How can we help?

• Author: MacKinnon, Carolyn

There are a lot more similarities than differences between the U.S. and Canadian approaches to marketing and business development. We share most of our clients and are not doing things dramatically differently.

It comes down to basics. It's not nuclear science. It's about what our clients find valuable and providing those services. At Blake's, we focused on two things: 1) Does it follow along with our strategic objectives? and 2) Is it valuable to the client?

It's way too easy to get caught up in the flash of marketing--social media, websites, advertising. Our tactics always revolve around the clients. It's not flashy. We look for tactics that benefit the end user. A good example is CLE, which became mandatory not long ago in Toronto We set out to provide valuable CLE for clients--not just getting credits but providing real value. We did it not only through Blake's Business Class, but also onsite at the client's business and in locations such as Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, where lawyers also need CLE. If you're a GC, you're working with tighter and tighter budgets, and you may have less time to spend on something like CLE. It's hard to do this in-house So how can we help?

One difference worth noting between the United States and Canada is that the size of our market means we have to be more international. Marketing...