The ‘boiling the ocean’ approach to marketing, where firms pursue too many opportunities, is hampering business development, according to the LexisNexis InterAction’s global marketing and business development 2019 survey, published this week. Other obstacles to growth include failure to follow up on opportunities that do arise and heavy competition in the market.
Collaboration between different departments within firms is another weak spot, although it is improving―42% of survey respondents (compared to 56% in 2018) cited ‘cross-firm collaboration’ as their top challenge. However, this should be balanced against the fact 52% of 2019 respondents rated their collaboration as ‘successful’.
Collaboration with the IT department is increasing as firms place greater emphasis on digital marketing and prospective clients request information on the firm’s technology. Some 70% of law firms expect to invest more in website and social media in 2020. However, their online activities lack focus and fail to target business opportunities.
For example, a mere 9% use analytics to track business opportunities over the lifecycle of a client relationship, although 42% of respondents mentioned analytics as a major investment initiative.
‘As technology continues to support marketing and business development initiatives and reporting capabilities, IT is becoming a strategic partner for helping drive growth among top law firms,’ said Meghan Frank, Global Director of Marketing, LexisNexis Legal & Professional Software Solutions.
‘Improved technology integration combined with actionable data greatly enrich client engagement and can help firms grow new business development opportunities.’
As was the case in the previous two years, just under half of US firms and a quarter of Europe and Asia Pacific firms described their business development efforts as successful.
‘While most firms are using technology to maintain client data, many are still not using it to create the insights needed to drive better decisions, improve client service and create focused firm growth strategies,’ said Scott Wallingford, VP and General Manager of LexisNexis Software Solutions.
‘Leveraging client data will help overcome these challenges, providing critical insights to focus business development planning efforts and ultimately achieve improved client service and firm growth.’
The survey was conducted between August and October 2019 among 103 Big Law executives in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.
