Thank you, 9Sail and Joe Giovannoli! Appreciate all you do for our profession and our community …
Join us on the latest episode of the Tip of the Law podcast, where host Joe Giovannoli sits down with Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill and past president of the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International board. Discover how Roy’s unique journey from English major, theater practitioner, and healthcare exec to legal marketing has shaped his innovative approach.
In this episode, Roy shares invaluable insights on:
🔹 Strategic focus in legal marketing 🔹 Building expertise and credibility 🔹 The importance of internal support and storytelling
Don’t miss out on Roy’s expert tips to elevate your legal marketing strategies and drive meaningful results.
One key takeaway was the importance of strategic focus. Roy emphasized that firms need to analyze their data and prioritize the practice areas that have the highest revenue potential, rather than trying to please every attorney equally. Marketing dollars and resources are best spent amplifying the messaging around top revenue generators.
Roy also stressed the importance of attorneys establishing themselves as subject matter experts. By publishing content that builds expertise in their specialty fields, attorneys can signal to potential clients the areas a firm specializes in. This includes posting about events, speaking engagements, and podcast appearances on platforms like LinkedIn. Not only that, but by promoting podcast clips and interviews on social media, the attorneys perpetuate the marketing cycle and raise awareness for all parties.
When it comes to content, Roy said repetition, focus, and quality are often where firms fall short. Firms must consistently repeat high-quality messages around a select few priority topics to truly make an impact. Another best practice- and Roy’s takeaway tip for legal marketers- is creating a weekly digest highlighting recent marketing activities and efforts. This engages the internal team while giving marketers newsworthy content.
Overall, Roy provided many thought-provoking insights that firms can apply to strengthen their strategies. By analyzing data, prioritizing key areas, empowering attorneys as experts, and optimizing efforts, firms can maximize the impact of their marketing investments.
Key takeaways:
Law firms should strategically focus their marketing efforts and resources on the practice areas that have the highest revenue potential rather than trying to please all attorneys equally.
Attorneys can build expertise and credibility by publishing content on their own profiles that establishes them as subject matter experts in their fields of practice.
Law firms need to incorporate repetition, focus, and strategy into their marketing plans in order to achieve success.
Creating a weekly digest of marketing activities is an effective way for marketers to keep the internal firm updated on efforts while also giving them content to engage with.
Thank you, The Professionals: Inside Professional Services Marketing magazine, for this feature and shout out.
EXCERPT: “AI is certainly not a new phenomenon, and many firms and individuals within professional services firms are experimenting and even using it to save time. However, for many firms, its full potential to deliver and enhance their business development and marketing efforts has so far not been successfully tapped. To assist with this, a leading professional services BD and marketing agency, The BD Ladder, has released a thought leadership eBook, The Impact of AI on Business Development & Marketing in Professional Services, which features eight articles from leading independent BD and marketing consultants and practitioners within the professional services. …
“In comparison to this Roy Sexton’s article offers a contrary view on the widespread rush to adopt AI. He emphasizes the importance of thoughtful, strategic adoption of AI rather than chasing trends. Sexton warns against superficial compliance and advocates for a deeper understanding of AI’s potential and limitations.”
Are the kids all right? Are we too concerned with trend-chasing as opposed to delivering real value? Find out my thoughts on marketing, BD and AI in my article in The BD Ladder’slatest eBook.
Download your copy today and read the thoughts and opinions of industry leaders including Ben Chiriboga, Lynn Tellefsen Stehle, Ben Trott, David MacDonald, Megan Senese, Jennifer Ramsey, Richard W Smith, Michelle Howard, and Paul Roberts.
Thank you to Ben Paul and Lucy King who invited me to take part.
The kids are NOT all right … one marketer’s (cheeky) thoughts on trend-chasing and real value
By Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill and Immediate Past International President of the Legal Marketing Association
I suppose I’ve become more of a contrarian as I’ve progressed through my career. I love new ideas, change, and growth, but sometimes my Spidey-sense goes off when I feel like too many people are all rushing off after the same shiny object and I don’t perceive a great depth of thinking in their discourse. Now I’m not saying that’s the case with AI right now.
