In this series of short blog posts and videos I want to talk about the fundamentals of successful marketing for IP practitioners.

For those of us with no formal prior training in marketing or sales, the whole idea of business development can be stressful and intimidating, and this is made worse by all of the chatter about new web-based tools.  If you are like me, you were trained as a lawyer and need to practice law.  Taking on a whole other set of marketing issues “in your spare time” is not exactly a dream.  Being required to do more networking is troubling, but having to grapple with a whole slew of expensive web-based marketing tools is even worse. There is a lot of noise about marketing these days, tugging us in many different directions at once.  Much of this is self-interested blather from folks who want to get you to spend a lot of money on them.  They usually talk with a whole alphabet soup of acronyms and new names, like AdWords and PPC, SEO, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MailChimp and more, but very few of these marketing people really know what – if any – relevance these newfangled things have for a serious business like intellectual property.

I have spent a lot of time, money and grief trying to sort through what works for those of us in the IP business, and I want to share with you what I have learned. No hook, no catch – just my ideas.

6 years ago I bought a very small Canadian patent practice, and as I set out to grow the firm I was thrown into the deep end of marketing and business development. At the time I knew almost nothing about biz dev and certainly did not have any training or experience. Since then, however, through a combination of trial and error, hard knocks, training and education, I have gradually come to know a moderate amount about what does and does not work in our business.  And while we are still a small firm, we have been fairly successful.  Essentially all of our work now comes as a result of the various marketing initiatives we have implemented.  We cannot coast on legacy clients – we live and die by our ability to generate new work from new clients.

I do not expect to revolutionize your marketing, nor do I expect that if you follow my suggestions you will suddenly see a massive influx of new work.  My hope is simply that to give you some confidence and peace of mind that you are on the right track, so that you can tune out the noise and avoid wasting a lot of time and money and focus on what works.

Here are the key things I have learned:

• There is no magic silver bullet.
• Focus on the fundamentals.  The fundamentals of marketing do apply to IP.
• Nothing will happen overnight.  Business development takes time (and effort, and money, and ideas, and repetition).
• Of the many new online marketing techniques have appeared in recent years, a few of them can be very useful for IP practitioners, but many are neither useful or appropriate.  You can safely ignore almost all of the noise about new stuff.

Ultimately successful business development in IP is about getting a few more folks to entrust you with their IP matters.  In the next few posts I want to talk about the following topics:

• To sell IP we need to sell trust.
• You sell trust by providing indirect proof via content marketing and social proof.
• Referrals are the best social proof, and the way to get more referrals is to recognize and address the trust concerns of your referral network.
• A little tool like Intellectual Property Law For Dummies book can really help to build trust, and in particular, to support and assist your referral network with their needs.

That is what we will cover.  There is no hook, no catch, no hard sell.

Of course, I do think that Intellectual Property Law For Dummies, produced in collaboration with the Intellectual Property Owners Association Education Foundation and now available for you to buy, is one of the best marketing tools in our business (perhaps the best?), and I hope that it will help you grow your business very successfully, but as the author of course I am biased.  I have distributed 60,000 copies of the Canadian version and I really think that this new version will help you, but I promise, no hard sell.

I hope that these musing are useful for you and I look forward to your comments.

Neil

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As IP practitioners, obviously we “sell” intellectual property services.  That is what clients ultimately buy from us: services related to patents, trademarks, copyrights and designs, whether it is related to acquisition of rights (drafting, filing and prosecuting), enforcement of rights and dispute resolution (litigation), or ownership (buying, selling and licensing IP).

But when it comes to business development, this far too simplistic.

Business development in IP is the process of selling trust – we pitch the client on why they should entrust something to us and we need to get the client to buy-in and trust us first before they hire us; if they do not trust us, they will certainly never engage us.

There are many other practitioners who provide similar services, and they are just a Google search away.  One of the key reasons that clients stick with their existing providers so often is that it is easier to ‘trust the devil that they know’ than to gamble on an unknown.  If you want to win more work, you have to overcome the fear and skepticism of the prospect and get them to buy-in to trusting you.

Client trust depends on 4 key components (which I call the four legs on the stool of client trust):

• Expertise. Can I trust you to have the expertise required to address my problem?

(Note that part of being an expert is providing clear advice and recommendations that the client can understand, act on, and provide instructions in response to).  By definition IP is fairly complex, so expertise is hugely important.  Without expertise, a client will not trust you with their IP needs.  But, there is more to sell to get them to trust you than just expertise – don’t make the mistake of assuming that expertise is all that you need to sell to establish trust.

• Attention. Can I trust you to give my file the attention it requires?You may be an e xpert, but if you do not pay attention, your expertise does me no good. This is a surprisingly common problem in law, so make sure that in your business development you properly convey how you will ensure that the client gets proper attention.
• Timeliness. Can I trust that you get the work done on time?  Ideally, you will deliver consistent with the reasonable deadline we have agreed on in advance and it will not be a last minute rush (see attention, above).
• Cost.  Can I trust that your fees will be reasonable?  Can I trust you to stick to the budget we agreed to?  (Note the importance of cost certainty, especially for clients who have to report to many stakeholders and budgeting requirements.  Nothing hurts a client relationship like billing surprises.)

