Law Firm Marketing Strategy or Tactics: Chicken or Egg?

You often have to adjust current tactics as you work toward a new strategy, and then be ready to substantially change or replace those tactics consistent with the new plan. Admittedly, it’s not ideal or even logical. But it may be your best option.

Let’s Be Clear About This

A digital agency founder I respect recently posted that strategy must come first, that you have to stop jumping to the tactical execution stage too fast, and that tactics minus strategy equals busywork. His agency offers search engine optimization, paid online marketing, and lead generation for “people law” firms—practices that focus on the legal needs of individuals in their personal lives, including personal injury, criminal defense, family law, and specific types of immigration.

Those kinds of firms generally need a large number of clients and referrals because their clients will probably need the firm’s representation only once (unless they’re terribly unlucky). They predominantly use online marketing strategies to connect with people through Google searches, social media, YouTube, streaming services, and other digital channels. Because online marketing can be costly depending on competition from other firms, you need a strategy to avoid wasting money and spitting in the wind.

With a few notable exceptions, Rain’s law firm clients are in the “business law” space, where long-term relationships generate new work from prospects and more work from existing clients. Our job is to help them initiate, cultivate, and strengthen those connections. Sure, we’d like to develop, implement, and execute an informed, overarching strategy with each firm, practice group, and lawyer. I’d also like more hair, but things don’t always happen that way.

Law Firm Realities Get in the Way

Here’s what 32 years of working with lawyers and law firms has taught me:

Consensus is hard and takes time. Firms usually make marketing decisions, definitely big ones, by formal committees or ad hoc groups. Getting agreement is difficult. The only real exceptions are solo practitioners.

Brand perception varies widely. Every lawyer has a personal brand, but how they see it in their minds may differ from how prospects, clients, colleagues, and referral sources perceive them. The same can be true for a firm’s brand, and it’s even more problematic when different lawyers define it differently.

Revenue comes first. Fun fact: Lawyers prefer to work on client matters and generate revenue rather than spend non-billable time on strategic marketing planning. Strategy development is non-billable and will never be an attorney’s priority.

Egos complicate everything. Some lawyers have oversized egos. There, I said it. When their egos extend to believing they “know” marketing, that looking-outside-from-within perspective can produce a fishbowl effect.

Change is hard. Some firms are open to change, while some are not. Some lawyers are open to change, while some are not. When change-motivated, decision-making lawyers are at odds with status quo-minded colleagues—or vice versa—it causes gridlock, especially if egos are involved (see bullet above). And let’s not overlook firms that, for whatever reason, have never had marketing plans and where timing, budgets, resistance. and a “we don’t need no stinkin’ strategy” sentiment are real-world issues.

Marketers must be cat-herders. Law firm marketers, in-house and outside alike, must be skilled and knowledgeable subject-matter experts and emotionally intelligent cat-herders capable of shepherding worthy ideas through a maze of litter boxes.

Any of these challenges slows down the strategic planning process, so it’s unreasonable to think you can simply end current marketing tactics until you design a new strategy. Instead, you have to work on the fly, modifying or jettisoning tactics, aligning them as best as possible to the anticipated strategy.

Let’s not overlook the firms that, for whatever reason, have never had a marketing plan.

We’re Not Talking Fire, Ready, Aim Here

The alternative isn’t random activity—it’s systematically dipping your toe as you obtain clarity for your strategy.

There’s a misnomer that branding means logos, color schemes, business cards, and brochures. It’s far more, including positioning, targeting, practice mix, and service delivery. As such, branding without strategy is ill-advised, to say the least. Below that 30,000-foot altitude, though, there’s plenty of room for day-to-day marketing tweaks and enhancements.

Content is a constant, and the need for posts, articles, videos, thought leadership pieces, and firm news rolls on. If you think about it, social media is an excellent place for preliminary experimentation. Publishing a post and monitoring likes, comments, shares, and views is a no-cost focus group of sorts. Debuting a video on your website, in a newsletter, or in a client alert can help determine if and how your audience engages with visual content. You’re testing messages to see what resonates, what sticks. You’re adding to your institutional knowledge of what works.

Many firms hold annual events or perennially sponsor conferences, industry associations, or non-profit causes. You’re not going to pause them because you haven’t completed your brand research and analysis yet, particularly if your absence from these programs will be glaringly evident.

Then there’s business development. Relationship building doesn’t stop while marketing catches up, nor does an attorney’s target market change so dramatically that they would toss aside the connections they’ve established and wait for a new set of targets. In my humble opinion, BD must be ongoing—even more constant than content—and it doesn’t require new brochures or a website.

Assuming your current marketing goals and efforts are no longer valid is dangerous. Don’t cast aside aging market research under the misconception that it’s inaccurate. The strategy-first approach assumes you know what you don’t know when, in fact, you do know what your firm needs to succeed, regardless of what your brand style guidelines call for.

What Tactics-Toward-Strategy Marketing Looks Like

Carrying out tactical marketing without a shiny new strategy doesn’t mean taking a buckshot approach and hoping for the best. You still need to follow a protocol:

Zero in on one channel, one message, one audience. Pick the marketing activity that feels most natural to your firm and optimize the hell out of it. Lawyers, if you’re comfortable speaking, focus on webinars. If you write well, focus on content. If you network naturally, focus on attending events and having meaningful conversations.

Double down on what works, kill what doesn’t. When you discover that your employment law content generates 3x more qualified leads than your corporate briefings, you’ve learned something strategic about your market position. When you find that LinkedIn outperforms email marketing, you’ve identified a channel priority.

Scale successful tactics across other areas. Once you understand why something works, you can apply those insights to other channels, practice areas, or target markets.

This tactical-first approach gives law firms something the strategy-first model doesn’t: momentum. When partners see measurable results from marketing activities—more inquiries, better prospects, increased visibility—they become believers and cheerleaders willing to invest more time, attention, and money in marketing.

Again, Let’s Be Clear

Strategies are great. You should have one. Your life will be better.

However, the dirty secret of effective legal marketing is that planning and tactics aren’t sequential—they’re iterative. Your strategy should evolve based on tactical learning, and your tactics should be informed by strategic insights. But you have to start somewhere, and for most law firms, starting with tactical experimentation and building toward strategic sophistication works better than the reverse.

The firms winning in today’s market don’t always have the most sophisticated strategies. They succeed because they have the discipline to test, measure, and improve continuously. They understand that in a rapidly changing market, the ability to adapt quickly matters more than having the perfect plan.