LawFuel.com – Law Firm Marketing News – An unusual dessert may appear to be an equally unusual way in which to approach law firm marketing matters, but Deborah McMurray, who consults to law firms on marketing matters, took to her blog to explain what she was talking about.

The dessert that prompted Ms McMurray’s protest (pictured) was at a San Francisco retaurant called Twenty Five Lusk and her issue is that the dessert, which was labelled “Textures and Chaos” (pictured below) and was described as having just four ingredients but was, she claimed, ‘crowd-sourced’ to include anything the kitchen staff wanted to include.

Here comments appropro law firm marketing are these:

What can lawyers learn from this? With the proliferation of new Internet-based marketing and business development channels, particularly social media outlets, individual lawyers, practice groups and firms have an unprecedented opportunity to jump into the fray.

And indeed they are jumping! More than ever before, these lawyers, groups and firms need guidance and direction from experienced marketers who can help them define strategy and keep their focus. Having an Internet presence that isn’t well delineated, refined and targeted does the lawyer and firm no good – in fact, it can dilute any reputation you might have that’s been developed in more traditional offline media.

Firm strategy should start back in the kitchen-equivalent (not at the dinner table) and be a thoughtful consideration of audiences, markets, geographic reach, competition, threats and opportunities that are just cresting over the horizon. This positioning stake in the ground informs what practice and industry teams could do, and what individual lawyers on those teams can do.

When well-intentioned, but overly independent lawyers go off and create their own Internet presence with no regard for their law firm, they miss the most important advantage available to them – leveraging the investments (strategy, time, reputation and money) made by the mother ship.

All of which goes to the key point about law firm marketing, which is to remember that it needs to comply with an overall marketing plan, rather than representing something cooked up in the kitchen of fine ideas, but not so fine dining.