Law firm marketing is unique. The typical marketing tactics used by other businesses do not always work well for law firms. Rather, there are marketing activities specific to law firms that can help you meet your particular goals. Engage in the following marketing activities every day, and they will become second nature to you and your marketing team, allowing you to seamlessly build your business and improve your client acquisition.
Define Your Goals
When your law firm is defining its marketing goals, it is crucial to be clear and specific. Most law firms have marketing objectives that include building business, enhancing client relationships, and targeting new clients. Other key objectives to consider include:
- Building trust with existing and potential clients.
- Establishing leadership in your practice area.
- Demonstrating expertise.
- Connecting with existing and potential clients.
- Requesting referrals from clients and other professionals.
If you are just starting your marketing strategy, it may be best to focus on one objective or goal at a time as you build and implement your marketing plan. Add more goals as time progresses and you become more adept at marketing. Committing to a few marketing practices every day will help you develop your marketing skills and strategy so you can reach your goals and move toward success.
Build Trust
Building trust is a critical component of law firm marketing. If potential clients don’t trust you, they won’t hire you. If existing clients lose confidence in you, they will go elsewhere. Trust builds confidence, improves communication, and establishes you as an authority in your field. In order to build trust, implement these tactics in your everyday interactions with clients:
- Meet deadlines.
- Bill accurately, using appropriate technology.
- Be approachable and ensure your clients know they can contact you easily.
- Demonstrate empathy and show clients you care.
- Listen more so you can better understand your clients’ pain points.
- Underpromise and overdeliver by giving your clients realistic possible outcomes and aiming for excellence.
Demonstrate Leadership
Lawyers need to be leaders, in the office, client interactions, and marketing. While many lawyers naturally have strong leadership skills, even if one is not born a leader, these skills can be developed with practice. The following activities will help any attorney develop as a leader:
- Be a positive example to your team and others.
- Practice active listening with colleagues and clients.
- Follow a mentor and seek constructive criticism to gain new insights.
- Be solution-minded when facing problems.
- Delegate tasks to team members whose skill set matches the project or task.
- Consider where your law firm has weaknesses, fill the gaps, and create cohesion.
- Set clear expectations for staff, define responsibilities, and encourage learning.
Publish Consistently
One way to establish yourself as a leader in your industry is to consistently publish high quality content. You can address important issues in your practice area by creating articles and blog posts for your website and LinkedIn page. You can answer FAQs on these platforms to help prospective clients learn about legal issues relevant to your practice. If writing is not your forté, consider hiring a content company that focuses on creating written content for lawyers and law firms.
Become a Thought Leader
Thought leadership is a current buzzword, in part because it is a great marketing tool when done correctly. To be a thought leader, you need a unique voice with an insightful perspective on important issues. You can broadcast your expertise as a thought leader to a wide audience by posting insightful comments or thoughtful questions on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.
Exhibit Expertise
In digital marketing, there is a metric termed “EAT” (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.) Demonstrating EAT is critical for improved search rankings, in particular because expertise is highly important to Google. You can show others (and Google) that you are an expert in legal matters by regularly providing content on your website that proves your expertise. You can also provide social proof of your law firm’s expertise by including client stories and testimonials on your web pages. Exhibiting expertise is one of the most powerful ways to show potential clients you have the necessary skills to successfully tackle their issues.
Connect With Clients
If your law firm has already been serving clients, you have likely defined your audience. Knowing your ideal client is crucial to effective marketing. Some law firms may have only one type of client they are trying to attract, while others need to focus on several types of ideal clients across different practice areas. If you need to determine your ideal client, brainstorm with your team and answer the following questions:
- What legal issues does our ideal client often face?
- How are the finances of our ideal client?
- Where does our ideal client live, and what is life like at home?
- Who is our ideal client within the workforce? What is their profession?
- Which concerns and pain points can we help our ideal client solve?
- What kind of service does our ideal client expect from us?
Check in Regularly
Even when your clients know they can contact you regularly and as-needed, you can strengthen relationships with them by checking in regardless of whether there are recent developments in their case or matter. Checking in ensures clients know they are important to you and your firm.
Use Technology
Technology has the potential to vastly increase our ability to stay solidly and dependably connected with clients. For example:
- Using an online client portal makes it convenient for clients to receive messages and share documents with their legal team.
- Video conferencing is great for client meetings in place of phone calls because video provides a more personal interaction. Some clients may need assistance with video conferencing software, so be sure to offer the necessary support..
- Communicating via text messages is popular and often preferred over phone calls with many clients. Always remember to keep ethics rules in mind when texting clients.
Request Referrals
One daily marketing task your law firm should always pursue is requesting reviews and referrals from clients, lawyers, and other professionals. After every case or matter wraps up, the next step should be to request a client review of your services. Happy clients are usually willing to write reviews, but since their attorneys do not ask for them, clients do not provide them. Also ask colleagues to review and rate you, and other professionals to recommend you, on various platforms, such as LinkedIn.
Digital Marketing Action Steps:
Law firm marketing requires trust-building, strong leadership, evidence of expertise, and solid client connections that lead to valuable referrals. Keep these critical marketing practices in mind each day as you interact with team members and interface with clients. Using these inexpensive and powerful tools will help you create a solid marketing plan for your law firm.
Take some time this week to truly determine where you want to place your hard work and connect with your potential clients.
Annette Choti graduated from law school 20 years ago, and is now the CEO & Owner of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency focused on small and solo law firms. Law Quill is the only legal digital marketing agency that provides unique, SEO-optimized content, pre-packaged content, and courses for lawyers to learn SEO themselves through Law Quill Academy. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or at annette@lawquill.com.
