Briefing Marketing & BD Leaders event Recap with Tony Cox, Russell Bell and Emma France

After the Briefing Marketing & BD Leaders event in London, we sat down with Tony Cox, our Director of Business Development, and Russell Bell, our Senior Sales Executive, and Emma France, our Client Engagement Product Manager, to get their insights on branding and messaging by client type and nailing down effective data-driven marketing and BD strategy.

Let’s dive right into it. 

What strategies do you employ to ensure that client-specific branding and messaging efforts align with overall business goals?  

Tony: Having accurate client data is a critical first step to ensure you have a real and up-to-date understanding of your clients. From this understanding, branding can be tailored to align with the client's unique value proposition and long-term business objectives. 

What techniques do you use to maintain brand consistency?

Tony: Creating comprehensive guidelines outlining the brand's mission, values, voice, tone, visual elements, and messaging standards is imperative.

You must also ensure these guidelines are readily accessible and invest in training so people can articulate and apply them in their daily work.

How do you address and manage client expectations?

Tony: I prefer to foster open and transparent communication from the beginning of client engagement. Setting realistic expectations and educating clients about what is feasible and achievable within the given constraints is always good. This includes budget, resources, and timelines.

Always be honest about potential limitations and discuss alternative solutions to meet their needs as required.

Can you describe your experience at Peppermint Technology with supporting firms with their data-driven Marketing and Business Development strategy?  

Russell: A PMS integration is essential. It will form the foundation of your BD and Marketing Strategy and provide insights such as: Where are the cross-selling opportunities? Who are your top referrers? Which clients should you invite to events?

Emma: The role of our Client Engagement product is to ensure that those within a firm who are defining and executing their data-driven Marketing and Business Development strategy are provided with the accurate data that they require. Unification and maintenance of quality, accurate data is essential.

We do this by enabling seamless integration for Client Engagement to gather essential client information from various systems while providing a friendly user experience that minimises or eliminates the time spent updating client information.

What do you believe are the biggest challenges in creating effective data-driven marketing and BD strategy?

Russell: Some of the biggest challenges are data quality and user adoption, which can be linked. Poor quality data will mean reporting is impossible and will turn users away.

Emma: The capture of and maintenance of quality, accurate data is essential. The challenge is that this typically sits with the primary relationship holder – usually a Fee Earner or Partner, who are busy and have competing priorities.

How do you overcome these challenges?

Russell: Technology helps in these two cases. At Peppermint, our ERM Solution will passively create contact records, cleanse data in the background, and establish and score connections your lawyers have with clients and prospects.

Also, our Client Engagement solution is built upon the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 – a modern, familiar, and intuitive user experience inside the apps your lawyers spend the most time in. Senior buy-in is also imperative to winning hearts and minds and fostering a culture of successful relationship management.

Emma: Firms need simple and friendly tools to ensure that their client relationship holders capture the data required by the Marketing and Business Development teams. It's even better when this is done silently, with minimal or zero effort. This is certainly a key guiding principle for our Client Engagement product strategy.