The ‘boiling the ocean’ approach to marketing, where firms pursue too many opportunities, is hampering business development, according to the LexisNexis InterAction’s global marketing and business development 2019 survey, published this week. Other obstacles to growth include failure to follow up on opportunities that do arise and heavy competition in the market.
Collaboration
between different departments within firms is another weak spot, although it is
improving―42% of survey respondents (compared to 56% in 2018) cited ‘cross-firm
collaboration’ as their top challenge. However, this should be balanced against
the fact 52% of 2019 respondents rated their collaboration as ‘successful’.
Collaboration
with the IT department is increasing as firms place greater emphasis on digital
marketing and prospective clients request information on the firm’s technology.
Some 70% of law firms expect to invest more in website and social media in
2020. However, their online activities lack focus and fail to target business
opportunities.
For example, a
mere 9% use analytics to track business opportunities over the lifecycle of a
client relationship, although 42% of respondents mentioned analytics as a major
investment initiative.
‘As technology
continues to support marketing and business development initiatives and
reporting capabilities, IT is becoming a strategic partner for helping drive
growth among top law firms,’ said Meghan Frank, Global Director of Marketing,
LexisNexis Legal & Professional Software Solutions.
‘Improved
technology integration combined with actionable data greatly enrich client
engagement and can help firms grow new business development opportunities.’
As was the
case in the previous two years, just under half of US firms and a quarter of
Europe and Asia Pacific firms described their business development efforts as
successful.
‘While most
firms are using technology to maintain client data, many are still not using it
to create the insights needed to drive better decisions, improve client service
and create focused firm growth strategies,’ said Scott Wallingford, VP and
General Manager of LexisNexis Software Solutions.
‘Leveraging
client data will help overcome these challenges, providing critical insights to
focus business development planning efforts and ultimately achieve improved
client service and firm growth.’
The survey was
conducted between August and October 2019 among 103 Big Law executives in the
US, Europe and Asia Pacific.
