Please enjoy this quick ILTACON 2023 summary of "Leveraging Data to Strengthen Your Law Firm's Brand" by Jill Huse, Partner and Co-founder, INform."
Date/time: Thursday, August 24, 2023, 11:00 AM ET
Panelists: Kelly Harbour, Chief Business Development Officer at Goulston & Storrs, Kevin Leahy, Senior Director of Content & Brand Strategy at One North and Jill Huse, Partner and Co-Founder of Society 54 and INform Tech
During one of Thursday morning’s sessions, participants enjoyed a lively discussion about using data to effectively measure the success of your law firm’s brand and marketing efforts. Arranged in the concentric “fishbowl” configuration to better encourage audience participation, the session featured insights from Kelly Harbour, CBDO at Goulston & Storrs, Kevin Leahy, Senior Director Content & Brand Strategy at One North and Jill Huse, Partner and Co-founder of INform. The conversation covered a broad range of topics and included practical advice about defining clear and measurable goals, refining your strategy, and integrating internal and external data sources to present analytics in a clear and actionable way.
Some of the key learnings and takeaways from the session:
- · Panelists spoke about the need to prove marketing results with data, with Kelly Harbour sharing the in-house perspective that demonstrating ROI is crucial for promoting initiatives and motivating their adoption. Doing so has enabled her team to devise effective strategies, set expectations, and shift her team’s standing within Goulston & Storrs to become trusted consultants.
- · On using data to drive strategy: always begin with the end in mind. Figure out the answers you need, the problem you’re working to solve, or what you are trying to measure, and back into what data elements you need to get there. Then, hypothesize whether you can completely and consistently capture the data for analysis. And beware of collecting unnecessary data, which will skew the signal-to-noise ratio and eat up valuable team bandwidth. Using technology tools to aid in the collection and analysis can be game-changers for firms, especially as it relates to elevating the professional departments within the firms and their strategic contributions.
- · On getting buy-in across the firm: Jill Huse shared how gamification can be integrated into firm initiatives to drive adoption and create behavioral change. In matters of persuasion, client feedback can be a powerful tiebreaker. Speaking to clients is a tremendous source of advantage, as they will give you a perspective on the client experience and the firm’s value that those within the firm cannot otherwise access. There are lots of rich data elements in law firms from marketing analytics to hours, fees, and realization, but there is no substitute for direct client feedback when it comes to understanding their needs and preferences.
- · To reduce the possibility of sampling error in those client conversations, Kevin Leahy advised that the composition of the interviewees should reflect the composition of your firm’s client base, so that you hear from every constituency. You can then take those qualitative insights about client needs, preferences, and perceptions of your firm, and devise a prospect survey that validates those insights at scale.