Branding — once considered the key mission of law firm marketing efforts — is now more appropriately viewed as a means to achieve the desired result: developing business. In fact, “All institutional marketing must fuel business development — or be ineffective,” say Norm Rubenstein and Kent Zimmermann of the legal marketing consultancy Zeughauser Group. How can a law firm realize the power of a strong brand — which in other industries can be a company’s most valuable asset — to drive the business pipeline and get it on the short list every time?
To help answer this question, the Legal Marketing Association recently brought Rubenstein and Zimmermann to Philadelphia to present “Play to Your Audience: The True Integration of Branding and Business Development.” This LMA symposium concluded a great divide exists between most law firms’ branding efforts and their attorneys’ ground-level business-development interactions, and that the two need to connect, to ensure firms’ success in the future.