I’m implying that’s the case with AI right now.
Why do I say this? Well, for one, we’ve all been living with AI in one form another already for 20+ years. It’s baked into just about every cell phone and home media device, ubiquitously scattered across the land. It’s part of all major software applications. It’s part of every shopping recommendation we receive – and heaven knows AI-shopping suggestions sustained my spirit during the pandemic!
But in 2023 it suddenly captured the zeitgeist and, at least in my chosen profession of marketing, it seemed as if everyone feared they didn’t sound “smart” if they didn’t jump into the fray. For a while, it seemed all slapped the sentence “AI won’t take your job, but people who know AI will” into every piece of thought leadership, whether pertinent or not.
It’s AI o’clock … do you know where your children are?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m as enamored of AI-prompts and AI-streamlined tasks as anybody. As a glimmer into my psychology: I remember I fought voice-to-text for years, until my poor thumb screamed “give me a break with all the texting!” And now I haven’t typed anything on my phone for the better part of a decade (I think). I also am not sure I’ve proofread any of my texts in the better part of a decade either come to think of it.
And I guess that’s a bit of my concern. There’s a meme I share on social media every time I see it, and much like Yogi Berra I’m sure I will mangle its verbiage. It’s something to the effect of … “Hey, rather than have AI replace all the artists and screenwriters, let’s have it clean up the oceans.” That speaks to me. I will sound like a tin-foil hat wearing conspiracist but did the accountants get together with IT and say, “You know what … we both hate writing. Can we work on something to replace THAT?” I know AI does SO much more, but this is what hits close to home for me. Truth be told, writers are generally paid a pittance anyway, and I’m not totally convinced that what comes from AI prompts is as compelling as what comes from the human mind and heart. Plus, if the robots are doing all the writing and the responding, who’s doing the reading? Asking for a friend. Isn’t the point of marketing copy to connect with fellow humans and influence their purchasing decisions? At least that’s what I always thought.
What does appeal to me is the idea of AI clearing the decks of tasks that are not value-add and replacing with ones that generate market insight, while expanding the reach of the human minds in the room. I do believe in my bones we are at an incredible tipping point where data is concerned; AI rapidly scouring all the interwebs to inform our creative decisions, to target the right clients and customers just-in-time, and to close the deal will create greater efficiency and outcomes. This will also empower the creatives to do their work, to not have to fight their internal clients endlessly (that’s honestly where all the marketing waste is), and to focus on what they do best: innovate and connect.
I caution us as professionals to not lose ourselves in a sea of buzzwords and trends. For the past decade, every conference season, I slog through a million panel discussions where everyone hyperventilates over the next big “disruption.” Shall I rattle off a few? Big data. Internet of things. Blockchain. NFTs. Um … Clubhouse. I could go on.
What I am interested in is how we can already leverage what we have been using unknowingly for ages, not to downsize teams or confuse an already broad generational contingent even further, but rather to quickly craft holistic solutions that empower creators and consumers alike to connect over what they really need.
We’ve already seen the speed with which digital solutions can disrupt (negatively) real life, particularly the impact that social media has had on community fragmentation, political turmoil, and the dissemination of fraudulent information. When education and human comprehension don’t keep pace with technological advancement, human beings veer into “Dark Ages” dystopian times. Disruption seems clean and sleek and sexy in the rearview, but it is messy in real time. People are messy. We can’t help it. I’m not saying that’s bad and I’m not saying that’s good. I loved Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat as much as anyone. But it remains a concern and as breathless as we are about these new tools and solutions and what they can do for the “bottom line,” let’s also consider what they will do to an already fragile human condition.
I will leave you with this anecdote, names changed to protect the innocent. I have an attorney friend – a Baby Boomer. I’m not being ageist – it’s important context. This attorney reminds me of my beloved late mother. Both reflect a fascination with social and digital platforms and a desire to connect as broadly as possible, seeing the potential in these channels for commiseration on scale and enthusiastically embracing it all. Both also are petrified they are going to “break something” every time they touch social media. Doesn’t hold them back but fear always lurks in the background.
