If you ever built a house, you understand the importance of designing the structure or floor plan with an architect before laying the foundation. If you are an attorney, you understand the importance of doing some discovery about your client and case before presenting to a judge.

GUEST BLOGGER: Kimberly Alford Rice, Preisdent - KLA Marketing Associates

Why Firms Should Develop a Strategic Plan

When I work with law firms, which profess to have strategic plans, I find it bewildering that they often are stored in the management teams’ drawers somewhere and rarely are implemented. I scratch my head and ask why bother expending the energy and time to develop a course for the firm if there is no system created to implement the plan. What a colossal waste of everyone’s time and resources.

Accounting marketers have swarmed Washington, DC this week for the Association for Accounting Marketers (AAM) annual conference. Sessions have included performance reviews, how to add value to your firm and niche development to marketing audits and online marketing strategy.

GUEST BLOGGER: Matthew Gallizzi, CEO - Notix Technology Solutions

Facebook mobile has over 100 million users and is growing faster than desktops. Morgan Stanley believes that more users will be connected to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within five years. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha told Reuters that Android-powered mobile devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured.

When working with multiple clients, it’s important to learn what is the most effective form of communication for that client. More often than not it will vary from person to person and not firm to firm. There will be some global technologies that a firm uses and are important to know and understand early in a client/partner relationship, particularly if you are working on building a website or designing an electronic annual report. But at the end of the day people just like to be asked – “What is the best way for me to communicate with you?”

GUEST BLOGGER: Michael Zolno, Principal – Zolno Consulting

Six months ago, after almost a year of trial and tribulation and at great expense, your law firm completed its rebranding efforts. This morning, at the marketing committee meeting, you; the Director of Marketing, were asked by the Managing Partner, “are our new branding efforts showing a return?”

Fumbling with your papers and looking taken off guard respond, “I think so. Some of our clients have told us they like the new website and …”

I remember being eight and all I wanted for Christmas was "Game and Watch" games. Game and Watch by Nintendo, was a handheld gaming unit made in the early 80s, with an LCD screen and very simple motion. In my mind, this was the seed of the moblie generation and I'd like to believe that this revolution may have started with me. ;)

You just bought a parcel of land and are planning to build a brand new home, your dream home. Would you start building this home without an architecture or floor plan? I would hope not. And the same goes for building a website.

Blueprints are to a house, like sitemaps and wireframes are to a website. Information architecture requires a significant amount of hours of research and discovery long before the designer touches the canvas with their interactive tools.

Recruiting lateral partners is one the most important ways that a firm may increase their gross revenue, profits per partner, revenue per attorney all while adding value and importance to the firm. Recruiting a “high profile” lateral partner should be treated with equal importance as landing a new client or getting additional business from an existing client.

Simply because your title doesn’t say Marketing Strategist or Director of Strategy does not mean you should sit on your hands and not suggest strategic solutions to your internal and external clients. Consider this for example: