Anne Parys: Marketing Today’s Business With A Twist

Finding new ways to market a business in the Covid climate takes skill. Marketing a unique company like a law firm takes having a gift in marketing. Anne Parys has this gift. As marketing director of Rothman Gordon PC, she found a way to market the law firm through the murky waters of COVID 19.
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What’s even more unique about Anne’s achievement is that she found herself needing to market the law firm from two different perspectives. She developed marketing plans to target B2B clients as well as B2C clients. 

Getting to know Anne

Anne has been Marketing Director for Rothman Gordon for 17 years. Before starting at this firm, she was Sr. Marketing coordinator for Deloitte Management Consulting firm, where she focused on accounting marketing. Her background in professional marketing has enabled her to look at all avenues of marketing and create the most effective plans possible. 
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As the sole member of the marketing department, Anne wears many hats interchanging them to fit the marketing plans she creates at Rothman Gordon.
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Rothman Gordon is a Pittsburgh Pennsylvania-based law firm founded in 1954. This 25 attorney firm specializes in a suite of services for individuals, organizations, and closely-held and family businesses. They specialize in areas from personal to corporate law. 

Adapting to a changing marketing landscape

Many businesses have had to adjust to a new way of marketing due to the pandemic. Anne became much more creative with her approach. The relationship-based marketing the attorneys were used to needed to be changed to an online strategy. 

For these attorneys, Anne jokes that they do not want to be the first. When presenting any new ideas to them, they would always ask who else has done that. This was counterintuitive to the market process, Anne shares. Because there were so many changes due to the pandemic, they were forced to step out of their comfort zone.
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They were concerned about ethical issues and client confidentiality concerns and if a social media presence would hinder this. Because attorneys are their product, they can feel possessive about their methodology and client base. Their reputation is what sells. They would need to overcome their hesitation in marketing themselves on social media if they wanted results. 

Achieving success

Shifting the company’s marketing plan meant the attorneys would need to jump into the world of social media and develop an online presence. Anne’s focus became focused on developing good content. Together they created a team that was assigned different topics. They were hoping to stay ahead of all the new regulations that were coming out. 

With all the regulation changes during the pandemic, no one in the world was sure what was going on. Anne shared that the team did a great job of monitoring and writing content that would help to generate new clients. 

They were able to expand their presence on social media. While they have always been active on LinkedIn, the journey into Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram was new. Through persistence, Anne’s plan was paying off. The development of a PPP loan series in the U.S. enabled the company’s SEO traffic to skyrocket. The success they achieved generated inquiries from all across the country.

Even with the success of the social media and online campaign, some attorneys were still not seeing its benefit, that is until Anne told one attorney in particular that he needed to be more active. He took her advice and began to reap the benefits when he was on the first page in a Google search. This is Anne’s victory story. 

Each new client brought in from Anne’s social media, and online marketing campaign gave her a sense of accomplishment. The plan that so many of the attorneys were hesitant to was paying off. 

Moving forward, Anne plans to implement cross-selling. For most companies, this idea is elementary, Anne says. The challenge with cross-selling attorneys becomes a problem because of the compensation issue. To see the rewards, the firm will need to take steps to achieve that. 

Tips for surviving the ever-changing marketing world:

• Don’t overwhelm yourself
  
  ‍With the ever-changing world of marketing, sometimes it can become overwhelming. Anne describes it as drinking from a fire hose. Instead of trying to learn everything. Pick a couple of tools and educate yourself about them. For Anne, one area she chose to focus on was podcasting. Rather than letting herself become overwhelmed, Anne says to “go with it and have fun.”

• Rely on your network
  
  ‍Having a network of other marketers is vital. Knowing there is someone who understands marketing you can talk to. Because Anne was the only one in her department, she shares it was lonely at times. Anne used her network of marketing groups to bounce ideas off and determine what they might be doing in their marketing plans. She shares; having other marketers to communicate with reminds you that you know what you’re doing. It helps you keep your head above water. 

• Pivot
  
  ‍Marketers tend to be planners. Whether you are planning for next month or five years down the road. Sometimes the best-laid plans need to be adjusted. Give yourself permission to change plans. The pandemic has shown us this. Sometimes adjusting your plans as Anne did could make all the difference in the world. Anne says that “At the end of the day, all marketing is really about is meeting your client's needs and exceeding their expectations. Everything else is a tactic.”

Anne was asked, “If the ideal scenario where you have all these special needs, the bandwidth you need, all the budgets, you made everything you need, What would be that dream market effort that you would like to do? Her reply, “I would love to do a giant conference retreat for all of our clients offsite. She shared that having the opportunity to have one-on-one time with clients having a mix of education and a social gathering in a beautiful place would be special to the clients. Not only would the clients benefit from it, but so would we at the law firm. We would have the opportunity to find out what they really want. “That to me would be a dream project,” Anne adds.