(Sidebar: I grew up in the era when parents told you not to sit too close to the television for fear of ruining your eyesight nor to turn it on and off and on and off for fear of breaking it. In fact, we – gasp! – took our TVs periodically to the “repair shop.” I wonder if this is why an entire generation lives in abject terror over tech. Just a theory.)
One day this attorney asked me why they don’t see the words “[their name] likes this” under posts on social. I said, “Well, when you click ‘like,’ OTHER people see that.” They then got insistent: “No, I want it to say [my name] LIKES this.” I explained again. Then a light bulb went off. I looked at their activity and realized in the time we were chatting they had started typing this as a comment “[their name] likes this” over and over and over under different posts. Paging Amelia Bedelia!
Now flash forward a few months, I get another call. On a Sunday. This attorney is apoplectic. “Why does it show I’ve left all these comments on my very important clients’ posts? I didn’t say these things. I wouldn’t say these things. Can I sue LinkedIn? I’m so embarrassed.” Again, I calmly asked, “Now describe to me what you are seeing?” (I learned this in years of similar panicked chats from my mom. I think I could have a side hustle here.) With some time, I figured out they thought the AI prompts under a given post were a string of comments they had actually left. They were so distressed about it that they had then sent emails to all said connections apologizing. THEN they reached out to me. Not a great look for someone trying to show their facility and agility in this digital age.
So, what’s the problem here? Why am I sharing this? I actually GET why the attorney was alarmed. Now, I knew what I was looking at when I saw those prompts, but they didn’t. Because the tech industry sometimes moves at the speed of “we’ll get to it when we feel like it” and other times at the speed of “we’re changing stuff and not explaining it and you can just figure it out or not,” there is likely a deep rift we will create across generations if we don’t pause a bit and implement things sensibly. Did this attorney NEED a prompt to say, “Congrats on your work anniversary?” Do any of us? Was that actually a problem that needed to be solved? And how many troubles have been created inadvertently in the process?
What’s that line sardonically offered by Jeff Goldblum’s Jurassic Park character Dr. Ian Malcolm (who specialized in chaos theory BTW)? “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Now, I know those reading this ramble will shake their heads in judgment and think, “I’m shocked. SHOCKED! I had no idea Roy was such a wet blanket luddite.” Listen, I’m not. I love what we are able to do with digital and social tech and how AI can supercharge our ability to connect meaningfully and hopefully change the world for the better. But I’m not honestly seeing much of that yet in the discourse to which I’ve been privy. So just imagine I’m Ian Malcolm here. And remember he’s one of the few characters who survived.
P.S. Confessional … I first asked Chat GPT to write this article for funsies. I hated the result. Tossed it all out. And then I wrote this. You might hate it. But I don’t. And I still think that matters.
P.S. Above depicted one of my most treasured invitations I’ve ever received in 12 years of being a member of the Legal Marketing Association. Thank you, Tahisha Fugate, MBA [she/her]! Love you and love this dynamic, brilliant, fantastic, fun group of incredible human beings.
LinkedIn post from Tahisha: “For the third year in a row, a group of Black Women in Legal Marketing and friends gathered at #LMA24. Women from firms of all sizes, across the U.S. and Canada, connected and engaged. We were thrilled to be joined by some legal marketing business partners, including Chambers USA, Passle, RubyLaw, and Jaffe to name a few.
“A special thank you to my firm Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP for their continued support of this event! I look forward to seeing everyone in DC next year. #legalmkt #marketing #businessdevelopment #DEI”
Thank you, 9Sail and Joe Giovannoli, for all you do for our profession and community. Such a gem! Thank you also to Lynn Tell for inviting me. And Todd Rengel, you are an absolute delight. Greatly enjoyed this conversation and being able to share my free-ranging perspectives on our collective future.
