Latest / Technically Sound Strategy / Episode 38 - Building a Brand: Strategies for Law Firms with John Czeranna

Transcript

Episode 38 - Building a Brand: Strategies for Law Firms with John Czeranna · Technically Sound Strategy

• 0:01
  Welcome to legal LaFleur radio, a production of LaFleur Marketing this
• 0:05
  week, I chat with John Czeranna, executive director and partner at Witandcraft about
• 0:11
  branding strategies for small firms.
• 0:14
  Since beginning his career in 2003, John's philosophy has been simple.
• 0:18
  Do good work for him.
• 0:20
  This means utilizing strong design to overcome inherent Marketing
• 0:23
  challenges and create exceptional solutions that not only get attention,
• 0:27
  but also achieve the client's goals.
• 0:30
  Working on brands that include Ford motor company.
• 0:33
  Pentair, Nationwide, Pfizer, and the Shift Group, John has had the
• 0:38
  opportunity to create campaigns for clients that span narrowly focused B2B
• 0:42
  to broad reaching consumer audiences.
• 0:48
  Hi, John.
• 0:48
  So it's great to have you here with us today.
• 0:50
  As we were discussing the topic I'd like to dive into is how to
• 0:53
  apply branding for a law firm.
• 0:55
  I think that for a lot of lawyers, when they look at branding, they
• 0:59
  think of big brands like Coca Cola, McDonald's, things like that.
• 1:02
  And it's an area that I think is vitally important for a law firm
• 1:06
  to establish because it is their personality is who they are.
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  And we do a lot of work to build upon that, but oftentimes
• 1:13
  there's some foundational work that needs to go into that too.
• 1:16
  And, since that's really your area of expertise, I'd love to hear from you
• 1:19
  if you're a law firm, that's, yeah.
• 1:22
  Getting into, the private practice, or if you're looking to launch a
• 1:25
  firm, like, how do you go about that?
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  What's the starting point , what is a brand to a law firm and
• 1:29
  how do they start to build that?
• 1:32
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:33
  Well, first of all, thanks for.
• 1:34
  Thanks for inviting me on.
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  I think this is a lot of fun.
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  Of course, we always have great discussions.
• 1:38
  It's good to finally do this, in a more recorded way.
• 1:42
  But I love this topic because, I think lawyers as very highly
• 1:46
  specialized folks out there, a lot of schooling, a lot of they're already
• 1:51
  niched, , in a certain area within law.
• 1:54
  Yeah.
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  I think that they represent a lot of different small businesses out
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  there or can be representative of a lot of small businesses out
• 2:03
  there and how they get started, especially within the service sector.
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  I like to equate it to me.
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  It makes a lot of sense.
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  And I can be empathetic here because graphic design, branding,
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  Marketing field is a lot of the same.
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  And when listen, I were.
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  Getting ready to start Wittencraft 10 years ago that we're wrestling
• 2:23
  with kind of the same thing.
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  It's like, how do we take this expertise?
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  How do we package it up?
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  What are the things that we like to do?
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  How do we go about getting new business?
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  All of these how questions, right?
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  Like, how are we actually going to succeed after like leaving this very
• 2:39
  corporate comfy gig, and Making decent living having clients, they're ready and
• 2:44
  prepped for us to actually hanging a shingle, going out, getting new clients.
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  And there was so much that we didn't know about the world.
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  And one of those things was how to sell.
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  The other thing was though we've done it for other people,
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  how do we brand ourselves?
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  How do we get people to understand the problems that we're solving for them very
• 3:05
  simply and attract them into our world.
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  And so I look at the, I look at all of the lawyers out there and
• 3:13
  where they're at and wrestling with the same things, whether they're.
• 3:16
  Working at a large law firm and want to hang their shingle or even like right
• 3:21
  now is we were just talking about, having a government gig and maybe looking to
• 3:25
  jump in and get more into the private sector or start a business or something.
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  They're probably wrestling with the same questions, which is
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  I know I can be successful.
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  I have all of this experience.
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  How do I get people to see it and how do I attract people into my world?
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  Yeah, that's, I think we run into that.
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  So much.
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  Most of the lawyers that we talked to, when you get to know them, you
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  find out that they're great lawyers.
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  And then you also find out that nobody knows that.
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  And you can't just put a sign up that says, Hey, we're a great lawyer.