The key challenge of new business development in IP is to successfully address all four of these questions, before you get hired.

Do not ignore the 4 components of client trust.  Whether these questions actually come up or not for discussion or not with a prospect or existing client, and whether the client consciously averts to them or not, subconsciously these are always key issues of concern for prospective clients.  If you want to win at business development, your job is to proactively address all 4 of them.

In the next posts, the indirect ways of establishing trust: content marketing and social proof.

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Indirect proof: content marketing and social proof. As much as you may want to ‘sell trust’, you cannot force people to trust you. You have to earn it. And, until they are a client, you can only demonstrate indirectly to them that you are worthy of trust.

While the focus here is on new prospects, don’t take clients for granted: make sure that you keep addressing the 4 trust questions with existing clients.

Most of your revenue in the next 12 months will come from people who are already clients. The number one priority, bar none, of business development is “make sure existing clients keep requesting more work”.

All clients have a choice of provider, and many of them already have multiple providers who provide similar services. To ensure that you maintain (and ideally grow) your share of your client’s requirements, you need to ensure that the work that you are delivering – and the manner that you deliver it – continues to address all 4 of the client trust questions. Do not take existing clients for granted, and in particular don’t assume that what you are doing for them addresses all four of the questions, and that it is clear to the client that you continue to answer all four of the questions (doing great work, and being seen to do great work are two different things). Make sure that you are providing demonstrative proof for your clients that continually answers the four questions.

Content Marketing

Answering the four questions for folks who are prospective clients requires some effort and creativity. Clearly, you cannot provide demonstrative proof because they are not yet a client.

As a result, we need to rely on indirect proof to establish the level of trust necessary to get an engagement. Indirect proof rests on two things: content marketing and social proof.

Content marketing is simply marketing that is premised upon providing useful information (“content”) to prospects for free.

The tried and true approach of writing papers and giving talks is a classic example of content marketing. However, it is important to remember that delivering papers and giving talks to other attorneys is just one form of content marketing and it is distributed through only one distribution channel to one [narrow] set of potential referral sources.

For best results:

• Segment your potential audience.  Communicate clearly to each segment in language appropriate for them.  Different audiences want different information at different levels of sophistication.  Domestic clients need different information from foreign associates.  I am amazed at how few IP firms have implemented basic marketing segmentation. If you have more than one type of client, you likely need more than one type of newsletter. This is very basic, very important, and far too often ignored.
• Expertise is more than just knowing the law. Always avoid jargon and be as clear as possible. Part of expertise is clear, effective communication. Make sure that your marketing materials demonstrate this form of expertise.
• There is more to trust than just expertise. There are four client trust questions. Make sure that your content marketing addresses all four of them. Far too many IP practitioners focus on proving their expertise, and forget entirely about providing answers about attention, timelines and cost.
• Use different modes of communication.  Different folks consume information differently – even the same people consume information differently at different times.  Accordingly, you should use a full range of communication methods: text, video, webinars, in-person presentations. Similarly, use different channels. If you give a presentation to a Bar association, give it again as a webinar and online video, and make the paper available online. Not everyone what wants to know about a subject can or will attend the Bar association meeting that you talked at, and if you went to all of the trouble of preparing a good paper you should make it available as broadly as possible.
• Communicate frequently in small bites. People are busy and attention spans are short. Content marketing is about informing (and entertaining) the reader, not vanity publication for lawyers. If people don’t read your newsletter, it is not working.
• Make your marketing entertaining if you possibly can. While it is important to be professional and accurate, entertaining is always better than boring.
• Provide genuinely useful information.  Do not make it a sales pitch.

A lot of lawyers have the mis-guided notion that if they give away information for free that they are shooting themselves in the foot. That is wrong-headed.  In the law business, there is no point trying to be a gate-keeper for information. The web has been a game changer for content marketing in that it makes it possible to provide massive amounts of valuable content for free to any and all without any additional cost to the provider of the information.  Prospects can review your content online 24/7 when they want the information.  Good prospects (people who want advice and are willing to pay for it) will then get in touch with you to engage you. Bad prospects (people who want everything for free) did not cost you anything.

Social proof.

The other crucial form of indirect proof is social proof. People make many important trust decisions by looking at what other people have done or said. If prospects are unable to determine whether to trust you based on direct evidence (as they have not yet seen your work in action), they decide whether to hire you based on what other people say about working with you. In the IP business, there are two crucial sources of social proof:

• Existing clients. Prospects gain social proof from your existing clients in the form of testimonials or referrals, and sometimes just by virtue of the fact that it is a matter of public record who you act for. “If they are good enough for [Recognizable Client], then they are good enough for us”. In the IP business, this can be very effective.
• Referrals from non-clients.  Prospects can gain social proof that they should entrust work to you from other people in their network of trust. However, a key aspect of these referrals is that the referring party likely has not direct experience as a client of yours. Referrals from other attorneys who are not IP practitioners, and all sorts of other professionals are often of this type. Referrals from non-clients are particularly important in the IP business.

There are some things that you can do to improve the chances of your prospects receiving compelling social proof.

