“You can write up all the strategies and directives and systems you want, but if the culture of your organization isn’t right, it will devour your best-laid plans.”
– Horst Schulze
The success of a law firm goes far beyond the expertise of its attorneys. It relies on an intentional culture and an engaged team that is committed to the firm’s vision and actively contributing to business growth.
If your team is not engaged with your law firm’s vision, not committed to getting results, and not moving the needle in your business — it’s likely because they are not engaged.
How do you get them on board?
Two words: Internal marketing.
In this guide, we will explore:
- What is Internal Marketing for Your Law Firm?
- The Importance of Internal Marketing in Your Law Firm
- Examples of Internal Marketing Strategies
What is Internal Marketing for Your Law Firm?
Internal marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on promoting the vision, values, and objectives of a law firm within the organization itself. It applies marketing techniques to align and engage the people who work in your law firm.
By adopting an internal marketing strategy, law firms can create a shared sense of purpose among their team. This means ensuring that everyone in the organization understands and commits to the firm’s overarching goals and values. By promoting the firm’s vision and objectives to its team members, they are more likely to feel a sense of ownership and commitment towards achieving them.
Essentially, internal marketing is a strategic tool that you can utilize in your law firm to strengthen your organizational culture, enhance your team’s engagement, and foster an aligned work environment.
The Importance of Internal Marketing in Your Law Firm
Internal marketing plays a pivotal role in driving your team’s engagement, productivity, and overall organizational success.
According to a Gallup study, highly engaged teams experience 21% higher profitability compared to their less engaged counterparts. Engaged team members are more motivated, productive, and committed to achieving the firm’s goals — and believe it or not, internal marketing strategies play a crucial role in engaging your team.
Internal marketing:
- Keeps your team in the loop and actively engaged in firm-wide initiatives
- Fosters culture and communication among team members and departments
- Helps team members understand how their individual contributions are essential to the organization’s big-picture success
- Reinforces the concept that your clients are the reason for your team’s work and thus should always be their priority
- And so much more
Here are a few tangible benefits of internally marketing your law firm’s culture and initiatives to your team members.
Align with the Vision
Aligning with the vision is a crucial aspect of internal marketing within a law firm. When teams have a clear understanding of the firm’s vision, they can better connect with it and become more focused on working towards common goals.
When team members are aligned with the firm’s vision, they gain a sense of purpose and direction in their work. They understand how their individual efforts contribute to the larger objectives of the firm. This awareness helps tour teams prioritize their tasks, make informed decisions, and allocate their time and resources effectively.
Cultivate Commitment
Cultivating commitment among your team is a key objective of internal marketing within a law firm. It involves creating an environment where they feel valued, connected to the firm’s goals, and motivated to go above and beyond in their work.
With internal marketing, you have the ability to recognize and acknowledge your team members’ contributions, foster a culture of accountability, and provide opportunities for growth and development. When they feel valued, they are more likely to develop a sense of commitment towards the organization.
Alignment with the firm’s goals is another important aspect of cultivating commitment. When team members understand and align themselves with the firm’s objectives, they can see the bigger picture and the impact of their work. Internal marketing ensures that they are well informed about the firm’s goals, strategies, and progress, which helps them develop a sense of ownership and commitment. This commitment translates into your team investing their energy, time, and expertise in their work, striving for excellence, and seeking ways to contribute positively to the firm’s success.
Drive Business Growth
Driving business growth is a crucial outcome of effective internal marketing within a law firm. By inspiring and engaging your team, internal marketing efforts can transform them into brand ambassadors who contribute to attracting new clients and fostering client loyalty, ultimately leading to business growth.
When your team understands and strongly believes in the firm’s values and vision, they naturally become advocates for your firm’s brand. Internal marketing helps inculcate a shared sense of purpose and values among your team, aligning them with the firm’s vision and goals. This alignment creates a cohesive team that is passionate about representing the firm and its services in a positive light.
As brand ambassadors, your team members play a vital role in attracting new clients and new hires to the firm. Their enthusiasm, commitment, and deep understanding of the firm’s strengths can resonate with potential clients. When your team believes in the firm and its offerings, they are more likely to communicate its value proposition effectively, showcasing the expertise and quality service it provides. This can lead to new business opportunities, the acquisition of new clients, and the attraction of new A-players who want to be part of something great.
Examples of Internal Marketing Strategies
To align your team and enhance engagement within your law firm, consider implementing internal marketing strategies in these four key areas:
Vision Alignment
To grow your law firm over the long term, it’s essential that every member of your team understands and aligns with your vision. When everyone has a compelling North Star to work toward, all members of your law firm are able to row in the same direction toward achieving it. If they don’t know what the firm is working toward, why would they care about contributing to that mission?
Here are a few ways we leverage internal marketing to gain vision alignment:
All-Hands Meeting: All team members assemble for two hours once a month to participate in an interactive session on the status of our goals, new company initiatives, and any major announcements. The goal is to align the company monthly on the status of targets for the year.
Values and vision training: On every new hire’s first day, we present an intentional “Crisp 101” training to catch them up on the company’s history, vision, goals, and core values. The goal is to embed new hires into the company culture so they are aligned with the vision from the first moment they join the team.
Core Values Alignment
Core values are meaningless without 100% alignment in the way you hire, fire, and operate as a law firm. By integrating your law firm’s values into every decision you make and every team member’s daily actions, you cultivate an intentional culture that gets results you want.
Here are a few ways we leverage internal marketing to ensure core values alignment:
Employee rewards and recognition: With a platform like Bonusly, each team member can be allocated a certain number of points to distribute to fellow team members throughout the month for outstanding core values contributions. At Crisp, each time a team member awards another Bonusly points through our communication platform Slack, it must be tied to a specific core value. The goal is to celebrate when team members are aligned with the core values and to ensure they are engaging with our culture together.
Culture Committee: Twice a year, team members can apply to join the Crisp Culture Committee, a group that meets biweekly and hosts a variety of team, core value, and community initiatives. The goal is to develop a group of committed leaders to increase overall team engagement, participating, and positivity.
Unique Value Proposition Alignment
Your unique value proposition is why you exist and how you are different from any other firm. Ensuring your team is aligned with your UVP ensures clarity of purpose and understanding your clients’ challenges.
Here’s one of the most effective internal marketing initiatives we use to promote UVP alignment at Crisp:
The Game Changing Attorney Podcast: Each week the team is encouraged to listen to the new episodes of the podcast, and they can submit their key takeaways to earn Continuing Crisp Education (CCE) credits. The goal is to get team members engaged in the podcast to better understand how legal market leaders think and serve our clients at a higher level.
Goals Alignment
It’s essential to your law firm’s growth to connect what each team member does to the bigger picture. Internal marketing is a powerful and effective way to keep the team informed, motivated, and connected to the long-term mission of your law firm.
This is a daily internal marketing touchpoint we implement to ensure perpetual goals alignment at Crisp:
The Daily Dash: Each morning, the team gets an update on where each team member stands on their KPIs and monthly targets. We believe that what gets measured gets improved — but what gets measured and shared publicly gets drastically improved.
Final Thoughts
Engaging and aligning your law firm’s team with the firm’s vision, core values, UVP, and goals is vital for achieving sustainable success. Internal marketing serves as a powerful tool to inspire, motivate, and connect your team with your firm’s goals.
Looking to develop your own custom internal marketing strategy — along with support in every other area your business needs to grow? Connect with us to make it happen.
