Midsize Law Firms: Two Key Questions to Stop Random Acts of Marketing

[00:00:00] Erika Steinberg: Don’t overcomplicate marketing. Start clear, stay focused. Don’t chase after the shiny objects. Don’t commit random acts of marketing. It does not have to be complicated.

[00:00:15] Announcer: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let’s get started with the show.

[00:00:32] Michelle Calcote King: Hi everyone. I’m Michelle Calcote King. I’m your host, and I’m the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We’re a public relations and thought leadership marketing agency for B2B professional services firms, including law firms. To learn more, go to Rep-Ink.com. So there’s a certain feeling that I think has crept up on all of us at some point or another where you’re constantly in motion but not actually moving forward.

A lot of midsize law firms are there hosting events, updating websites, sponsoring conferences. But when they ask, what are we actually achieving, the answer isn’t always clear. Today we’re joined by Erika Steinberg, who founded CMO2Go to make expert marketing accessible beyond the largest law firms.

Her team partners with midsize firms nationwide to craft strategies, manage rebrands and strengthen marketing teams with more than 30 years in legal marketing and leadership roles at AmLaw 100 and 200 firms. Erika speaks fluent lawyer, bringing deep industry insight and a practical understanding of how law firms operate.

We’re talking today about why strategy doesn’t have to be a capital S thing that costs a fortune, and how the simplest question, what does success look like, can transform how firms approach their marketing. So welcome to the show, Erika.

[00:01:50] Erika Steinberg: Thank you so much. Every time I hear that 30 years, I get a little shocked.

[00:01:54] Michelle Calcote King: I know. It does it to me too. Well, I’d love to hear from you how you came to found your own business.

[00:02:06] Erika Steinberg: Oh my goodness. Well, I fell over backwards into legal marketing 30 years ago. I had no idea what it was, and I’m so glad that I did because I think like many of us, or at least some of us who have been in this field for 30 years, you end up in it and you find, wow, this is interesting work. It’s always something different. I’m never bored and I’m working with some of the smartest people I’ve ever come across. So after 25 years in-house at AmLaw 100 and 200 firms in New York and in D.C., I ended up going out on my own coming up on seven years ago now.

[00:02:42] Michelle Calcote King: Congrats.

[00:02:43] Erika Steinberg: Thank you. And I changed the focus from the largest law firms to smaller and midsize firms. So I was thinking, let me bring what I know and what I’ve learned and what other colleagues that I’m still close with have learned over the years to a different size firm, and I haven’t looked back. It’s been a wonderful experience.

[00:03:02] Michelle Calcote King: Love that. So let’s jump into our discussion today. What do you believe midsize law firms get wrong about strategy and planning? What are some of the misconceptions or assumptions that you debunk when you work with them?

[00:03:17] Erika Steinberg: I think one of the biggest is what you hit upon, that strategy doesn’t have to be this big capital S strategy thing. I think that firms feel like if it’s not expensive then it’s not correct. And it doesn’t have to be like that. I think that most people, when they think of strategic planning, they imagine themselves in a conference room for days on end and they’re exhausted and they come out with a binder that’s this big and no one’s ever going to look at it again.

But really strategy does not have to be complicated. It doesn’t need to be for midsize firms. The firms that I work with, I find that it can be very simple and you can answer two questions. What are we trying to accomplish? Who are we trying to reach? And then your marketing plan consists of what are the few, emphasis on the word few, things that we will do to support that this year.

When you start with that kind of clarity, then I think everything else follows, including how you define success, which we’ve talked about as well.

[00:04:16] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. So when you work through with your clients how to define success, what are some of the questions that you ask them?

[00:04:29] Erika Steinberg: Probably the biggest one is, if we look back a year from now, what will have happened that will make us say this worked? How will we know? What will be true at the end of this that is not true at the beginning of this? And pausing, taking a beat is really hard also because lawyers and legal marketing professionals are in constant motion. So there’s this unending stream of things that you have to react to and a ton of projects that do require advanced planning. And I don’t say take a beat and ask that question of everything, every little thing. That doesn’t make sense.

But for projects that require a significant amount of time or money or both, just ask that question. What do we want to have happen at the end of this? And answering that question before gets everyone aligned. And then you start the doing. If you just jump into the doing, you don’t know what you’re aiming for.

[00:05:29] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, I love that. And so it sounds like we’re not talking numbers here. It sounds like it’s more, it’s OK to be general with this because as we know, attribution can be really difficult in B2B marketing.

