This post may be a bit unconventional for a legal marketing forum, but stay with me.

Mandala is an ancient Sanskrit word that means “circle.” In Tibet, Buddhist monks will create beautiful, intricate pieces of sand art by the same name; a painstaking process that can take several weeks to complete. Intriguingly, once the final grain of sand is poured into place the piece is destroyed. The exercise is a study of impermanence, symbolizing the Buddhist belief in the transient nature of life.

Even if you are not a Tibetan Buddhist monk, your law firm’s Internet marketing bears similarities to a monastic’s sand mandala.

How?

By, itself, being a study of impermanence.

You carefully assemble every element of your marketing campaign. You strategically place every component. You watch your vision take shape. You admire the final result for what it is: a work of art. And, in the world of algorithm updates and changing technology, the moment you find yourself ahead you are behind. Like the mandala, your Internet marketing strategy is a study of impermanence.

Yet, there still is value in the doing.

The brick-and-mortar office where I work is directly opposite Berea College, a work-study institution with which my employer, Consultwebs has an established partnership. Recently, monks from Drepung Loseling Monastery in Tibet visited campus. During the course of their stay, the monks created a mandala in a public lounge. As my marketing colleagues and I visited the display over lunch, we were struck by how similar the work of the monks seemed to our own legal marketing endeavors.

This connection has been identified before. In a 2007 issue of Innovative Marketing, researchers compare marketing to the Buddhist theory of impermanence. They conclude, “Impermanence theory is of particular significance to marketing managers, as they must understand that the apparent success of a strategic business unit or the entire company is the result of being at the right place at the right time. Thus, despite the success of a company’s portfolio today, future success is not guaranteed.”

As it relates to Web marketing, that “apparent success” is entirely the result of a pristine online profile, cutting-edge Web design, a winning offsite strategy, Social Media engagement, being perfectly compliant with Google’s standards and a host of other parameters that make legal web marketing just as thrilling as it is frustrating. Oddly comforting to the legal marketer though: Just “as success is impermanent, difficult times… likewise are impermanent.”

You see, your failures are not as disastrous precisely because they are momentary. Likewise, you cannot become too comfortable in your successes as they, too, are momentary.

Do you agree that legal marketing is a study in impermanence? What has your experience proven?