It’s hard for law firms these days.
Today’s legal clients scrutinize their spending and are well informed about pricing, value and competitive alternatives. This necessitates insight-driven marketing and business development strategies just to keep up.
The challenge is that business executives can only provide these insights if they have greater transparency into client matters, along with a seamless process to access, capture and curate data in order to predict future client needs with confidence.
Adding to the challenge is the reality of many firms holding their data in task-specific silos. This approach makes it impossible to actualize transparency, derive actionable insights and collaborate effectively. The result is that business opportunities are missed as the complexity of engagements increases. Firms wearing data blinders lose market share to competitors who take a more modern approach to data and technology.
Enter the CMO
Forward-thinking firms accept this dynamic and fully understand the challenges. They are also taking action by procuring modern technology like Intapp and changing, as needed to predict the needs of their existing – and prospective – clients.
The key to sparking and driving successful change is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
Modern CMOs are the change agents who are transforming marketing from what is often a supportive function into a strategic partnership with profitability squarely in its sights. With the benefit of a bird’s-eye view across the entire client lifecycle, CMOs are best positioned to champion data-driven decision-making and the requisite infrastructure and process changes.
CMOs are also stewards of the firm brand, which is heavily influenced by the client experience. They are actively involved in both the pursuit of new clients and identifying new opportunities with current clients. According to the Pareto principle (also known as the “80/20 rule”), 80% of revenue and profit come from only 20% of clients. However, the reality that many law firms now face is the “Super Pareto” effect, where 90% to 95% of profits come from only 5% to 10% of clients. The CMOs that see the patterns and anticipate client demands will generate more revenue for their firms and have happier clients.
The investment pays off – and then some
How much of an impact can this modern approach make? According to a recent study conducted by ALM Legal Intelligence and Calibrate Legal, the investment pays off in a big way. Am Law 200 firms have seen an average return of $47 million on $1 million of marketing and business development spending.
Now that we’ve set the stage for the CMO as a change agent, we’d like to invite you to check out two in-depth ways to learn more.
Intapp CMO POV and webinar
If you’d like to learn more about forward-thinking marketing and business development strategies – including the critical role of the modern CMO – we have two new resources available:
Download the “The Modern CMO: Advancing Marketing from Reactive to Predictive.”
We’re also holding a webinar on “Modernizing Business Development from Reactive to Predictive” in collaboration with Above the Law on Wednesday, August 7, at 1:00 pm ET. We invite you to join us as we discuss key topics around winning business with data-driven insights, smart collaboration techniques, reactive vs. predictive marketing and more!