Podcast Summary

This podcast provides an overview of legal marketing, including the key stakeholders, the importance of personal branding for lawyers, the role of business development, and the differences between B2B and B2C legal marketing. The interviewee, Rob Watson, is an experienced B2B marketer who has specialized in legal marketing.

 

Transcript

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(00:22):
This is the Cambridge Marketing Podcast.

Kiran Kapur (host) (00:27):
Hello and welcome. This week we are in the world of legal marketing and I'm very pleased to welcome Rob Watson, who's an experienced B2B marketer, but currently specialising in legal marketing. He's also a long-term tutor with the Cambridge Marketing College. Rob, welcome. Could we start with what we mean by legal marketing?

Rob Watson  (00:49):
Hi, Kiran. Yeah, it's great to be back on the podcast. So what we mean by legal marketing is working in-house within a law firm in a marketing role. So depending on whose statistics you believe, I think there's something like between eight and 9,000 UK law firms of different sizes and with different specialisms across the uk. So yeah, working in-house as part of the internal team.

Kiran Kapur (host) (01:11):
Wow I had no idea they were quite so many law firms and presumably they go from quite small to absolutely enormous. It's 'golden circle', isn't it? The big top ones.

Rob Watson  (01:20):
That's right, yeah. Generally the sort of more global law firms, which sometimes you might have one of those firms will have a UK office, and so the parent company of the client will insist "no, we only deal with Magic Circle law firms". But yeah, so there's always an element of a snob value around those. Just as an interesting little aside on those, some of the magic circle law firms have announced recently that they've upped their salaries for newly qualified solicitors to around the £200K mark, which has been quite controversial, but it tells you the figures that can be earned within corporate law.

Kiran Kapur (host) (01:55):
Wow. I know one of the sections we're going to look at is a little bit on corporate law on the B2B side of legal marketing, which is quite fascinating. So I know one of the key things in anything to do with legal is stakeholder management. So what sort of stakeholders are we talking about and why is that important for marketers?

Rob Watson  (02:15):
Yeah, I mean you're talking about lawyers at all sorts of different levels, predominantly with the partners of a business. So when you look at it, partners have a hell of a lot on their plate. They are a practising lawyer, they're leading a department as well. They do also have quite a responsibility for marketing and making sure that it happens and coordinating it, and they effectively between them own the business as well. So there's a lot of pressure on them and they're very, very time poor. So it's just about making decisions easy for them, building credibility with them as well, helping them understand the marketing process along the way. And there are all sorts of cliches about lawyers being difficult to deal with. I don't find them particularly more difficult than any other stakeholder group I've worked with before, but it is, there are some of them that are very open about not knowing about marketing and being very open to your ideas and there was a lot more of those than people would suspect. I think it's quite an unfair reputation that some lawyers have.

Kiran Kapur (host) (03:17):
Yeah, there is definitely a view amongst marketers that lawyers are some of the most difficult people you would deal with

Rob Watson  (03:22):
Once you get to know them, they're a decent bunch really, and it's certainly a sector that, it's a sector that I always quite aspired to get into, didn't manage it for a number of years but do really enjoy it and it's one I intend to stay in.

Kiran Kapur (host) (03:35):
So we are specifically talking about stakeholders as in the legal stakeholders, the lawyers. So we are looking at internal stakeholders. Now I've always understood it there are fee earners and non-fee earners within a legal company. Is that correct?

Rob Watson  (03:50):
That's correct. And then the fee earners aren't necessarily partners, so they can be paralegals upwards and solicitors associates and so on, but yeah, that is right.

Kiran Kapur (host) (04:02):
So the lawyers make the fees and everybody else is essentially an overhead

Rob Watson  (04:09):
Essentially. But as marketers, we don't like to be seen just as an overhead do. We like to see be seen as value creators and a lot of lawyers are appreciative of that in my experience. They do realise that if they work with you, you can help them to get more business in.

Kiran Kapur (host) (04:27):
So how do you as a marketer get that sort of credibility? It must all be around your own branding.

Rob Watson  (04:34):
So personal brand is a really key thing, and as marketers, I think we need to think about our own personal brands, but personal brands for lawyers is a really key theme as well. Really hot topic, much talked about on LinkedIn within the legal profession and as marketers we can really help them with that. So giving them guidance on how to make best use of LinkedIn, how to make sure you're connected with the right people, how to make sure you regularly get content out there, looking at things like blogs and website articles to make sure they've constantly got lots of things to be sharing on LinkedIn, thought leadership pieces and everything else that they can put their name to and build their personal reputation as a lawyer. Because what I found from working in-house, when you look at things like website analytics, you've got the homepage and the about page and beyond that, the most visits pages are quite often the lawyer's individual profile pages rather than the service ones.

