Following up on my post of last week "Too Busy for Marketing? Or Just Unfocused?,”  I ran across a post by John Jantsch over on Duct Tape Marketing where he uses the “P” word. He apparently encounters small business owners (like some lawyers I meet), who say that they’re too busy to market, and he takes issue with that. So do I.

As he says, "marketing is and must become a habitual activity in your business.” He goes on to say that "the only way to find time for marketing is to plan for it," and one way to do that is to "create a marketing theme for every month of the year, " and then carry it out on a daily or weekly basis. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m a big fan of John’s, but in this case I’m not sure I agree with a theme-of-the-month approach. It reminds me too much of the chasing-the-latest-fad that law firms have done over the past couple of decades.

Rather, I would suggest that firms develop a plan that involves multiple activities that will all contribute to reaching the business development goals that firm hopes to achieve. That doesn’t mean that a lawyer can’t focus on a particular activity for a given month (like making a speech in September, writing an article in October, and visiting the client’s place of business in November, etc.) – and maybe that is what John means.

In any case, the important thing is to plan and undertake business development activities on a consistent basis, even in the throes of meeting deadlines for client work. Lawyers must make time for marketing. Failure to do so is preposterous – or do I really mean disastrous?