I recently heard one of my favorite songs – “Once in a Lifetime” – by the Talking Heads that has a refrain of “Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.” This refrain is a perfect metaphor for those lawyers looking to leverage new marketing techniques to drive business for their firms.
I’ve gotten several calls recently from law firms who are looking for the “next big thing,” and granted, there are a lot of next big things out there – social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.), Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM), Digital Asset Optimization (DAO), 1 to 1 Marketing, etc. Make no mistake – new approaches to marketing, advancements in the web and rapid adoption curves are creating a lot of opportunities for intrepid early adopters.
For the record, at BARD, we blog, tweet, are on Facebook, on YouTube and are LinkedIn. This said, when looking at new marketing approaches, realize that none of them is a silver bullet, and just like networking, email marketing, sending out printed newsletters and all the other “old” marketing approaches, successfully leveraging any of the new marketing techniques requires commitment. There’s no sense in tweeting if you only do so once a week, or creating a LinkedIn account where you only have 10 contacts. The same goes for all the other new techniques. While early adopters often receive a short term benefit from being among the first, over the long term, those who get benefit from their marketing efforts – new or old – are those that leverage the tools better. Same as it ever was.