(05:29):
So the cliche of 'people buy from people' is very, very true in the legal sector and you can help them work on that. And there is quite a science behind it, and again, a bit of a cliche warning, but yeah, you have a personal brand anyway, so you may as well manage it to make sure that it is a positive one. And so by working with those lawyers and educating them on the process of personal brand and how they can raise their profile, that personal brand for them then is something to be blunt about it, quite transferable that they take with them from company to company, but it's an important asset for them. And then it's then up to the company to make sure that they keep these superstars that are building really good personal brands within their sector.

Kiran Kapur (host) (06:09):
That's really interesting. So it's partly building their brand amongst their peers, but also building brands between somebody who just needs a lawyer. So it's quite a wide remit for a personal brand.

Rob Watson  (06:22):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, currently I'm working in the higher end of the legal sector where your customer is the general counsel or the senior in-house lawyer that the head of legal at a large corporate. So you've got to convince them and quite often what they'll do is sometimes they'll have it dictated to them. They've got to run a panel of say, three or five legal firms and you've got to demonstrate your value individually so that they sort of fight to keep you on their panel of solicitors.

Kiran Kapur (host) (06:49):
So that takes us quite neatly into something legal firms often like, which is business development. They tend to, I've noticed, and it's not often called marketing, it tends to be called business development. So what does business development mean within the legal sector?

Rob Watson  (07:03):
Business development is always one of those phrases that means different things at different companies and especially so within the legal sector. So quite often it is used because they're not comfortable with the word sales or selling. Some firms will put marketing and business development into one department and people will do elements of both, which is probably the most common. Sometimes some firms will split the two out. Business development will generally tend to mean almost like the people also use the phrase account-based marketing where you look at an individual client and say, okay, what campaigns have we got that we can share with this particular client? Let's do it through CRM system, let's have it so that the individuals within the firm, like the partners and the more junior lawyers are sharing things with clients to make sure that they get their attention. And that's often the best way when it's coming from a legal person that they speak with regularly rather than through a mass marketing campaign.

(07:59):
So there's an element of that. Then there's a lot of larger firms will win business through bids and tenders, so they will have a specialist team that handles those. And it's quite a hot area of the job market at the moment for marketers is getting into bids and tenders. A lot of demand for bids professionals at the moment. And sometimes as a marketer you'll also need to contribute towards bids and say, oh, okay, yeah, we've got these other clients in that sector, so here's the expertise and here are the creds that you should be putting in that bid. So very, very broad, but it's just you rarely will as a marketer get involved directly with the client. The partners and the lawyers very much sort of own the client relationships and have the dialogue, so it's quite rare for you to speak directly to one. But yeah, it's just helping guide that activity on a more individualised basis for key clients.

Kiran Kapur (host) (08:53):
So bid writing and bid specialisation, that's actually considered to be part of business development and also part of marketing. So it's something that marketers could do

Rob Watson  (09:02):
In most firms. It is a very, very specialised area of work. If you've worked say elsewhere in B2B and you've worked on mainly content SEO and PPC, that's probably a bit, you'd have to almost go back to the junior levels and start again. But yeah, it is a very specialised skill recognised across, it's very prevalent in legal and professional services, but also across things like construction as well and seems to be an area where you do see a lot of jobs being advertised and there's a lot shortfall of people at the moment, I think for the demand for jobs

Kiran Kapur (host) (09:36):
Possibly. It doesn't sound as exciting as SEO and PPC and all the other things that marketers can do.

Rob Watson  (09:43):
No, no, it can be quite exciting mostly because, if I can call it excitement, because of the tight deadlines that you have to operate to and quite often very prescriptive requirements of the bid format and that sort of thing.

Kiran Kapur (host) (09:58):
Interesting. You mentioned branding, and we've talked about personal branding, but what about branding for the actual law firm? Is that something that has to be done? Is that something that comes under a marketing, presumably comes under a marketing remit

Rob Watson  (10:12):
And it is really crucial. As I mentioned, there are around 9,000 firms, not all of those will be direct competitors necessarily, but it does make a big difference. And I'm sure probably you may have mentioned before on the podcast when looking at other subjects, but things like the, I think it was the McKinsey B2B research that said something like 90% of B2B buyers buy from someone who was on there, what they call their day one list. So when they brainstormed initially for names that they already knew, 90% of people end up buying from on those list. So having a really strong brand and some clear values attributed to it is massively valuable at getting you on that day one list and giving you much more chance. And yeah, if you are only doing short-term bottom the funnel type activity to pick up the people that are looking for a law firm this year, certainly in B2B and certainly at the top end of the market, that may be difficult to pick them up without having warmed people up over a number of years, but having a strong brand.

