 15 minutes presentation. I am Jocelyn Brumbaugh, the founder of Builden Partners, and we’re happy to have you join us here when we talk about how to market a new legal practice. If you like people who talk very fast and cram a lot of marketing best practices into a very short amount of time, prepare to have your mind blown. So you know us, we are Builden partners. We do marketing strategy exclusively for law firms. We are consultants to the AM law 100 firms, but my favorite part about what we do is serving as an outsourced marketing department for law firms with 15 to a hundred attorneys. And how do we do that? We have a very strong senior team that all joins us from large law firms and other very fine institutions, and we get it. We understand how to work with attorneys and we use a process driven approach to raising firm’s profiles with minimal amount of time spent by the attorneys. So let us jump in. Devon, tell us what do we need to do to market a new legal practice?

Devon Pine (01:07):

Thanks, Jocelyn. So before we dive in on how to kick off and market a new practice, let’s talk about the importance of finding a niche practice. First thing you want to do is identify your why. The question of what is your why is essentially answering why choose this attorney or why this firm? And that answer is going to be what differentiates you from your competition and gives your ideal client a reason to choose your services. Once you have that answer, let’s summarize it. You should be able to talk about your new practice clearly and succinctly, and that keyword there is succinct. If you need to take a page out of the 15 minute team book, please do so.

(01:48):

But summarizing your firm’s and your individual value proposition in a way that ends in an actionable step is really the key to effective marketing. And this can be as simple as, would it be helpful if I send you an article explaining more? But this isn’t just about why they should choose you, but also why now? Many attorneys handle many kinds of matters for all different kinds of people, kind of like a jack of all trades, but by identifying and presenting timely solutions to potential clients, there’s more of an incentive to choose you over anyone else. A niche practice helps you speak to the specific benefits that clients will get from your services. And when your core marketing strategy identifies the issue or problem, it sets you up to be the solution to a potential client’s decision makers and then you stand a better chance of landing that client.

(02:47):

Okay, so we know that a niche practice is important, but how do we go about finding it? Well first start off with an area that is complimentary to your current practice. That way you’re not starting from scratch. Your core practice doesn’t have to go away, but the intersection of your old practice and your new one, that’s going to be your superpower. Also, think about the specific industries that you’re already serving and how you can specialize in them. Clients go to business via industry so it makes sense for lawyers to do the same. You also want to think about the cases that you’re referring out to other firms. Could you be keeping that revenue in the firm if you were to start a new practice area or industry team? Alright, and yes, we are considering fun or at least what you enjoy. A niche practice allows you to do the work that you like for the clients that you like.

(03:42):

You are in control to develop a practice that fits that bill. So things that you enjoy and your strengths, those really go hand in hand and are self-explanatory, but you should also take a hard look at your weaknesses. So if you plan to start a practice focusing on the needs of Cuban immigrant owned businesses, but you don’t know how to speak Spanish, you may want to reevaluate your practice area. That honest evaluation of your weaknesses can save you from choosing a niche that might not be a good fit. Your personal experiences can also be a driver to see who you want to serve. Maybe you’re a female founding partner, so it’s important for you to help female entrepreneurs. And finally, for God’s sakes, please read the news. Look at how much things have changed in the last year and a half because of Covid and how many legal opportunities have cropped up as a result.

(04:37):

Maybe you’re a labor and employment lawyer who can now specialize in work from home issues or a litigator who is looking at business interruption insurance. Beyond Covid, maybe you are an environmental attorney who now helps companies with climate change impacts. Reading the news can definitely help you get a start of where to find your niche practice. Okay, now that you have compiled a list of potential practices, it’s time to begin your market research. Is there enough demand in your geographic area to support your niche practice? How much competition will you be facing? What advantages do you have that will give you a leg up on your competition? The answer to these questions will help you evaluate whether or not your niche practice is likely to succeed. The first is an easy way to answer some of those questions is to let the news come directly to your inbox via Google Alerts, Law 360 or Westlaw, and committing just five minutes every morning to scanning these alerts will not only help you get up to speed, but help you stay up to speed with current news and provide you with potential opportunities to share information with clients and contacts, and really position yourself as a thought leader in the area.

(05:52):

Okay, if you are not already BFFs with the library and marketing team, please send them a fruit basket or at least start leveraging their knowledge. The library team can really help turn a general data dump into competitive and business intelligence that can help you find and understand patterns. Once you do that, the business development and marketing team can help you get a grasp on potential issues clients are facing, finding those gaps in service, which can result in business opportunities. They can also help you get your message in front of the right people in a really nice branded way. So as you’re researching, mind the gap. Where there are holes for thought leadership, maybe podcasts, discussion groups or gaps in service, maybe a potential client needs an audit in this area that you can provide. Find the gap and get creative. Okay, you’ve done the research legwork, now it’s time to kick things off.

(06:51):

Oftentimes a new practice or industry team will be the result of a lateral hire. So that means that they need to be integrated seamlessly. So using regular meetings, check-ins with practice group leaders, or if you have a designated integration partner, that can be a really helpful tool. Also using cross marketing roadshows, which can be virtual now or it can be something as simple as circulating an internal one pager, describing that laterals practice to help promote the practice internally. Other times when new practices are born out of an idea or identifying those patterns that we talked about earlier, it’s important to team up with the finance team and identify how many current clients already fall into that industry or area. We all know it is easier to expand business with current clients than it is to bring in new ones. This data will also help you get the buy-in that you need from firm leadership. Okay, once you have assembled the right people on the team, it’s time to identify who should be receiving your communications. So let’s pull everyone’s contacts in to form a really strong mailing list for direct visibility. And then we want to use this list to send a value add soft announcement. This announcement is not only going to inform people of this new practice or industry team, but also provide some kind of an article or update that’s really valuable to the recipients.

