Has the title of this post confused you? You might be thinking "wait a minute ... I thought the author of this blog is a marketer!" I am. I'm just grabbing your attention and highlighting a post from Timothy B. Corcoran of Altman Weil, Inc. entitled: Law Firm Leaders - Save Money Now by Cutting Marketing!
If you are a PSF marketer or leader in a PSF, read this post. It is dead on. Here are the key paragraphs:
Marketing carries so many different meanings. For lawyers who have enjoyed the luxury of near unlimited demand for legal services for a generation, Marketing is nearly synonymous with high-end administrative support. It’s event planning, brochure writing and writing elegant prose about how wonderful we are. For the rest of the business community, Marketing is about identifying optimal target markets, taking steps to increase visibility and demonstrating expertise in these markets, understanding client concerns and then developing and offering solutions to address these concerns.
When the expense reduction committee turns its attention to Marketing department, I suggest it’s less impactful in the long run to view Marketing as a collection of fixed and variable expenses and people comprising a cost center. Focus instead on what the firm is doing to articulate its strategy, pursue clients and prospects, enter new markets, replicate financially successful engagements, improve inefficient operations and thus elevate the service posture, and protect and defend its key client relationships. If the red pen you wield in the budget discussion doesn’t directly improve any of these metrics, then what’s the point? You can continue to reduce expenses across the board without regard to what generates revenue, but this won’t buy enough time until client demand returns to previous levels. That train has left the station. Don’t cut “marketing expenses.” Rather, cut the wasteful expenditures and activities which have little impact in generating new revenue. (emphasis mine)
Read the whole thing. Great stuff.