Kiran Kapur (host) (11:13):
So you've talked about branding for the personal branding and it's the lawyers doing think pieces and being active on LinkedIn. Where do you go for legal branding when you're branding the company? What sort of mechanisms do you use for that?

Rob Watson  (11:29):
I think again, the company branded thought leadership is a big part of that, and then lawyers can then sort of do their own individual thought, mini thought leadership pieces within that, or it's just making sure that they're visible and sharing the company-wide thought leadership all sorts of ways. Things like events, when they're carefully done and they are genuinely groundbreaking, they can be really powerful in staying in the memory of firms over a long period of time. It depends on you're digging down to your brand values and what you want to be seen for. So if you are helpful and educational, doing a lot of helpful events that are helping in-house lawyers stay up to date with the latest developments in their particular area of the law, that is going to help keep you in the mind over time. So it's just about creating lots and lots of touch points over a period of time can be as tiny as regular organic social posts, maybe paid LinkedIn ads are really effective in this sector just because it's very granular. You've got to get very specific job reach people with very specific job titles in certain organisations. So those are the main mechanisms to build a really strong brand probably requires an external agency.

Kiran Kapur (host) (12:45):
So one of the things you've talked about is B2B in legal and you said that obviously that's your background, that's where you are. So can we explore a little bit about the differences in the legal sector? Obviously a B2B and there's a B2C side. So let's start with the B2B, what does that look like?

Rob Watson  (13:03):
Yeah, sure. I mean I've got currently in B2B, but experience across the two. So I've noticed a lot of differences between the two. So B2B and especially at the very top end of the market, it is very technical. You've got most of the dialogue if you like, is between the senior level partners who really know their area of the law and their client, which is an in-house lawyer such as a general counsel. So you've got two very knowledgeable people speaking to each other. So the role of marketer is quite difficult. You have to accept the fact that content creation is going to be largely led by the lawyers you work with and then it's just up to you as a marketer to finesse it, make sure it's structured right and all the usual things about content structure and making sure it's going to get the attention of people.

(13:53):
But you have to lean quite heavily on the technical input of the lawyers and perhaps concede a bit of ground here and there, but just make sure that your role is just to make sure it's structured well and compelling, but still gets the quite technical message across. And that's very different from B2C where for example, if somebody is looking for a family lawyer or a residential conveyancing lawyer, it's a relatively distressed purchase. They're only, nobody thinks, oh, that lawyer's good and cheap. I think I might get divorced. So most of them are, they are distress or very purposeful that you can't manufacture necessarily an outcome for. So on B2C, it's more, as a marketer, your level of knowledge is probably on a par with that of the person in the street or slightly better. And your job is to sort of come down to their level. You can be more active in creating content and helping sort of step them up to the point where they've got enough knowledge to speak to a lawyer, whereas it's very different. It's almost like building bridges between two people at a very similar level and B2B as opposed to sort of building the stepping stones to get someone up to the level where they're ready to speak to a lawyer in B2C.

Kiran Kapur (host) (15:12):
Yes, it is one of the interesting things, isn't it that when you are dealing with members of the public who might suddenly need a lawyer, as you say, it's a distressed purchase, I'm not going to hire a lawyer just because they're cheap or because I know them, I'm only going to hire them when I need them. You've mentioned several times the General Counsel, so can you just explain what's the difference between a General Counsel in-house lawyer and the type of in-house lawyers you are dealing with?

Rob Watson  (15:40):
So I'm working in a law firm, so I'm working with lawyers, but their client in, I don't know if it was Sainsbury's or somebody, Sainsbury's would have a General Counsel, which is or Head of Legal, which is the most senior in-house marketer within that organisation.

Kiran Kapur (host) (15:56):
So a General Counsel is somebody with a, I'm assuming, is somebody with a general knowledge of the law, hence they're a General Counsel. There's somebody internally Sainsbury might go to for a bit of legal advice. And then you are dealing with very specialist lawyers. Is that how it works?

Rob Watson  (16:12):
That's right, yeah, yeah. General Counsel will be a qualified solicitor as well, but they're quite a generalist and some of them will have worked in law firms before and some not, but they will particularly need specific help on certain areas of the law, especially if new laws or regulations come out, they will need to use external counsel. So it's seen as the norm that large corporates will generally use external counsel and appoint a law firm to do certain specific work

Kiran Kapur (host) (16:43):
Just to keep the expertise because law changes quite rapidly.