Jocelyn Brumbaugh (08:20):

So you’ve got your who, you’ve got your current network, and here’s what you need to do next. You need to do what we call dreaming out loud. And what that really means is that when someone says, “Hey, what’s new?” You no longer say not much. Instead, you talk about this new niche, this new practice that you’re building. You talk about why it’s important. You talk about building the practice because nine times out of 10, the people that you talk to are going to be rooting for you and want to help make connections. They’re going to be invested in your success. And so when you find these golden people who know the industry or can help make connections, start to dream out loud with them. Say, “if you were launching a practice in this space, what would you do? Who would you target? Where would you invest your marketing dollars?” and file these away,

(09:02):

these are nuggets that will help you as you start to put your marketing plan together. The next thing to think about is that you shouldn’t go it alone. The best thing to do is to find someone in a complimentary practice area who can help hold you accountable and whom you can hold accountable as well. Devon talked about this earlier, but if this is not fun, you’re not going to do it. It’s a lot of work. And so you need to build in the fun factor to make sure that you put the work into this, even at the end of a busy day. Maybe you’re on the corporate side and you can find somebody who can fill the litigation aspect of this particular niche. Boom, you got your wingman good to go. One other thing that you want to think about when you’re looking through your contacts are your weak ties.

(09:42):

We talk about that a lot at Builden. If you go to the website and search up weak ties, there’s a number of resources that’ll pop up. But the gist of this is that the weak ties are the people who are outside of your main social circle. The kind of people that you see that you don’t talk to every day or every week. These are people that maybe you see once a year or at a wedding or at a reunion. They know people that you don’t. And that is so key as you’re starting to build this practice. If you’re in any networking groups, you may start to feel like the world has gotten very small and that everybody that knows the same people, that’s the beauty of weak ties. If you think about your college roommate or somebody at your last firm, maybe they live in a different city, they’ve got a different tight group of people that they talk to every day, and you want into that, that’s going to differentiate you from your competitors.

(10:31):

You’re going to know these other people who can help make connections and drive business your way. That is the importance of weak ties. And then once you’ve got your weak ties and all of your other connections, you need to track your outreach to them. And this is boring, but you have to do it anyway. This is one of those process driven things that is essential to creating a new practice. So what I like to do is I make a chart and I say, when I’m going to reach out to these people and I turn it green when I do it, and sometimes yes, I marvel at how beautiful my green chart is because I hate when my chart is red and I’ll do anything I can to keep it not being rad, which is doing the work. Now Devon has a different approach, which I like too.

(11:09):

She makes calendar appointments with herself in the future, so she remembers to target people on a regular basis. Either way, you need to find a system that works for you and you have to use it. So finally, you need to advance the conversation. You need to be adding value all the time. You are a thought leader in this new space and you need to act like it. You need to write about this topic, speak about this topic. You need to educate other people on the importance of this space and the key things that they need to do and that they need to know. If there is a podcast, start a podcast, be on a podcast, start writing a column. You need to be a connector and advance the conversation and the cause. Devon’s going to talk on the next slide about how to leverage trade groups, but if there isn’t a trade group already that’s out there, start one. You need to be the connector and build a brand around this new space. So you are the person that people think of when they think of this space.

Devon Pine (12:07):

Definitely, and like Jocelyn mentioned, a place to start advancing that conversation is in trade groups. These are great tools for that and obviously you want to use the education opportunities of trade groups. Kind of going back to that getting up to speed portion we talked about earlier, but at their core, these trade organizations are for networking. So make the most of events and conferences by going prepared. Get your hands on that attendee list beforehand. Think about your targets. Be setting up coffees or drinks beforehand. If you come up with a plan for your approach before the event, that’s how it’s going to be the most productive, and we know if prep is important, then follow up is key. After the event, follow up with folks by adding them to your mailing list or connecting with them on LinkedIn. This is going to make sure that not only the firm stays on top of mind, but also you and your practice do as well.

(13:06):

Do not let follow up fall through the cracks. So not only do we want to be tracking our return on investment for these trade organizations, but also the return on opportunity. This is slightly less quantifiable, but you want to think about the relationships that you’ve built at these events or through this trade organizations. How many new LinkedIn followers do you have, if you hosted an event, how many people attended? Again, this is going to be about those relationships and the stories that come out of these events. And speaking of opportunities, Jocelyn is going to talk to us about how to get the most mileage out of them.

Jocelyn Brumbaugh (13:43):

Right? This is another way that you can be sure to bring a process driven approach to launching this new practice. So step one is all the things that we’ve talked about so far. It’s all the value adds, the events that you’re attending, all of the thought leadership that you produce, you need to capture all of that. Then step two, you need to put that on the website. Three, you need to share that news on social media and four, four is the money. Step four is the money step here, just like it is when we talk about Builden’s marketing infrastructure. Four is circulating the news internally, and that means telling your partners what you’re doing. You need to let them know that you’re launching this practice, about the work that you’re doing here, the value adds that they have so they can start talking to their clients about the work that you’re doing as well.

(14:29):

Internal comms is king here. Step four is so important. And then five, five is taking all those value ads and making sure that you’re putting them into the inbox of your contact list on a regular basis. All right, time. That’s it. Any questions? Oh, we don’t have time for questions. You got to go. Ah, just kidding though. We always have time for your questions. Devon and I, here are our email addresses and you can reach out to either of us with any follow-up questions that you have. And if you like what you heard today, sign up for more marketing tips. That’s at hello@buildenpartners.com. And yes, our next program is already on the books for Wednesday, October 20th at 11:00 AM. We will tell you everything that you have ever wanted to know about business development coaching in 15 minutes. We’ll see you there.