Marketing Tips for New or Small Law Firms

Marketing for law firms has become essential in the digital world. However, with so many strategies and tools available, attorneys can often be challenged to decide which ones will work best for their legal practice. What worked last year may not work this year, but it also could work in just a few more years. So, to remain competitive in today’s market, law firms must adapt to these advances.

This means you need a marketing team with deep knowledge who can craft an image that will attract new customers and encourage customer retention. One of the best ways to get good marketing suggestions is to ask! Marketing is proper as long as you carefully research what’s effective within your target market sector. So let’s look at how legal marketing might help your firm stand out.

What does legal marketing entail?

Legal marketing can be as easy as advertising on a bus, billboard, television, or radio. You may also spend on high-quality pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements that appear on the web or sites visited by prospective customers.

But it can be far more than just letting the world know you’re willing to fight for clients. Legal marketing now encompasses tactics for optimizing your website, email campaigns, and social media profiles.

Marketing’s significance in a legal practice

Legal marketing is important to expand the reach and establish the credibility of a company .

In today’s world, marketing is vital for law businesses. As law businesses develop and the legal market becomes more competitive, establishing a niche for your company is critical to survival. That doesn’t imply you need an A-list star and a big budget. Law company marketing may be intelligent and professional.

5 Secrets To Marketing For A Law Firm

Secret #1 Have A Marketing Budget

Before making any other judgments about your legal marketing approach, determine your budget. Budgeting without understanding your goals will lead to a marketing approach that is blind and fails. An effective marketing plan starts with measurement, and the budget is the starting point.

In short, there is no set amount you should spend.

Most law firms with marketing budgets spend between 2% and 15% of their income on marketing, with the bulk of expenditures falling in the lower range. However, your marketing may not deliver the desired results if you are a smaller firm. 

Effective legal marketing expenses should be based on many aspects. Remember that a well-spent marketing budget is preferable to a poorly-spent marketing budget.

Secret #2 Have A Marketing Strategy and Plan

• Your marketing strategy outlines your firm’s marketing goals and guides your marketing activities.

Lawyers need to be aware of other firms’ legal marketing strategies to advertise themselves. Defining your target market, assessing your rivals and demand, and developing your main message can help you establish a successful marketing strategy.

Always begin with a sound marketing strategy for your legal company. You don’t want to start developing social media marketing material for your law firm’s Twitter profile only to discover that your target clientele reacts to an entirely different sort of message.

Here are six legal marketing strategies to consider:

1. Search Engine Optimization

SEO tactics may help your law firm’s website rank higher in search engine results pages (like Google).

2. SEO methods for local businesses

• A Google My Business page. Setting up a Google My Business profile is the first step to appearing in local searches. This page should contain contact information, images, and links to your firm’s website.
• Assemble a local keyword list. Add local keyword data to your website to help it rank in local searches.
• Maintain your NAP. Your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) should be structured consistently online (website, Facebook page, etc.).
• Build linkages. Backlinks from authoritative websites may help your legal firm’s website rank higher in search results.
• Get customer feedback. What customers say about your firm helps build trust in your product or service. Aside from that, good reviews help build your Google rankings, increasing your online presence and authority.

3. Search Advertising

Among the search advertising strategies:

• Pay per click (PPC). As part of a PPC campaign, you are charged a fee each time a website visitor clicks on your ad. This may enhance visitors to your website, but it costs money for each click. This PPC advertising success guide for attorneys describes the concept in detail.
• Google Adwords. Depending on your profession, a Google Ads campaign might be an excellent method to boost web traffic to your company. 

4. Websites 

Consider your legal firm’s website as online real estate, and make it user-friendly.  Your site must be:

• Easy to use and navigate. Images and text should be scaled correctly. Contact information should be visible.
• Adaptable. Your website’s mobile friendliness affects your search ranking.
• SEO-ready. Straightforward, keyword-optimized content that aligns with your legal firm’s brand.

5. Content Marketing

Content marketing entails developing relevant content and distributing it online through various channels.

Blog entries, movies, infographics, and even podcasts are examples of content.

6. Email Marketing

Your legal firm’s competence may be established by sending focused and regular marketing emails to your network.

• Marketing Plan for law offices

Your law firm’s marketing plan will guide your overall marketing strategy. To execute your marketing strategy and reach your marketing objectives, you need a marketing plan. This part of your attorney marketing strategy will also include advertising. This covers SEO and social media marketing. Consider your desired outcomes while creating your marketing strategy.

Secret #3 Think Beyond Traditional Marketing Techniques

While traditional marketing is still essential, it is not as powerful as it once was. Nowadays, firms need to think more creatively about using networking and social media to market their practices. For example, firms should consider:

1. How they can use social media creatively to bring in potential clients.
2. How they can effectively reach out to other local professionals and businesses with whom they might have common interests and concerns.
3. The different ways they can connect with other professionals on social networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter.
4. How they can use blogs to help establish an online presence and grow their practice while also offering valuable knowledge and content to their clients.
5. How they can create a newsletter or other publication that helps them reach out to clients and prospects in interesting new ways.

Secret #4 Know All The Channels For Marketing

Advertising Channels That Are Frequently Used

Consider the kind of clients you’re looking for. They often match some profiles and are easily identifiable by their backgrounds. Individuals in certain occupations, income levels, and ages exhibit distinct behaviours for consumer-facing lawyers. While for business lawyers, the target market come from a variety of businesses. These characteristics may assist you in determining how your prospective consumers get information or, in marketing language, what kind of material they like to consume.

The following are some forms of media with which the majority of people, regardless of their background, engage daily:

• Email 
• Prints (newspaper ads, bus stops, signs, etc.)
• Advertising – Text or Advertising – 
• Social Media

Which Channel Is the Most Appropriate?

Now, just because those solutions are often utilized does not guarantee they will benefit your law firm’s marketing plan. Specific channels will be more relevant than others, just based on the habits of your ideal customer. 

What Result Do You Desire?

Additionally, it is critical to choose a channel depending on your target client’s objective. Are you attempting to schedule an initial meeting with them at your office? Advertising is a promising avenue for accomplishing this aim since the customers who react to the advertisement will already have a sense of the services they need.

Other prospective customers may be aware they have a legal issue, such as a divorce, but will be unsure which attorney is best suited to fulfill their requirements. In these instances, customers may benefit from some targeted “warm-up” message that progressively develops confidence. These messages may be sent by email or via social media.

This is just a sampling of possible scenarios. There may be another suitable channel, or combination of media, that we haven’t identified.

Secret #5 Don’t Try Doing Everything Yourself

The attorney’s responsibility to market the firm is enormous. All the tools you would use for typical marketing and business development have to be used. You have to have a solid online presence, a strong social media presence, and a strong business development presence. This is where most attorneys are weak. They don’t know how to do it, or they don’t like doing it, or they don’t want to hire someone to do it.

If you’re having trouble finding new clients for your law firm, you’re probably having trouble with marketing and business development. Issues in these areas keep law firms from succeeding and growing.

It would help if you learned how to do these better and then hire somebody who knows how to do them well then let them do what they’re good at doing. Don’t try doing everything yourself because you can’t be as good as you want to be if you’re trying to be both the rainmaker and the rain catcher at the same time.

Kick-start your marketing law firm with Advantage Attorney!

To ensure your law firm is successful in this digital age, you need a marketing partner that understands the changing nature of the practice of law. Count on Advantage Attorney as your go-to law firm marketing firm. We’re here to create a sound brand identity and market it in a way that will bring you clients, leads, and overall success. 

If your law firm needs a fresh perspective on marketing, it’s time to book an appointment or call at (866) 391-5001.