In this installation of 9Sail’s Legal Marketer Webinar series, Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill and President of the Legal Marketing Association, and Todd Rengel, legal marketing technologist and President of Animus Rex, Inc. joined 9Sail founder and CEO Joe Giovannoli to reflect on this year in legal marketing and review trends for the future.
Key takeaways:
Market Consolidation: continuing law firm consolidation is likely, in part arising from increased competition from technologically savvy firms that have a mature infrastructure and strong, highly specialized teams already in place. Marketers should prepare to play a larger role in strategy, and to encourage their firms to be proactive rather than reactive.
Increase Team Efficiency: One of the best things marketers can do, both in budget and in use of technology, is to streamline and find the pathways that are most efficient to satisfy the needs of their internal lawyer clients and external firm clients.
Be Digital: It’s vital for legal marketers to engage in effective digital marketing, or be left behind.
Thank you, Wabash College! ✨… Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill Law and 2023 International President of the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International, has been named to the INvolve People Outstanding 100 LGBTQ+ Executives Role Model List for 2023.
While at Wabash, Sexton was a double major in English and Theater, was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, Student Senate, The Bachelor, and the Wabash College Theater.
The Outstanding LGBTQ+ Role Model Lists supported by YouTube showcase LGBTQ+ business leaders and allies who are breaking down barriers and creating more inclusive workplaces across the world. They aim to represent the wide range of impactful and innovative work being done for inclusion across different countries, organizations, and sectors, and celebrate the diverse range of inspiring individuals who have made it their personal mission to make a difference.
INvolve is a consultancy and global network driving diversity and inclusion in business. Through the delivery of advisory solutions, awareness workshops, talent development programs, INvolve drives cultural change and creates inclusive workplaces where all individuals can succeed. They publish annual role model lists recognizing and celebrating business leaders and future leaders who are breaking down barriers at work and inspiring the next generation of diverse talent.
Looking forward to joining Todd Rengel and Joe Giovannoli for what is sure to be a robust and fun conversation. Thank you, Lynn Tellefsen Stehle and 9Sail, for including me!
Description: More than ever before, law firms are relying on their marketing and business development leaders and teams to navigate the complexities of client development, new client acquisition, communications and reputation management.
Although business development and marketing teams may have more opportunity to impact a firm’s bottom line, their path to success is fraught with challenges that include internal resistance to adapt and the agility needed to anticipate and respond to a client’s needs. How then can marketing teams evolve to keep pace with the increasing demands made on them by their firms and clients? How can they continuously prioritize to focus on what matters most to help their firms, and thereby, their careers?
Join Roy E. Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill and President of the International Legal Marketing Association, and Todd Rengel, legal marketing technologist and President of Animus Rex, Inc. for a provocative and timely fireside chat moderated by Joe Giovannoli, Founder and CEO of 9Sail. Together they will explore and share their insights and predictions about the direction of legal marketing, and what it will take to succeed in the digital era. Join this important and timely conversation to listen, learn and share your thoughts.
This webinar is the latest in 9Sail’s Monthly Legal Marketing Webinar Series. 9Sail webinars unite industry experts and in-house law firm leaders to deliver insights to empower the implementation of strategies to accelerate growth.
B. Riley Farber Executive Search partners with numerous professional services firms to assist with the growth strategy and plans.
We asked some of our partners and we are pleased to share their views on the future of marketing and the top skills that will be in demand in the next 5 years.
Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill reminds marketers on the importance of messaging and the right strategy, “The intersection of messaging, data analysis, and digital marketing will remain absolutely key. First, you need to be able to articulate your value proposition and differentiation. Always. And forever. But you then need to understand the best channels for your services and maintain the right media mix, be that social, thought leadership, targeted campaigns, etc. And ultimately you need to be able to measure what you are doing and articulate clearly that you are having the proper reach and awareness. Too many marketers just start lobbing messaging without a proper strategy. You may as well light your money on fire in the parking lot.”
Reel Roy Reviews 