Building Influence To Maximize Your Marketing Success

For many legal marketers stepping into a new role or operating as a solo professional, it is easy to feel siloed or isolated. You’re entering an established firm ecosystem with its own hierarchies and communication habits, often without a clear roadmap for how marketing is expected to function. It’s easy to find yourself unsure of how to gain traction or where to start.

Marketing success comes from building trust, opening communication channels and positioning yourself as a strategic partner for the entire firm. Strong internal relationships across firm executives, practice group leadership and emerging leaders are the foundation for meaningful marketing engagement and outcomes. This article outlines the key relationships legal marketers should prioritize, how to build them and the powerful results that can be generated.

I. Key Relationships in Your Law Firm

Managing Partner and Executive Leadership
The firm’s managing partner and executive leadership team influence everything from marketing budgets to public messaging. Building strong relationships here is essential. These leaders need to see marketing as a tool that tangibly supports firm-wide business development (BD) and growth. Gaining their trust and advocacy allows you to push forward larger initiatives and be included in strategic conversations.

Practice Group Leaders
Each practice group has unique client acquisition flow, pain points and growth opportunities. Practice group leaders are invaluable allies for uncovering these insights. By working closely with them, you can shape targeted marketing plans that align with real business goals, whether that’s client retention, cross-selling or entering a new industry segment. These relationships also give marketing professionals added credibility when requesting information from practice group members, such as bio updates, award submissions and thought leadership content.

Emerging Leaders
Most of firm marketing attention is on equity partners and rainmakers with associates and junior partners often overlooked as marketing contributors, but they’re a critical part of the future growth of the firm. New attorneys are eager to grow their networks, build visibility and learn how to contribute to firm marketing and BD efforts. By connecting with them early, you create a strong cohort of advocates willing to participate in marketing efforts and help drive engagement from the ground up. Additionally, building strong marketing and BD habits early on will allow emerging leaders to have a head start building their referral network and practice when they do become partner.

II. Building Trust and Nurturing Relationships

Establishing strong internal relationships is about building credibility and demonstrating value. One strategy to show value is using data and open communication to shift attorney perceptions and clarify how marketing directly impacts the firm’s growth.

Use Data to Demonstrate Value
Marketing professionals can use internal datasets to demonstrate the tangible impact of their efforts. For example, after featuring an attorney on LinkedIn, you may be able to point to a noticeable spike in traffic to that attorney’s website bio. By tracking the performance of a content marketing initiative such as publishing articles on the firm’s website, you may observe an increase in referral traffic from search engines. These metrics would illustrate a broader narrative of visibility translating into opportunity.

You can also identify the role referral relationships play in driving new business to the firm and use that insight to emphasize the importance of consistent networking and thought leadership. Highlighting relationships that drive business will encourage attorneys to place more value on networking and become more receptive to suggestions for networking events, happy hours or similar initiatives.

Create Face-to-Face Opportunities
Beyond the data, prioritize spending time with attorneys one-on-one to discuss their goals and pain points. These conversations are critical for addressing preconceived notions about what marketing is and isn’t, and uncover how the marketing team can support firm growth. By talking through the purpose of tactics like content development or bio updates, marketers can shift the perspective from “marketing is a distraction” to “marketing is a BD tool.”

Follow Through and Stay Visible
Building a relationship isn’t a one-time effort. It is important to stay visible by attending firm meetings, following up consistently and delivering on promises. That consistency will build trust. When attorneys see that their efforts translate into polished posts, published articles or increased visibility, it reinforces the value of marketing and BD.

III. The Value of Building Strong Relationships

With stronger relationships and clearer pathways for engagement, attorney participation in marketing efforts will significantly increase. It can translate directly into more visibility, more lead generation and new business for the firm. Attorneys will also see marketing as a partner in their success, not simply a burden to manage or an unnecessary firm expense.

Below are three real world examples of positive outcomes that can be generated through building strong relationships with firm leadership.

Thought Leadership Content
One of the most impactful outcomes for our firm was the launch of a consistent content marketing plan. Where we once had little regular presence online, we now publish monthly thought leadership to the website — giving attorneys a platform to showcase their expertise and helping the firm establish authority in key practice areas.

News and Update Flow
Previously, we averaged about one LinkedIn post per month. Through relationship-building and trust, attorneys began proactively sharing updates, resulting in an average of two posts per week. That improved cadence keeps the firm top-of-mind for clients and peers and has measurably improved social media engagement and website traffic.

Associate Business Development Coaching
During my conversations with associates and young partners, it became clear they needed more personalized support to begin their BD journey. This led to the creation of a 1-on-1 coaching program. I now meet with emerging attorneys to help them craft BD plans tailored to their goals and comfort levels — offering ideas ranging from networking and public speaking to targeted content creation.

IV. Conclusion: Collaboration is Key to Success

For legal marketers, particularly those working solo or entering a new environment, building internal relationships isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. By identifying the right firm leaders to connect with, taking a strategic and data-driven approach to building trust and delivering consistent value, marketing can become a pivotal partner in the firm’s business strategy.

Once those connections are in place, the marketing function moves from isolated to connected and from reactive to strategic. The results include more participation, more visibility and most importantly, more business.

You don’t need to have all the answers on your first day. Start with a conversation. Build trust. The rest will follow.

 

Learn More About Marketing Management and Leadership with the Third Edition of the LMA Body of Knowledge The content in this feature correlates with the Marketing Management and Leadership domain in the LMA Body of Knowledge (BoK). Dive deeper and access the latest edition of the BoK online. The Third Edition of the LMA BoK showcases enhanced expertise across every domain, introduces new competencies in Client Services, Communications and Technology Management, features more advanced skills across all domains and broadens coverage of competitive and business intelligence skills. Plus, it emphasizes a stronger commitment to nurturing diversity, equity, and inclusion across the entirety of the BoK. Learn more.