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  There's bar rules that we have to comply with but telling that story and then
• 4:01
  and then also trying to weave that in, trying to weave in that special like
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  ingredient, that special approach, I think is challenging even more so now,
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  because there's these content engines that are just producing and producing.
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  There's a ton of noise, that's out there right now.
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  I listened to a talk the other day and the guy was making a really
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  good point and he's like, Hey, look, you have to like your competition
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  isn't what you think it is anymore.
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  You think that, your competition is somebody that has a like service, like
• 4:31
  product than yours and and kind of in the same industry bubble and stuff and he's
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  like, that is your competition for sure.
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  But also you're competing with Tik TOK and Facebook and, LinkedIn.
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  And Netflix and all of this other stuff and the point that he was trying to
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  make is there's so much distraction and so much noise out there competing for
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  your eyeballs and your attention that we as marketers have to be way more
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  sophisticated with who we're talking to the types of problems that we're solving
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  for these people and where are they?
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  How can we get in front of them in a way that feels very
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  natural to them and familiar.
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  So that it feels like a safe place.
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  Like, Oh, this is set up for me.
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  Oh, they're speaking my language.
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  I need to pay attention to what this person is telling me or saying,
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  or, Oh, my gosh, I'm dealing with that exact same issue right now.
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  This is the person that can solve that problem.
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  I'm going to go explore more.
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  You touched on something that's really central to the challenge, the problem
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  statement really for a law firm is especially a trial lawyer is you probably
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  only need their services once, right?
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  And so it creates a unique problem from a branding perspective, because,
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  people might drink coke every day.
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  They're not hiring a lawyer every day.
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  And so being that voice.
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  When they're needed in that specific moment is really challenging.
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  So can you speak to that a little bit?
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  How do you build a brand for something that you only buy one time?
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  Yeah, it's a great question because a lot of the times when you're talking about.
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  Or consumer facing product type stuff.
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  It's how do we get repeat buyers?
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  How do we extend the lifetime value?
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  If you're a trial lawyer, I don't think that your customers really
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  want to be a repeat buyer, so, uh, it's totally different, but
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  you know, how do you do that?
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  It's kind of the same process, really . It's what I was talking
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  about building .this foundational purpose driven messaging platform,
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  which we'll call, the brand position.
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  And then basically getting it in front of the right people.
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  So how do you do that?
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  I think the 1st thing that we instruct people to do is go out there and really
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  get a keen understanding of 3 things.
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  The 1st 1 is.
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  Who's the competition?
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  Who are the direct and indirect competition competitors that are
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  vying for the same eyeballs that you are the same types of people
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  that are going to be purchasing your services to what are your strengths?
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  You can do this through like a SWOT analysis or something like that,
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  but really focus on those strengths and the opportunities that exist
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  for you as a lawyer, as a company.
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  As a firm and and then be able to compare that against what your competition
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  is doing and see if there's, anything that you're doing extremely well
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  that the competitor set is not right.
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  And then the third and probably the most important thing is having
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  an understanding of the buyer.
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  We call it , creating an ideal client profile ICP.
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  Here it's.
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  Understanding not just the demographics, though, that's important.
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  But the psychographics, where are they at?
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  What are their needs?
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  What are their pains?
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  Or, what is the, fears, frustrations, pain points, paired with the Aspirations,
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  wants, and needs of that ICP.
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  Now you take those three things, you put them together, in the center of
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  that becomes your differentiators.
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  It's those key things that make you different than the competition and
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  appeal to the right people, your ICP.
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  And then everything else we build on top of that.
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  So we have an understanding of who these people are.
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  What they're looking to solve.
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  We know what your strengths are, how they're different from the competition.
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  How do we approach or put messaging together that is going to speak directly
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  to that one particular person or that ICP?
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  Does that make sense?
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  Yeah, it makes a ton of sense.
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  It kind of is tangential to a challenge that we're facing right now, right?
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  With the advent of generative AI some of the pushback we get from the lawyers that
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  we work with is that, now , they want to produce some of their own content, right?
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  And what ends up happening, though, is they generate a large volume
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  of content, but they don't do it with the consideration of the ICP.
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  And yeah, they're generating a lot.
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  It's good in that it's factually accurate and it answers a question.
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  But what we find often is that it doesn't answer the question that their
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  potential clients are asking, right?
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  It's not necessarily relevant just because we can produce a lot of it.
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  And we're really active in the AI space.
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  We've got a product that we've built that is a pure AI play.
