Ep.76 - "A Go-to-Market Strategy by Industry" with Mike Mellor

Mike Mellor, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Pryor Cashman LLP was a recent guest on the Market Leaders Podcast. Pryor Cashman has approximately 200 attorneys and three offices, primarily in the media centers of Miami, Los Angeles, and New York. Mike has been in legal marketing for about 10 years and prior to that was in financial services.

Below is a recap of the discussion from the episode,  “A Go-to-Market Strategy by Industry,” followed by the full transcript. 

Considering Your ICP’s Perspective

David noted that Mike’s previous roles likely allowed him to pull industry knowledge from the various types of professional services into his role at Pryor Cashman. He asked him to explain his industry-focused go-to-market strategy.  

“I think that people pay attorneys to be myopic.” he began. “And when you’re used to the devil being in the details, it’s a difficult transition to make from thinking about how you specifically practice law – how you’re dotting the i’s on the contracts or within the litigation – and then to come out and see the forest for the trees.” He cited the often-used line that attorneys historically have solved for the symptom, not for the patient.  

He continued, “So we look a little more broadly at how we align ourselves internally as a law firm. Looking at a restaurateur, they don’t care that an attorney is working on a restaurant management agreement; they want to go back to cooking. The agreement is just a necessary cost of doing business for them. So, to have somebody who is intelligent and industry-focused, who can contextualize the information – not into a regurgitation of legal code – but more like here’s what you need to do to achieve your business objectives is mission critical in today’s market.” 

Mike said when a firm recognizes that, they also recognize that there’s an inherent difficulty in clients and prospective clients navigating their websites. He shared that his industry-focused go-to-market strategy initiative at Pryor Cashman started with a firm-wide, website-wide audit. He said, “We had something like 67 different pages – commercial leasing, office leasing, etc. We took a closer look at what those pages are, and because attorneys need data and evidence, we really looked at the backend and combined that information with financial data. We were able to boil our offerings down to 12 key industries and 13 key practice areas, which was much easier to navigate.”  

He added, “Clients may not know what their specific legal issue is. They just know they’re getting sued for an IP claim. Is that going to be a TTAB? Is that a USPTO thing? They may not know. But they’ve obviously got decent awareness of the issue within their industry. For a firm to be able to look at it from the audience’s perspective, from its ideal client profile’s perspective, is important.”   

Making It Work for the Firm   

Mike went on to explain how the industry-focused go-to-market strategy works for the firm. He said, “This is really a platform to get people around the firm talking who maybe historically haven’t done so. They begin to realize that there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit, see where we can anticipate needs, start to look into client life cycles, and provide proactive advice. We’re seeing that’s making stickier clients.”  

He noted there’s a lot of evidence that clients who work with firms in two or more practice areas are much more likely to maintain the relationship if someone leaves or other change takes place, but there are additional benefits to the firm. “I think us being able to get out ahead, not be so reactive, and to tell clients we know that three months after something happens, this is most likely going to happen. Being able to provide that looking around the corner approach brings a lot of value to clients and strengthens relationships.” 

Tactical Execution

David asked Mike what a day in the life at Pryor Cashman looks like, looking at the firm structured around industry groups versus a firm taking a more traditional approach. 

Mike said it all begins with looking at analytics. For example, he explained, “If we’re seeing bounce rates rise, we look at the behavioral Google Analytics and maybe see that people are rarely going past two pages. With that, we may discover we need more teaser content. Day to day, the business development team does a lot of market analysis that brings ideas that may not fit into the way that attorneys are typically pigeonholed.” 

He continued, “I find it much more creative because I’m, for example, taking my employee benefits person and my art law person, putting them together, and asking what’s coming around the bend for gallery owners and folks who work in museums given new regulations. It’s fun to continue to learn and watch the light bulbs go off, and seeing creative alliances around the firm I think can only help our clients in the long term.” 

Putting on the Change Agent Hat

David pointed out that it seems Mike creates an environment of collaboration that gets lawyers talking about shared interests, which is a different mindset for them. 

Mike replies, “That’s exactly it. We’re seeing that change and it’s really rewarding for us. We love doing that. A lot of times I’m talking to my marketing department and telling them our job is really to build structures for communication. If we can’t do it in a practice group, can we set up email threads because people are in different time zones? What else can we be doing? It’s our job to carve those pathways.” 

“When I became a CMO,” he added “I realized that I did a lot of taking the marketing and BD hat off and putting the change agent hat on. It’s a lot of change management, it’s a lot of celebrating the little wins and things that everyone talks about. The structures don’t need to be formal, but you’ve got to get folks talking, and you’ve got to be an inch deep and a mile wide to be able to pull folks together who may not have historically really thought about it. Watching those gears turn is really exciting.” 

More on the Data

David asked Mike to expand on how his department uses data to assess success. 

Mike shared an example of a specific initiative. “On our website, we had multiple lease pages. We asked, is everything mutually exclusive? Are we focused on issues? Is this the most accurate representation of the best way to put our foot forward?” 

He said, “We had very specialized areas with maybe only one person working in them. We had duplicative things. Things aren’t very cut and dry in our music practice. There are tons of copyright issues and there’s also litigation. We looked at a lot of data to explore which one of the areas visitors are coming in from and where they are they going next. Was that because they’re not finding an answer? By leaning on the data, we were able to centralize a lot of content and centralize a lot of issues. We looked at how people were searching and improved our search strategy. We did a big SEO audit, leveraged that information, and baked it back in.  

He added, “And we continue to do that. We’re looking at specific issue-based splash pages, for when issues are coming in that may not fit neatly into industry buckets or practice buckets. It’s a lot of fun, and we really earn the trust of the partnership by being able to have evidence.”  

He added that every time he pitches a particular initiative, he has data in his hands in anticipation of questions so he optimizes the opportunity to influence leadership.  

David asked how often Mike and his team are logging into dashboards and obsessing over the trends they see.  

“Probably more than I’d like to admit,” he chuckled. He said he loves looking at data and asking questions. “What do you think spawned this? Is it the content? Is it how it’s presented?” Mike added that he and his team have earned the trust of the partnership, so they let them fail fast when they test new approaches.  

He shared that he regularly challenges team members to try new things and just see how things go. He said, “We’re not curing cancer here. We’re obviously in an important role, pitching multi-million-dollar law firms, but if we have one bad social post, it’s not going to kill us. Having that comfort enables us to be creative and innovative and see what sticks.” 

A Word of Advice

David asked what advice Mike would give to other marketers who want to take a more data-driven approach to their team’s work.  

“Make sure that your Google Analytics is really set up and that you understand the data,” he suggested. “I bought a heavy Google Analytics textbook that I fell asleep to numerous nights, but I didn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I would recommend trying a couple of things, testing a couple of different things, whether it’s specific to a practice area or specific to an industry.” 

He added that if you don’t have access to Google Analytics, there are other ways to get external data, such as SEM Rush and Moz, so just get started using data to inform your decisions. He added, “It can be as small as looking at one person’s bio or at a single practice page. You’re not going to be able to manage what you can’t measure.”