Are law firm marketing executives missing the mark in how they engage with in-house counsel about their firms?

That's one potential takeaway from a new survey released Thursday by public relations firm Greentarget and co-sponsored by legal consulting firm Zeughauser Group. The report highlights the ways in-house counsel can diverge from their companies' C-suites when it comes to how they consume and value marketing. But for law firms, the bigger lesson may be how their own CMOs could be targeting clients more effectively. 

Consider the resources that law firm CMOs allocate to various platforms. Eighty-five percent of them say their firms assign high or moderate priority to marketing through “peer-driven rankings or listing services,” according to the survey, and the same percentage assign high or moderate priority to LinkedIn.

But when it comes to the content sources that in-house counsel find most valuable, peer rankings and listing services are at the very bottom of the list, with just 17% pegging them as very or somewhat valuable. LinkedIn and other social media are similarly less valued, with only 15% of in-house counsel respondents saying that find LinkedIn highly valuable and 26% calling the service somewhat valuable.

Instead, in-house counsel are turning to traditional media, legal industry publications, and other trade press. Seventy-nine percent said traditional media was a very or somewhat valuable source for industry or legal news and information, followed by 75% and 74%, respectively, for legal publications and industry trade publications.

As for the sources they use to research specific outside firms, in-house counsel are most attuned, not surprisingly, to direct recommendations from trusted sources. But after that the second highest percent said the most important source of information was the humble lawyer bio on law firm websites—again beating peer rankings and directories and social content on platforms like LinkedIn.

Law firm CMOs clearly recognize the value of their own firm websites, with 78% saying their sites are highly valuable platforms for distributing content, according to the survey. But 80 percent of them say the same thing about LinkedIn, while a relatively low 65% say search engines—a key vehicle for attracting clients to those all-important firm bios—are a very valuable platform for distributing content.

Law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser, chair of the Zeughauser Group, said the apparent mismatch in how clients and CMOs view social media may have more to do with marketers' media savvy than with a fundamental difference in how executives consume information.

“They may just be running a bit ahead of the pack,” he said.

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