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  I think there's value there but navigating that nuance there is something that.
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  I know that we've struggled with with some of our clients, right?
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  Like they're out there, they're able to produce more.
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  But if you're not doing it within that framework, then it's problematic.
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  And sometimes that framework is a little bit hard to explain, without
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  getting back into branding one on one and positioning and things like that.
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  Yeah, for sure.
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  I look at this as basically inputs.
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  Inputs and outputs, put it really simply, right?
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  Everything that we create for the brand and the brand foundation.
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  That's the input that you need for all of your successful outputs.
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  As long as you're sticking within the the guidelines that we're putting together
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  in the brand positioning process.
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  What do I mean by that?
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  Well, like outputs could be AI driven.
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  Like certainly in the future, AI is going to be play a big part in some of
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  those outputs, some of the messaging, but it could also be a human, and
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  in the past when we would work with writers, we would give them the brand
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  positioning document and say, okay, here's everything that you need to know about.
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  About this brand, this company, who they're talking to, their
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  personality their tone of voice, like all of those things, right?
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  It's all of the inputs to make it successful.
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  So you can have a unique impression with the messaging
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  that you're putting together.
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  And so it's the same thing with tools like AI and I view it just like any other sort
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  of tool or any other type of person that you would hire to put this stuff together.
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  This might sound a little controversial, especially being a marketer.
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  Like I should be scared of this stuff, but I think it's a really
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  incredible, incredibly powerful tool for all of us to use as long as you
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  feed it the right inputs and in a way that is going to create very
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  responsible, very brand responsible.
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  Messaging in the long run.
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  We use a lot of AI prompts in our positioning process to help us along,
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  to help us speed up the process.
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  We instruct our clients, on how to properly use those AI tools and like
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  the inputs and, I'll give them prompts all day long, just to, if it speeds up
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  getting us the information that we need, but I think that's the point, right?
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  We need information in order to build this.
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  This brand in a way that is different than all of your competitors and in a way
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  that speaks truly to your to your ICP.
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  Yeah, I don't know if that
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  answered your question.
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  I think it does.
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  I think, training up a model, it takes, take some work and take some effort.
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  And I think that there's more to it, some of the tools that we have available now,
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  let you build in some of the background.
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  But that's also an area that I see that is not as effective yet.
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  It's just not as effective at understanding the audience and
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  kind of building things out according to the audience need.
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  It can produce content, but it struggles to hit that is effectively
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  without kind of an ongoing.
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  Conversational sort of prompt.
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  It needs that constant kind of refinement and things like that,
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  which it's still more efficient, than I think starting from scratch.
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  But without that ongoing work it tends to just produce something,
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  I would add to that and say, like our job as a branding firm is to humanize
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  the companies that we work on, make them very relatable to their customers.
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  And at the end of the day, AI is a robot, right?
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  So it's going to get you close, but it's never going to get you all the way there.
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  And, I always have an asterisk with the AI prompts that I give our clients.
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  I'm like, look, this is going to get you about 60 to 65 percent there, and it's
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  a tool to help speed up the process, but then you, we have to go back and edit.
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  We have to, it still needs that human interface to make sure that
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  we're creating the right things.
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  Yeah.
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  Cause ultimately marketing is about influence, right?
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  It's about influence and desirability and trying to influence someone to
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  make a decision in a certain way Kind of circling back more broadly You
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  know again when I think of the trial lawyers that we work with, you know
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  in big cities there's hundreds and hundreds of Competitors in that space
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  and the competitors live on billboards.
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  They live on TV ads, how would you take a look at?
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  Differentiating, let's say a firm, is maybe they're new,
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  they're coming to the table.
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  They're entering that market.
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  What is the starting point to establishing a brand and starting to build that?
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  You talked about a SWOT, identifying strengths and speaking in there.
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  But what about looking at it from a tactical perspective?
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  How do they make that mark and how do they get that to stick?
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  Yeah.
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  So it's really important to one, not just understand, taking a look at what
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  your competitors are doing, but really diving deep into that whole industry.
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  I'll call it an industry bubble.
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  And if you can, draw a circle with your mind and then inside of it, you
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  have all of the competitors, right?
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  All of the big players, small players, and that sort of thing.
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  Nine times out of 10, they're all saying the same stuff.
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  And so our biggest challenge is what can we say that is true and genuine
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  to you that they're not saying to gain the attention and the eyeballs of
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  people of your prospective customers.