[00:05:42] Erika Steinberg: Yes. I mean, it can be numbers. It doesn’t have to be, oh, well, we want, it doesn’t make sense to say we’re going to do this big project and then we expect our revenue to be at this other level when we finish. But there are other numbers. It can be how many new contacts did we make? How many people have we followed up with? Who else have we brought into our orbit and what connections have we formed? So those are all numbers-based measurements as well. It doesn’t have to be tied to money or hours worked or billed.

[00:06:12] Michelle Calcote King: A lot of those leading indicators. So I know you told my producer that you often find that firms don’t even know what results they should be seeing. And you just kind of walked me through some of those success metrics that they should be tracking. But when you have that conversation and they’re not even really sure, where do you start?

[00:06:34] Erika Steinberg: Well, I think that success needs to be specific enough that you can tell that you’re heading in the right direction. So it’s not always numbers-based. Where possible, that should be numbers, but it can be, I guess, softer measures. Numbers, as I said, can be the connections made, people you met. Over time you want to see that translated into revenue, into hours worked and billed, and of course, collected, not just worked and billed.

But the directional feedback, I think is valuable too. Are your lawyers having better quality conversations with their regular clients? Are they having those conversations? First of all, they should be having the conversations, but when they are, what kind of feedback are they getting? Are clients coming to you more than for just the matter at hand? Are they coming to you because you’ve become a trusted advisor? Is the relationship growing? Is it changing? But it can’t all be based on the feelings. At some point, data has to come into play.

[00:07:34] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Yeah. And so with smaller firms that have aspirations to grow bigger, they want to get into that midsize range, what are some of the roadblocks you see them grappling with?

[00:07:47] Erika Steinberg: There are a few. The first one that comes to mind, and I think this is true of any small business, is just trying to do everything yourself. In many small firms, marketing gets scattered across the plates of many different people. It’s falling on the lawyers’ plates, administrators, assistants, whoever has some time that week or in that moment to take care of something. And everyone is doing their best of course, but since no one is fully focused on it, marketing work becomes reactive. So things only get done when there’s time, when it’s really urgent. So you get the urgent things done, but you don’t get the important things done. And then the firm, it’s very hard to build momentum. And I think marketing, really a successful marketing program or even building a marketing culture really does depend on momentum.

And then another thing that comes up is firms wait too long to create structure. So they think that they have to have all of the pieces in place to create a marketing structure. And really, you don’t. You can start with a few clear goals, a manageable plan, somebody who will keep things moving and then give them the power or give them the tools that they need to keep things moving, give them the access that they need to keep things moving. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but again, you’re building consistency and you’re building momentum, and that is really what’s going to fuel the growth.

[00:09:13] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. I love consistency. It’s so important.

[00:09:16] Erika Steinberg: Yeah.

[00:09:16] Michelle Calcote King: Well, so since you started talking about the marketer, the in-house marketer or if it’s a fractional CMO, like you, how should firms be thinking about that marketing leadership role now to set them up for success in the future?

[00:09:32] Erika Steinberg: When I think about the marketing leadership role in general, I think of that person as the connector. So that’s the person who’s tying the marketing activity to the firm’s actual business goals. So you want to make sure that whoever you’re working with, whether they are fractional, whether they are full time, be sure to share the business goals with that person because it gives them a window into what the firm is doing. And I think that that’s really important. They’re going to be able to do better work when they have that information.

And then as far as the team goes, a lot of firms start out with fractional help, and that makes sense. You really need somebody who’s going to set the direction, set the priorities, keep things moving. And then you also need the people who are going to do the work, the stuff. Somebody said to me recently, oh, you do the strategy and the stuff. And I was like, yeah, I like that because you need, you can’t just have somebody setting direction and nobody doing the actual work and the stuff. But if you get used to working with a senior marketing professional or some kind of marketing professional in a fractional role, then that will give you information and data about what kind of person you should look to hire. You can see how the partners, how the lawyers are working with that person, what skill set you actually need, what personality you actually need. And so that, I think also helps set up a firm to make that first full-time hire from a better place.

[00:11:00] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, it can often be a great stepping stone.

[00:11:04] Erika Steinberg: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:05] Michelle Calcote King: So from, and you mentioned bringing the marketer into the goals, the business goals of the firm.

[00:11:13] Erika Steinberg: Yeah.

