Once upon a time I talked to lawyers about marketing and they really weren’t interested. They simply weren’t going to do the things I suggested. Their plan was, generally, to hang out their shingle and wait for whatever business walked through the door.

That’s not the case anymore. Nearly every attorney I talk to is desperate for marketing ideas and information. They ask me question after question about marketing strategy and tactics.

I’m happy to dispense all the advice that I can. I’ve been doing it with greater and greater frequency as the economy has changed over the past couple of years.

I realized, a few weeks ago, that much of the advice I dispense is never implemented. I was baffled as to why that might be the case. After all, these people are very serious about getting the information.

Why aren’t they taking action on it.

I wondered if maybe the advice I was giving was overly radical. On occasion, we talked about things like Google Adwords or advertising on TV. Those ideas don’t always fly with the people coming to me. But, upon reflection, I concluded that most of the advice I give focuses on doing conventional things like taking referral sources to lunch. Nothing radical about that.

So, again, I was baffled as to why my advice was not always implemented.

During a conversation last week with a solo practitioner I listened carefully to the responses as we discussed marketing. I was using that conversation to explore why my ideas aren’t implemented. I was wondering, as we talked, if I could find the source of the resistance. Was it that my ideas were being rejected or that there was something bigger going on here?

As I listened, I began to realize, that the problem was really a simple matter of priorities. The attorney that I was talking to, who is pretty representative of the attorneys I usually advise, felt that the highest priority in her day, was to get the client work done. That comes first and nothing else matters until it’s done. Sounds reasonable at first glance.

Once the client work is done she addresses the other pressing issues – things like dealing with staff, dealing with family, office equipment, etc. Her marketing activities are getting pushed to the bottom of the list. In fact, they’re getting pushed off the bottom of the list and they are only rarely being addressed.

That’s got to change.

The only way that marketing will get done is if you shift your priorities. Some things aren’t going to get done in a typical day. It’s easy to explain to ourselves that client work is the number one priority. That’s fine except that for many of us that means that the marketing won’t get done.

Maybe it’s Parkinson’s Law – “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Maybe we’re not saving time, at the end of our day, for doing marketing. I really don’t know how to explain the fact that we don’t get to the marketing.

All I know is that if the marketing is not a high priority – if it’s not the highest priority – it simply doesn’t get done by many, many practitioners.

We’ve got to find a new way to think about marketing or we’re not going to get to it. In my conversation with the lawyer last week, I suggested that she simply make marketing her first priority. My guess is that if she does that she’ll get the marketing done, and that she’ll get the client work and other priorities dealt with because they’re essential. She’ll make time. She’ll find a way to fit everything into her day.

I’ve asked her to try it for a week or two and see how it goes.

Maybe I’m just reiterating the same old ideas that some productivity gurus advocate like putting first things first. That’s one of Stephen Covey’s principles. If that’s what I’m saying then, apparently, Covey is right.

I’m not sure exactly what you need to do in order to get everything done in a day. I know that time is limited. I do believe, however, that you should try to move marketing up – way up – on your list for a while and see what happens. This is the time to get it done.

When you put marketing at the bottom of your list you’re not getting done the things you say you want to get done.

It’s time to juggle the priorities list. It’s time to put marketing at the top.