First, make it easy for prospects to find your social proof. Do not hide it. Make sure that they can find out more about your existing clients and places whether their referral network may overlap with yours. If you have testimonials, share them. If you have proof of your expertise, share it.

Second, make it compelling. Make sure that your social proof addresses all four of the key trust questions. It is very important to address the issue of expertise, but do not stop there – make sure that your social proof also addresses the other three questions.

Third, pay attention to the referral network. First, you need to grow it. It seems simple, but obviously you cannot get referrals from people who are not aware of you.  And, you need to be top of mind when the prospect asks them, so frequent communication is very important.  Second, you need to prove to the referral source why they should trust you.  How can they be confident the you deserve their trust? If a referral source is referring a client of theirs to you, they are entrusting you with one of their most valuable assets.  If the prospective client has 4 trust questions, the referral source indirectly has all four of the same concerns, magnified.  Once again, we come back to trust, but in this case it is selling trust not to prospects directly but to referral source. Make sure that you make it possible for your people who might refer work to you to gain comfort around each of the four client trust questions. Referral sources clearly need to know that you are an expert, and beyond that, you can help yourself by helping them be comfortable on the issues of attention, timelines and budget.

For both proving trust and staying top of mind for possible referral sources, “givers gain“: one of the most effective things that you can do is to do useful things for people in your referral network.  In particular, it is extremely important to give them useful information that they can use (back to content marketing, but with a twist).  Also, ideally, help them with their marketing and outreach challenges – not yours, theirs. Simply saying to people, “I am a patent attorney, please send me work” is not nearly as effective as saying “I am a patent attorney. Maybe I can help you with your marketing.”

And this is where Intellectual Property Law For Dummies comes in – it is a truly excellent tool for helping your referral network.  More in the next post.

Neil

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An excellent tool for:

• education & outreach
• marketing
• generating referrals

“Quite possibly the best marketing tool available for IP practitioners.”

Education and Outreach

Intellectual Property Law For Dummies is a great education and outreach tool.

There is a great public appetite for information about intellectual property. Most people have heard of IP (patents especially) but very few people know even the most basics things about it. If you have a mandate to support and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation you will find the book extremely helpful and cost-effective. It is a short, accessible, and effective introduction to the fundamentals of IP. For instance, the book is an excellent compliment to seminars on the basics of IP – whether your audience is students or CEOs.

Users who find it effective include:

• Economic development agencies with a mandate to support entrepreneurship and innovation
• Incubators & accelerators
• Technology transfer officers
• In-house counsel conducting training

Marketing and business development

The book is also an extremely useful marketing and business development tool for a wide range of users. Some of the reasons that the book is so effective include:

• They get noticed.
• They are light and easy to store, ship and distribute.
• People do not throw books out. They truly have a long ‘shelf life”.
• They are easy to find when needed – the For Dummies brand is one of the most recognizable brands in publishing in the world, and for a field like IP where someone may not have a need ‘right away’ a long lasting, easy to find, marketing product is very important. Your contact information can then be found readily, when it is needed
• They are great conversation starters.
• They are very cost-effective.

Some of the people who can use these most effectively for business development purposes include:

• IP attorneys
• Corporate attorneys
• Technology transfer officers
• Economic development officers

Use them to generate referrals

Of particular note for IP practitioners is the value of these books as an excellent tool for engaging with your referral network. If you want referrals, it really helps if you start by giving folks something that helps them. Asking is a poor way to start; giving is a better way to start a relationship.  “Giver’s gain” is a great mantra.  However, that is hard in IP – what do we have to give away to start the relationship?

If you want high quality referrals, help your referral network educate and triage clients about the basics of IP – you get more referrals from folks who actually need your services. If you give someone books which they in turn use to support their education, outreach and marketing initiatives, you really gain that person’s attention and their thanks, and thanks leads to referrals. We strongly recommend that you try giving the books in bulk to in-house attorneys, corporate attorneys and technology transfer officers for their use as they see fit.  No strings attached, ‘I thought these might help you’ is by far the best way to go. This is our favorite way to use the book because of the leverage it provides: less time, less money, better quality referrals.

Information on ordering the books is found here.

Neil

How to use IP For Dummies for marketing your practice

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It is very easy to order copies of Intellectual Property Law For Dummies.

Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. If you do not like the books, or cannot use of them, return them within 90 days and we will refund 100% of the purchase cost.

For a limited time only, if you order now you will also receive these great free bonuses:

Buy 100: Free Consult on Marketing

Order 100 copies & receive a free consultation on any aspect of your marketing.

You choose what you want to discuss.  From your website, to newsletters, SEO, PPC, LinkedIn …. you name it, I will give my my unbiased advice and thoughts.

Buy 1000: Join Our Marketing Group Free

Order 1,000 copies and join our IP Marketing Best Practices Network for free.

We will host very practical monthly sessions.  Hear from great speakers, and learn from the best.  Share with your peers, and learn what works and what does not.  Ask questions, get advice. Great for firms serious about taking their marketing to the next level. Learn in a friendly open environment and gain confidence and fresh perspectives on your marketing.

Neil

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