[00:11:13] Michelle Calcote King: Why do you think a lot of law firm leaders are hesitant to bring marketing into these kind of strategic conversations?

[00:11:23] Erika Steinberg: I have spoken to a number of marketing leaders at smaller and midsize firms who are marketing directors, CMOs, and they say, yeah, I was interviewing and they said, oh, I would be invited to the executive committee. I would be invited to these meetings. And it turns out that they were invited for the first five minutes and then said, OK, time to go now. And that gets very frustrating. I think that leaders sometimes guard information, maybe just out of habit. I think that they don’t necessarily, they don’t always realize that the marketing professionals at the firm are as invested in the firm’s success as the partners are. We’re not just there, a lot of times when you work hand in glove with the partners in a firm, you build these relationships and so you want to see the firm succeed. It’s not just, it’s not just a job. It’s not just coming in and clocking in and clocking out. You really want this organization to succeed and you get very invested in it. And I don’t know if law firm leaders know that. So when you get into those designations of lawyer and nonlawyer, I can’t stand that term.

[00:12:32] Michelle Calcote King: I know.

[00:12:33] Erika Steinberg: We want to get away from that and just get to, like everybody is there to try to do the best work that they can and to help the firm succeed and to help the organization succeed. So give the leaders of your firm, whether they’re in marketing, finance, technology, give them the information that they need to help the firm succeed.

[00:12:52] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. That’s great. Well, so I’d love to get into tools, some actual tactics. And you actually told our producer that you think PR is one of the best or the most effective tools law firms have. I’d love to hear why as a PR agency.

[00:13:11] Erika Steinberg: Yes, of course. Well, I think that PR is the trumpeter out in the world for the firm. When you have your strategy set and you have your brand messages set, so it’s important to have both of those defined and articulated first, PR is one of the best ways to get those messages out into the world and to tell the story about the firm or the stories about the firm, especially in this day and age when everybody’s looking at optimizing for AI search and you want to have the stories out there the way you want them to be told. So to me it’s beyond getting quoted. That’s really important because you want the credibility and the third-party verification that you actually know what you’re doing. But to me, more importantly, PR is one of the ways and probably, of course, the most public way that you can share the story of who the firm is and what you want the world to think about the firm. What do you want the world to know about the firm? Your PR professional is how you help tell that story.

[00:14:07] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Are there other tools or, sorry, tactics that you’re bullish on with law firms in addition to PR, thought leadership?

[00:14:16] Erika Steinberg: Content, having a content strategy is absolutely critical. And clients expect that of their law firms now. They expect that their lawyers are going to peek around the corners for them and that they’re going to share the information and that they’re going to share it in a variety of ways. So they’re going to share it in writing, they’re going to push it out on LinkedIn, they’re going to put it in blog posts, they’re going to make videos about it, however people need the information, they are assuming that their lawyer and their law firm, and if not your law firm, then another law firm is going to provide the information for them in that way.

[00:14:55] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Yeah. It is an expectation now. We hear it over and over again, and every in-house counsel panel, people want their lawyer to be guiding them and be that guide about the important issues that affect their business.

[00:15:09] Erika Steinberg: Yeah, and the more you do that and the more effectively you do that, your relationship with that client will change because that’s how you become the trusted advisor. And I see the same thing in my business when one of my clients starts coming to me for something other than the marketing, when we’re having other conversations. So when your clients come to you to talk about the matter at hand, but also what’s going on generally in their business, that’s when you’re the trusted advisor and that’s where you want to get.

[00:15:38] Michelle Calcote King: I love that. So I’d love to, I ask this of everyone. If there’s one final thought that you want to leave our listeners with today, I’d love to give you that opportunity.

[00:15:48] Erika Steinberg: Oh my goodness. So I have so many final thoughts.

[00:15:52] Michelle Calcote King: Go for it.

[00:15:53] Erika Steinberg: I would say don’t overcomplicate marketing. That’s what I see the most. Don’t overcomplicate it. Start clear, stay focused. Don’t chase after the shiny objects. Don’t commit random acts of marketing. It does not have to be complicated. Just keep it connected to what the firm is really trying to achieve. Once you define that, the marketing falls into place.

[00:16:18] Michelle Calcote King: It’s great. So we have been talking to Erika Steinberg of CMO2Go. Thank you so much for your time today.

[00:16:25] Erika Steinberg: Thank you.

[00:16:29] Announcer: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.