Law Firm Marketing – A Quest For Leadership

Marketing techniques all revolve around acquiring new clients. You can do most of the client-searching online. However, more often than not, it comes down to the fact that successful lawyers have perfected certain skills. These include the art of rainmaking, client development, and marketing. Unsuccessful lawyers often ignore or lack these skills. However, one can never overestimate the importance of understanding law firm marketing.

If you are involved in private practice, you are basically in business and survive on sales. You have to be willing to learn the art of law firm marketing. Otherwise, it is better to consider finding a job with the government or a corporation where marketing is not a requirement.

Law firms and lawyers are service providers. Unlike manufacturers or retailers, lawyers sell their skills and not products. Ultimately, a lawyer’s primary skills are his or her ability to tackle problems for clients. Therefore, the essence of client development and marketing for law firms and lawyers lies in recognizing a specific skill set, to be matched with a particular set of problems. Simply put, a law firm or lawyer cannot exercise his or her skills in the absence of clients. Similarly, clients cannot access a lawyer’s skills without knowing that a particular lawyer has the required skills. That is where lawyer and law firm marketing comes in the picture.

A lot of lawyers out there fail to get new files and clients since they don’t dedicate enough resources to business development activities. Others waste time and money on the inefficient services or activities or fail to connect with potential clients authentically.

Law Firm Marketing – The Basics

When strategizing to market your law firm, here are X key pointers to keep in mind:

Learn the rudimentary principles of law firm marketing.

  • Customize those principles to fit you personally and your law practice. Make sure you are clear about your specific law practice. These include the areas your practice revolves around, how much business you currently have in each area and how much business-activity you seek.
  • Create a written law firm marketing It doesn’t have to be fancy or sophisticated, just something that will help you see your objectives along with the necessary steps to achieve them. You should follow a timeline for completing every action step.
  • Follow the marketing plan on a consistent basis – Though it can be tempting to slack on your marketing efforts when business is booming, you shouldn’t stop even then. That’s because of certain types of legal marketing, like networking, calls for a substantial amount of time for the development of prospects. Remember that a week goes by without marketing is a week wasted.

Top 9 Effective Law Firm Marketing Techniques

Each type of business and service needs to employ proper brand marketing. That includes law firms and legal services. Listed below are top 9 techniques backed by scientific research that will allow you to take your law firm marketing to the next level.

1. Pay Attention to Your Previous Clients

Always keep in mind that your previous clients are your current potential clients, which is why you should never discard their contact information. All ex-clients need to be contacted, preferably via phone or by email campaigns, to remind them of your presence. To encourage repeat business, offer discounts to returning clients. Free consultation on a living trust or wills, for example.

2. Use Multimedia to Enhance Your Firm’s Online Presence

Having a robust online presence is the key to a successful law firm marketing, and possibly one of the essential techniques. In today’s visual-driven age, using multimedia such pictures and videos to liven up your website have become extremely important. Creating entertaining and informative videos is not hard, and can be done quickly and in an affordable manner. In fact, without videos, you are missing out on a great deal. Visual content not only enhances your branding but also makes you more noticeable.

3. Use Trade Associations for Networking

In the end, networking is a critical element of law firm marketing that gets you new ideas and contacts. For this reason, attending trade association in your area, where you might meet countless potential clients, is crucial. You can merely ask your current clients regarding the meetings that they attend, and request them to introduce you to others. It will help you familiarize yourself with potential clients, and offer a chance to score better when engaging in such associations.

4. Use an Informative Website

Nowadays, you can determine business-health by the effectiveness of websites. Not only is having a site vital, but having a great website is what will do the trick and bring in new clients. At present day, if your business does not have a proper site, it goes on to show that you are not up-to-date with the current trends and this impression could adversely impact your entire law firm marketing campaign.

While just having a website isn’t the only online marketing tool you should use, it surely will help your law firm. Potential clients want to find out more about prospective lawyers and ensure their lawyer is efficient enough in the area of practice that they need, before hiring one.

You should aim for a website that contains visually-appealing and informative content relevant to your practice areas so that potential clients can judge whether you will be fit for their case. Not only should your site state that you have expertise in a specific area, but it should also contain information regarding that law area, including blogs and articles.

Lastly, it should contain comprehensive biographies of all lawyers practicing law in your company, along with a photo so clients can have a better idea of who would possibly be representing them.

5. Utilize B2B Emailing

Business to business emailing allows you see actual results in no time when it comes to law firm marketing. You can see things such as the number of people who have opened your email and what exactly their response is. The B2B campaign would involve getting I touch with former business clients via email and providing them a discounted service should they agree to utilize it within the next month.

6. Get Your Testimonials Up

One of the most effective ways to bring in new client traffic is via positive word of mouth marketing. This approach can enhance marketing effectiveness by 54%. Ensuring that your clients are satisfied during your representation of them can result in new business. Potential clients are looking to know if their lawyers have been successful before.

One way of demonstrating this is through asking present clients to give feedback and testimonials on your firm’s website regarding their success stories. Don’t just go asking this favor from just any client. Only pick those that you believe will come up with something positive to say.

A positive testimonial will comprise of a narrative of their experience. You can combine this with highlighting particular elements of service that your law firm offered them. In addition, you can always ask satisfied clients to leave honest reviews on sites such as Google, and Angie’s List.

7. Measure Your Results

It’s straightforward: When you monitor results, they improve. So make sure to track the results of all your law firm marketing campaigns. Those that drive in clients that lead to billable hours evidently should continue, and perhaps even expanded. On the contrary, you should suspend those that are not so effective.

8. Set Aside At Least 2.5% of Your Revenues to Law Firm Marketing

This 2.5% cut does not involve the wages of workers you will have hired to implement the strategies. Instead, invest the money into making effective branding efforts, and on getting customers or clients out to luncheons. All these marketing tactics work, which is why you must consider investing in them.

9. Invest in Social Media Marketing

In today’s dynamic industry, using social media is a must if you wish to grow your legal practice. From Twitter announcements to Facebook posts, there are so many new prospects that a carefully managed social media marketing campaign can bring. To be successful with any form of social media marketing, you need to increase your following. After all, the more people that come across your brand and follow you on different social media networks, the larger the audiences you can potentially reach each time you post. That, in turn, will help bring in a higher number of potential clients looking for legal services.

If you don’t have the time to manage your social media networks, you can always hire an expert. SocialBuz is an SEO and marketing company that hires well-qualified, experienced and certified tech-savvy experts who can efficiently take care of all your law firm marketing needs. Their services include not only social media management but also high-quality content creation, strategic planning, as well as keyword management.