The key to successful schmoozing

Read any article written by a client that addresses the subject of why they appoint their legal advisers and one thing is always clear. Clients buy individuals. People buy people.
Therefore marketing has one ultimate aim. Marketing exists to facilitate those situations where clients and potential clients come face-to-face with professionals and are able to make an informed choice as to the suitability of these individuals as advisers to their organisations.
There are three types of marketing activities. We call these corporate marketing, capability marketing and contact marketing.

The ‘nearness to client’ pyramid
Corporate marketing includes activities such as advertising, sponsorship, public relations and the production of corporate brochures. Corporate marketing is typically broad brush and by its very nature hard to target toward specific clients or prospective clients.
Capability marketing includes activities such as running capability-specific seminars and workshops. Writing articles in journals aimed at target client markets or publishing authoritative books and other publications aimed at target clients would also be examples of capability marketing activities. Capability marketing, as the name suggests, is about demonstrating the firm’s (and sometimes an individual’s) particular abilities in respect of an aspect of law or in relation to a particular sector of the market.
Contact marketing occurs when the professionals within a firm have the opportunity to demonstrate their capability to a client or potential client – and the situation also allows them to do this on a one-to-one basis.
Because people buy people, contact marketing represents the most effective set of activities for winning new work for a firm. We do not suggest that corporate marketing and capability marketing activities should be abandoned. We do suggest however that they should, in some way, help to create the opportunity for contact marketing activities.
Many firms have great contact marketing opportunities on which they fail to capitalise fully. Take the example of a seminar aimed at clients and potential clients. The seminar is focused on giving guidance related to an impending change in employment law.
Most firms would see this event as a good opportunity to demonstrate capability and potentially win new instructions. Two firms have the same idea. One runs a capability marketing exercise, the other runs a capability and contact marketing exercise. How they do it is shown on page 20.