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'Media & Communication:' Is Your Firm Ready for PR?
As a publicist, I often speak with law firms who are interested in implementing a public relations program. Often times, the firm has never engaged in public relations and is not familiar with what such a program entails. They do recognize that public relations has value but are not certain of its role as part of a business development and marketing program.
|What Does PR Do?
Public relations is often confused with marketing, but they are not the same thing. However, the two areas are complementary — it is hard to have one without the other. Public relations is mostly concerned with how a company interacts with its audience and the public in general. While marketing focuses on selling, PR focuses on relationship building. A good PR strategy might involve working on content creation, managing social media accounts, interacting with clients online and offline, and talking to the press.
Public relations can serve as a distinctive tool for building and extending a firm's reputation, practice area differentiation and expert thought leadership. Public relations is all about relationship building, not just with the media but also with target audiences. Unlike advertising, public relations (specifically media outreach) is third-party endorsement of your firm and practice. A stranger making kind comments about you is much more powerful than you telling the world how wonderful you are.
|Why Is PR Necessary?
You may believe that since business is good and you have no trouble attracting clients, that PR is unnecessary. However, this good fortune may not last forever. Many factors can impact your business negatively such as an economic downturn or new regulations affecting your industry (e.g. tort reform). In the last decade or so, many national law firms have opened offices in Texas. This has made the legal market extremely competitive in the state, especially in Dallas and Houston. In addition, these national firms are luring talented attorneys away from local firms.
A comprehensive public relations initiative can assist a law firm in maintaining or enhancing their brand, further business development, position specific attorneys as leaders in key practices or industries, and help with recruitment by elevating a firm's profile to attract top legal talent.
Viewing public relations as a key management function of a business or an essential strategy to manage one's individual reputation will help accomplish important goals such as establishing or enhancing awareness among key audiences, increasing news media and social media presence, and maintaining a consistent voice across communication platforms.
|What Makes a Good PR Strategy?
A good PR strategy will include a multi-tiered process with different methods to create a conversation. This might include creating thought leadership opportunities to boost attorney credibility such as placing bylined articles on subjects in which attorneys are conversant. This could also mean producing videos or podcasts on peripheral but relevant subjects to garner attention and conversation around your leadership and firm. A comprehensive PR program works in conjunction with other elements of your overall marketing strategy, which may include social media, events or charity tie-ins. A PR strategy enables you to consider every aspect of communicating a message in the best possible way. It will also help you to maximize the success of your PR efforts and gain the most appropriate media coverage.
It's misguided to believe that PR professionals can make publicity just happen. Public relations requires the client to participate and provide story ideas. For instance, are there new regulations or a court ruling that impacts a specific practice of affects a particular industry? Has the firm recently settled a large case or won a significant court victory? Has a new attorney joined the firm? All of this is news a PR professional can leverage.
If you plan on retaining a public relations professional or handling your own public relations program, it's important to understand your goals. It's important to always have a goal for your PR activities. By determining your goal, you will have a clear purpose for your PR strategy and maximize the success of your PR activities. Is it to increase business? Or, maybe to attract the best attorneys.
Make sure you have access to your analytics, such as traffic to your website, which can help measure the impact or ROI of any media outreach or public relations campaigns. Also, determine if your website is ready for media coverage. It is important to have a news page where you can post media coverage your firm has received as well as announcements about your firm and attorneys. You can also include client alerts and newsletters. View your competitors' websites to determine if yours seems outdated. If your budget does not allow for a complete redo then consider a refresh.
|Should You Retain a PR Professional?
As a CMO, business development manager or office administrator, you already have a lot on your plate and developing and implementing a comprehensive public relations program may not be feasible. Therefore, it may make sense to have a public relations professional available, whether you hire someone to handle internally or retain an external PR firm.
Success doesn't happen overnight so it's crucial to commit time to the public relations process. Sometimes it can take at least three to six months for a PR professional to launch a successful campaign and secure media coverage. One of the worst things a firm can do is retain an outside professional or agency for six months and then terminate the relationship because they achieved a singular goal or you feel the program is not working.
You or your public relations firm, with the firm's input, should establish goals. It's important to regularly communicate to determine if the strategy and/or tactics are working. If not, what can be tweaked to improve. The long-term effects of media visibility grow over time, in fact, years, and this creates amplification.
Bill Gates once said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.” If PR is not a part of your marketing program, it may be time to consider and implement a public relations strategy to complement your existing marketing plan.
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Carlos Arcos is Senior Vice President of Public Relations at Jaffe where he develops and implements strategic public relations programs and focuses on translating complex legal issues for the media and other key audiences. He may be reached at [email protected].
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