Rob Watson  (16:47):
Yeah, some of the key differences between the two B2B legal marketing is dependent on, it's more of a long sales cycle sell, so there are more touch points needed along the way. So that's why they do events and in-depth thought leadership pieces, lots of video content and that sort of thing that's very educational to create a lot of touch points over time and stay in people's mind for a long time. Whereas B2C, although you do see there are people like Owen Mitchell who, I dunno if they still do it, they were sponsoring England rugby and they do a lot of TV and radio advertising, so they're sort of keeping the brand name out there as well, emphasising the importance of the brand. But yeah, generally there are fewer touch points in B2C, so SEO and PPC and social media ads are quite popular within that end of the market because you can pick up a customer relatively quickly off two or three marketing touchpoints.

Kiran Kapur (host) (17:44):
That's really interesting comparing the difference because it's a very direct B2B, B2C difference within the same industry. So we've talked about lots of things to do with legal and I would imagine there are going to be some people listening going, oh, how do you get into this? And you said it was something you'd aspired to. So what are the career opportunities in legal?

Rob Watson  (18:04):
I think it'ss definitely a sector that's quite difficult to get into, but once you're in, it does make life a lot easier. They definitely prefer someone with legal sector experience or the very least professional services. So if you've worked for say, accountants or architects or something similar at the moment as well in quite a tough job market, quite a lot of people are looking for very much more specific experience of saying you've got to have worked with corporate clients or you've got to have worked on something specific real estate to get this particular role as they being much more demanding at the moment just because there are quite a lot of candidates out there. But I think if you are good at, you're good at B2B marketing generally, and if you are good at, I've always found I'm quite strong with things that are, most people struggle to explain quite legal is on the face of it quite abstract. And if you can get under the skin of the subject and you're good at learning relatively technical information and retaining it, I think that would set you up well for a career in legal. I think most roles you will find are, like I described earlier, a mix of marketing and business development. So it's just being open towards that as well. But yeah, I'm finding it a great sector work in and hope to stay in it for a long time.

Kiran Kapur (host) (19:23):
Is it something where people sometimes think, "oh, well you can't be very creative". I sometimes hear this about people working in pharmaceuticals, for example, where you sort of say, well, you can't be as creative in marketing. Is that something that you hear said because it's quite a regulated marketplace?

Rob Watson  (19:38):
I think it's also, again, something that's said in a lot of different sectors, like you said about pharmaceuticals. But yeah, I think there is more that can be done to create a bit of personality around a brand. And again, it's crucial that you do with so many law firms out there when you think about it. I used to work in B2B insurance for quite a lot of years as well, and it's not so much the, you might find legal services or insurance services boring, but it's the things that it enables our end client to do. Things like taking new products to market and just having the peace of mind to do that is we underpin a lot of really exciting stuff for our clients.

Kiran Kapur (host) (20:16):
I think that's a really good point. Sometimes we forget that marketing is a means to an end and in your case it's the end for the client that's as important.

Rob Watson  (20:25):
A lot of the advice that we give to clients is quite strategic as well, so it helps them tap into new opportunities and enter new markets as well. So that's where their sort of excitement comes from.

Kiran Kapur (host) (20:36):
It's one of the questions I ask a lot of our contributors is because contributors that come on are always at a stage of their career. How did you get to where you are?

Rob Watson  (20:44):
I think it's all about being, just working hard, getting to learn your craft. I've always put a lot of work into my own personal development and I'm a chartered marketer, but I don't just do the CPD every year. I've got to log so many hours a year. I see it as a requirement to stay up to date and relevant as a marketer and then just being alert to opportunities. So in my full disclosure, I had an element of luck of getting into legal in the end because I worked in, as I mentioned, insurance broking businesses, which work in quite a similar way. They give advice to clients, they work across multiple locations and sell multiple different services For many years, it was a bit of snobbery every time I applied for a legal job because I was told, oh, you haven't worked in professional services.

(21:34):
And I was like, well, insurance is kind of the next best thing, but it's just being persistent and spotting those opportunities. So that helped give me an opportunity. I've always been fascinated with copying content and a great book recommendation that I've always loved is a book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. One of the things in that is uncovering the what's interesting about things that seem really abstract on the surface and how you can get better at that. And that's served me very well in insurance and legal and I try to cut through that abstraction and make things clearer for clients. And I think that's been a really valuable skill to have in insurance and legal, like I say,

Kiran Kapur (host) (22:15):
Rob Watson, thank you very much for that overview of marketing the legal sector. Rob, as he said at the beginning, has been on the podcast before and if you'd like to hear those again, you did a wonderful podcast on managing stress for marketers because it can be a very, very stressful industry. Everybody seems to know what marketers should do. So it was how to handle those. And also key skills for marketers, which plays on Rob's view that marketers should always keep their skills up to date. Rob Watson, thank you so much for your time and your expertise.

Rob Watson  (22:46):
That's a pleasure. Thank you, Kiran. Speak to you again soon.