Last week, I reproduced an article by Mark Usellis, CMO at Davis Wright, about how to get more marketing results in a down economy, even when budgets are flat. His answer was built around zero-based budgeting, which Wikipedia describes as “a technique... which reverses the working process of traditional budgeting” by ignoring last year’s spending completely, and justifying every proposed expense for next year strictly on its merits.
When I called Mark to dig into the details of how he accomplishes this, he stressed that “you have to start with a philosophy” and “be clear on what you are trying to accomplish.” If you can “tell a coherent story about what you want to do,” the people around you will understand why some expenses will be approved, and others will not.
In Mark’s case, “I wanted to reallocate our spending portfolio to do less on general visibility and more on relationship development, less on client acquisition and more on loyalty, and less on ‘a rising tide floats all boats’ and more on focusing on the firm’s core strengths.”
When Mark explained this to me, he diplomatically noted that “every firm is different in its goals and philosophy” and stressed that these were just his goals. In my less humble opinion, if you disagree with Mark’s goals, you are probably wrong. For most law firms, the best way to maximize new business while minimizing marketing cost is indeed to focus on relationships, loyalty, core strengths, and providing value.
By squeezing the budgets for sponsorships, directories, and public relations, Mark was able to free up money for a few very targeted business development initiatives, including DWT Pacific, a collaboration with Australian firm PLN Lawyers Sydney to provide legal and business services in the South Pacific (including Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Australia). This joint initiative builds on the traditional strengths of the two firms, and on the contacts and skills of several lawyers who had set up the program, along with new lateral David Cohen who joined DWT early this year “after serving 5 1/2 years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Affairs and two years as the U.S. Representative to the Pacific Community.”
In this context, the most important fact about the DWT Pacific initiative is that it did not require an increase in the marketing budget. All of the money that was needed to start up and maintain this program came from cutting other marketing expenses which were less targeted, and less clearly related to new business. Or, as Mark put it, “We set aside money for ‘move the needle initiatives’ rather than just feeding the boiler.”
So even in a down economy law firms can spend more on the things that matter, simply by cutting back on the things that don’t. The down economy is a dark cloud over all of us these days, but it could have a silver lining, if it forces law firms to spend their marketing budgets more wisely.
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