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  And that's like the biggest challenge right there.
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  If you want to, if you want to truly differentiate your messaging, have
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  that differentiated brand, it's, taking those three things, understanding it,
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  but then translating that into design and messaging that looks, sounds.
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  Different than what the competitors are doing, but familiar to the ICP.
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  When I say familiar, it's not that they've seen it before, but you're using, you're
• 15:01
  picking up on, on language that is them.
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  It's like, you've built your personality based off of what you understand about
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  your customer's personality so that when they engage with you, they're
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  like, Oh my God, these are my people.
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  In psychology, they call it mirroring.
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  And it's the same thing.
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  We're using those principles to build brands that that really help get, get
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  noticed by a certain group of people.
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  Now, if we do that, if you picture that industry bubble again and
• 15:30
  you have all your competitors in there, there's also white space.
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  And Basically, what we're doing is we're identifying the appropriate white space
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  for you and positioning you in there so that you can, in your positioning
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  statement, like the first sentence is your only statement, which is I
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  am the only lawyer that solves this problem for X people and when you can
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  boil everything down to that one only statement, that one sentence the rest
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  is kind of gravy, it's like, that's, it's really hard to get to that point,
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  but it's hard to get to that point because we run into this all the
• 16:02
  time, the folks that we work with, they want to appeal to everybody.
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  Right.
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  And I think that's a mistake.
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  I think that it's hard to make a decision to be inclusive of the group that you
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  want to target, which by default means you're exclusive of some other parties.
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  And so I think that's a thing to kind of wrap your head around in any business.
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  But I think in this one, it's an unexplored area where the thinking
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  largely is, I can offer the service to everyone who has this need, and
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  I'm the best choice to everybody.
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  And realistically, even if that statement is true you're not going
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  to target and you're not going to be effective trying to reach everybody.
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  You have to define who that audience is.
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  And I think that's a challenge that we face, right?
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  When we get a, when we get a client, especially a new client, they come
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  in and they're like, well, this guy's on the billboard, this guy's on TV.
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  How do we overtake them all?
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  Right?
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  You can't, you can't overtake them all, right?
• 16:53
  You have to pick a street and you have to, in doing that, you're
• 16:57
  excluding some other areas.
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  For sure.
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  I, I think I don't know who said this.
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  It certainly wasn't me.
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  And I can't remember who coined the term, but they're like, yeah, 50 percent of
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  branding is knowing what to say no to.
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  Yeah, it's true.
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  It's like, yeah, you have to take a stand.
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  You got to plant your flag.
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  And then you have to commit and you have to say no to certain things or
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  certain people if they're not a good fit.
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  There's very little value in producing something that's not
• 17:24
  associated with your company.
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  So like, it deletes it for sure.
• 17:28
  Yeah.
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  We see that out there too.
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  There's production of, creative or output and it's like, well,
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  we have this opportunity.
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  We're going to use it.
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  But it didn't fit.
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  And so people don't make that connection and so they may interact with it.
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  But just because the interaction in and of itself is not of value, it's the
• 17:42
  interaction with the association with the brand that strengthens the relationship.
• 17:47
  Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 17:49
  One of the exercises that we do is and we just have clients that we try to make
• 17:52
  it really simple, cause like branding is one of those terms that means so
• 17:56
  many things to different people for us, it's just about being different.
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  If we were to boil it down to it's, simplest and easy to understand form
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  it's how do we become different?
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  How do we stand out?
• 18:08
  Yeah.
• 18:08
  And part of that, like we were just talking about is saying no.
• 18:11
  Part of that is saying yes.
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  So we boil it down to okay, who are good fit customers, the best fit
• 18:15
  customers and who are bad fit customers.
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  And we write out the traits that we're looking for both.
• 18:22
  Yeah, and if you're checking more boxes on a bad fit customer, that probably
• 18:27
  means that they belong somewhere else, you know, you're not going to be able
• 18:30
  to service them in a way that you can.
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  And the other thing is to like, if you try to be all things to
• 18:37
  all people, then you're nothing.
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  You're nothing to anyone.
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  And taking that stand, boiling it down, becoming different is so important.
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  And it's not just for lawyers, although I think it's probably one of the most
• 18:50
  important things for that certain group of people to understand, those businesses to
• 18:54
  understand, but for all small businesses.
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  Yeah.
• 18:57
  I think that makes a lot of sense . But then it has to filter down
• 19:01
  into everything that is produced to support the brand, right?
