The crucial role of business development and marketing in chambers during Covid-19…and beyond
Serle Court's Business Development Manager, Charlotte Davidson and Marketing Manager, Shana Garioch talk about their change strategy to synchronise business development and marketing efforts in chambers during – and beyond - the pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected professional services firms globally. But, in the wake of the storm, we are seeing a fresh approach to nurturing business relationships and developing marketing methods to adjust to an evolving legal profession.
Barristers' chambers such as Serle Court are finding a collegiate approach and the integration of business development and marketing strategies are contributing to their return on investment and business growth in a very niche market.
It became quite clear early on during 'lockdown' that Serle Court's digital marketing strategy was going to change. We always valued our longstanding client relationships, but we were faced with a new challenge: to focus on chambers' existing relationships to develop a responsive, intermediate digital strategy.
To do so, our team focused on delivering a bespoke content marketing strategy including webinars, webcasts and podcasts, virtual roundtables, thought leadership pieces, regular social media updates and one-to-one ‘virtual coffees’.
Our main goal was to showcase Serle Court's main areas of expertise whilst expanding our marketing mix. Implementing a change strategy meant that we needed to adapt quickly. As new opportunities arose, we needed to find a way to highlight various areas of expertise in a new marketing initiative and that’s when SerleShare was created.
SerleShare came at a time when barristers and clients were relying heavily on high-value social media and digital marketing interaction as well as greater accessibility to informative and educational content. Discussions concerning topical legal issues started to happen on a much greater scale and became available on more complex platforms.
We also realised that over 90% of the visitors to our website were new users and they were spending more time reading our content, so we needed to deliver topical conversation readable in less than one minute.
The revised digital marketing strategy has presented us with real opportunities. Serle Court’s remote events programme, for example, allows us to regularly connect with our UK clients as well as offshore industry leaders, showcasing teams of barristers, and assisting us in delivering valuable content across our various marketing channels.
The remote events programme facilitated the connection with our international clients around the globe, generating a higher demand for Serle Court's webinars which in turn created an invaluable opportunity for us to reach a much wider audience.
Another example is our social media strategy, where we took the time to evaluate our followers and identified those who were engaging with our posts. We used this information to maximise our PR output by producing popular content to our followers and use in press articles.
“It became quite clear early on during 'lockdown' that Serle Court's digital marketing strategy was going to change. We always valued our longstanding client relationships, but we were faced with a new challenge: to focus on chambers' existing relationships to develop a responsive, intermediate digital strategy.”
Thought leadership pieces were driving traffic to our website and encouraging new leads to contact our BD team and clerks. It became noticeable that conversations around the topics that were set out within the strategy sparked conversations and educated new clients about Serle Court.
BD and marketing teams in barristers' chambers are integral in terms of brand awareness and business growth. Although these teams are a new phenomenon, the perception is changing, and thankfully BD teams are not only associated with organising events and ordering branded items. New era BD teams in barristers' chambers understand the needs of their clients and the market.
They understand individual members' practice areas and what they want to achieve with marketing. They know that chambers will grow expertise in line with the market demands, either as a result of Covid-19 or otherwise. These individuals or teams need to be innovative, at a time when it is crucial to have a proactive approach towards business development and marketing. Having a close working relationship with the clerks allows insight into what clients want from chambers aligning the business strategy.
The question to consider is: how do we continue to deliver results in this new digital era, where most businesses are competing for exposure and a share of the market?
At Serle Court, our BD and Marketing team is fully committed to continuing to deliver a high-level of marketing expertise through innovation, developing marketing trends, expanding our social media presence and using new technologies.
We know that to achieve the best results for chambers, we also need to have efficient internal communication systems, particularly by creating two-way strategic dialogue between the BD and clerking teams.
The continued focus at this time is further engagement with barristers and clients to better understand what marketing channels are most helpful for our longstanding clients, and new followers.
To read #SerleShare please visit Serle Court’s website here