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Peak Season for Law Firm Marketing & Business Development Is Here; Hurry before the Thanksgiving Lull hits!

peak_season.jpgIt was a joyous day on my work calendar after Labor Day when the kids went back to school. The camp bus pickup at 9 am is replaced by the school bus pickup at 7:25 am. Extended day at school moves the “end of day” from 4 pm to 6 pm. The sunscreen, towels and related daily chores are replaced by much simpler tasks. And while family vacations are nice, they are not exactly relaxing. Many of those work trips are far less stressful.

While summer time is fun, the reality is that a lot of business and work hits the back burners after Memorial Day. If there is one thing I learned when I started working with law firms on marketing efforts back in 1997, it is that there are two significant time frames where little to nothing gets done–the first is from Thanksgiving until after New Year’s. The second (and much longer) are the months of June, July and August. Because marketing falls below “work for clients” and “family commitments/vacations” on most schedules, it means little in my world gets done.

This did not stop a bunch of law firms from discussing business development plans for the coming year during the summer months. It was just made clear that nothing was going to happen until the fall. And I still had a few law firm clients that wanted to launch some advertising campaigns or related marketing ventures–that I quickly put the kibosh on. Because just as people do just enough to get by during the heat of summer, that also includes interest in reading business publications, attending CLEs and other events that don’t involve BBQs, concerts and the beach.

This leads us to the huge importance of the fall on our business calendars. There is not a higher peak time of the year than the September-October-November months for marketing and BD initiatives. We hunker down and get back to work, but just as critical, businesses are evaluating their lawyers, costs and needs for budget planning in the next calendar year. These are the months that generally tell me what kind of year I’m going to have in 2015. When January hits, many of these decisions have now been made. It is important for your law firm to be positioned properly (from a brand perspective, market position, messaging and identity) now to maximize visibility and possibilities for retention and growth. While I spent the summer telling many of you to not bother doing much in the public eye because nobody is paying attention, the reverse is true in the harvest season. The winter holiday lull will be here before you know it. And while ramping up again in January is certainly important, the real peak time to position you for a strong “next year” are right now.

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