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  Like a
• 19:05
  hundred percent that,
• 19:05
  that thought process to go into every creative piece, every output,
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  everything that gets published, everything that goes live.
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  'cause if it doesn't, then you're actually, it's a battle.
• 19:15
  Like , you can lose ground, right?
• 19:16
  Yeah.
• 19:17
  You're either gaining ground or you're losing ground.
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  And if you're not taking that into consideration with each piece.
• 19:21
  Then you have, you're at risk of losing ground, losing all the work
• 19:23
  that you put out into building up the brand in the first place.
• 19:27
  Yes.
• 19:28
  And I'm glad you brought this up.
• 19:29
  I was having a conversation with somebody two days ago, and we were talking about
• 19:33
  this exact thing and like where brand fits in and can help that, but if you
• 19:37
  look at it like two funnels, Okay, it's almost if you can picture in your mind's
• 19:43
  eye, there's a bow tie on the left side.
• 19:46
  You have your customer acquisition funnel, all of your Marketing activities.
• 19:50
  How do you get people into your world?
• 19:52
  How do you how did they, how do you get them some level
• 19:56
  of awareness of what you do?
• 19:57
  And then you filter them on down to take an action in the middle of that
• 20:02
  is kind of like the not of the bow tie.
• 20:05
  That's the sale, right?
• 20:06
  Okay.
• 20:07
  So at some point, you're going to have to convert the person from a lead to
• 20:11
  take an action and to buy your service.
• 20:14
  And then from there, you've got the other, the right side of the bowtie,
• 20:18
  which is the customer retention.
• 20:20
  Now that maybe this isn't as is, I think this is still very important to
• 20:25
  this audience because, you can replace the word retention with experience,
• 20:29
  customer experience and say, Hey, this person has such a great experience that
• 20:34
  they're going to refer people to you.
• 20:35
  So , that's one way that you can extend the lifetime value of a customer is how
• 20:39
  many people can they refer back to you.
• 20:41
  But so that's like the whole thing , all three of those pieces need to work
• 20:45
  together in a very consistent way.
• 20:47
  So what they hear in the Marketing and in the messaging that capture them into the
• 20:52
  funnel needs to be the same messages that they hear again in the sales conversation.
• 20:57
  And then those same messages need to be repeated over and over and over again
• 21:01
  within the customer retention or the customer experience portion of the funnel.
• 21:07
  Brand can help with those experiences because it sort
• 21:11
  of surrounds the whole thing.
• 21:14
  If we do our job right by knowing what to say no to, who to say no to, crafting our
• 21:19
  messages in a way that's very familiar to the ICP and then creating visuals.
• 21:24
  That are also picking up on these cues.
• 21:27
  You think of like color theory and that sort of thing, like what we discover
• 21:31
  in the positioning process influences the logo design, it influences the
• 21:35
  typography that we put into the brand, like all of the outward facing stuff.
• 21:40
  But those things need to be very consistent working in unison with
• 21:44
  Marketing, with sales, with retention.
• 21:48
  And if we can.
• 21:50
  If we can put all the pieces together into some kind of like a standards
• 21:54
  document that you can then train everybody on what the brand is, what
• 22:00
  it stands for, who it's attracting then we're doing our job, right?
• 22:03
  And then everything becomes consistent.
• 22:07
  I like to tell people it's like the consistent brand equals
• 22:10
  trust, like consistent experiences gives you trust in the end.
• 22:14
  So.
• 22:15
  That's the importance of it.
• 22:17
  I love it.
• 22:17
  Well, I appreciate it, John.
• 22:19
  Thanks for taking the time.
• 22:20
  As always, it's great talking to you.
• 22:21
  Appreciate your expertise and your thoughts on all this too.
• 22:23
  Thanks for joining us.
• 22:24
  And yeah I hope that the folks listening to this get some value out of it.
• 22:29
  Yeah, me too, man.
• 22:29
  I love it.
• 22:30
  And thanks for having me on.
• 22:31
  It's been a great conversation and has always.
• 22:34
  So, you know, let's do more
• 22:39
  a big thank you to John for joining us today.
• 22:41
  You can find John on YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn, or check out www.
• 22:46
  witandcraft.
• 22:47
  com.
• 22:49
  Legal Marketing Radio is a production of LaFleur Marketing.
• 22:51
  Find us at LaFleur.
• 22:53
  Marketing and on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.