Law firm marketing departments need real tech involvment

Marketing departments, though currently undervaluing them, need technology solutions and their technology people’s ideas per a study from management consulting firm McKinsey.

Ben Worthen at WSJ.com’s Business Technolog Blog spoke with Jacques Bughin, a director at McKinsey, about the study.

Internet technologies – everything from emails to blogs to online ads – have become an important part of corporate marketing efforts. But most companies still undervalue the role that tech can play in marketing, [Bughin] says.

In many companies, the online marketing group is an offshoot of the traditional marketing group – a separate entity with a separate budget tasked with managing a company’s brand on the Web. That structure may be preventing companies from seeing how valuable the online channel actually is. [The] study by McKinsey found that companies that have one group responsible for all marketing efforts end up spending a larger percentage of their marketing budgets online. These companies have learned that online marketing can actually be more valuable than traditional marketing…

Bughin goes on to explain how shallow companies are in their Internet marketing.

Most businesses have bought key-word ads that show up when someone enters a particular word in a search engine like Google, and many buy display or video ads that promote the brand. But most companies aren’t using technologies like blogs or social networking in order to reach customers. That’s a mistake. ‘You run the risk that all the interactions that people have around your brand will take place on other sites, they engage with your brand, but not with you.’

Couldn’t be more true than with law firms. Marketing departments, generally far less knowledgeable than some of their firm’s tech geeks when it comes to blogs, social media, and how how people communicate on the Internet, drive Internet marketing decisions.

Marketing and law firm heads strategize and decide on Internet marketing solutions and vendors. They then direct their tech employees in execution of the plan. That’s nuts.

These ‘tech geeks’ are using the Internet for everything from sharing pictures & video’s, IM’ing, blogging, networking with cohorts on the latest technology, playing video games, to whatever. They’re exposed to more Internet communication in a day than marketing heads are in a year.

Why not ask your law firm tech folks what they think of your marketing ideas? Why not ask tech folks what ideas they have – not just on technology software, for further enhancing your lawyer’s image and growing business? Why not ask them what Internet communication mediums they’d suggest? Why not make one of these ‘geeks’ a key decision maker in your marketing department?

I’m seeing more bright Internet marketing tech people with key roles at law firms. But they’re still the exception.