Most Law Firms do not have a Marketing Strategy; They may hire marketers, but the owner or principal partners do not have a plan with well defined goals and methods of assessing the impact of their marketing dollars. Smart professionals have plans. When you are competing against an army of highly competitive firms we suggest you write out a marketing plan, for your own practice and your firm’s practice. Individual lawyers can effectively market for themselves within their firms to grow their business and personal brand. The bottom line is a good plan gives you an upper hand against your competition.
In this article we provide a simple roadmap to get started. Just starting will put you in the top 10% of lawyers. After you build a roadmap and set clear goals the next challenge is to execute in a highly competitive digital marketplace. Ideas are everywhere and execution is everything.
Your marketing goals determine how you promote yourself or your practice. Almost every lawyer or firm is in the business of solving client problems. How do you differentiate yourself? First by tailoring your goals to your ideal client. One of the crucial factors to improve your practice is to acquire ‘A’ clients and remove ‘C’ clients who keep you busy but are not profitable. Figure out what your ideal client looks like, the demographics and geographics. With this knowledge you can focus your marketing resources in the right places.
Website Traffic
Google Analytics is a great tool to help manage your marketing metrics. The problem is it is not particularly user friendly for busy lawyers or inexperienced marketers. It is a data driven platform with a ton of useful information. Google Analytics will provide real time feedback and metrics on your marketing efforts. It helps you see how many visitors have reached, viewed, and left your site, tracks downloads, how long a visitor spends on your site, and other forms of engagement. How you engage with your A clients is crucial to getting the most out of your dollars and efforts
Online
SEO – The Holy Grail of most legal marketing efforts. Search Engine Optimization utilizes keywords, links, local SEO considerations, and metadata to help your site climb the ranks on a search engine results page. You want to be on the first page of the searches your ‘A” clients are performing. The key is figuring out how you can optimize a very complex and intelligent algorithm the geniuses at Google created. Might we add, it is not called Search Engine Manipulation, the people over at Google don’t like to be manipulated regardless of what a smooth talking marketing firm tells you. A standard industry tip is to tell you to try to write your content conversationally and casually to mimic typical search enquiries inquiries, or to outsource this task to a freelance writer who can. These are the SEO baby steps to get going in the right direction.
PPC – Pay per click ads are advertisements you pay for when users click on them. Typically found in emails or e-newsletters, it’s important to make sure that these ads lead directly to a designated landing page that directly correlates to the ad itself. This platform is where lawyers probably waste the most money without proper analytical feedback.
Social Media – Social media is one of the strongest ways to engage with your clients and colleagues on a more personal, informal level. It’s a great, more organic way to learn about your clients and their needs, while also being one of the largest, most expansive engagement platforms. This platform is where most lawyers, if they are even here make digital products that look pretty but achieve very little.
Legal Directories – Listing your firm in legal directories is an easy, and oftentimes free, way to drive traffic to your site and increase its SEO.
Google My Business – Google Business gives you the option to claim your firm’s profile, an amazing option for getting attention online without investing in expensive ads. It’s important to keep your profile updated, respond to reviews and comments, and add a FAQ page to increase your SEO and SERPs. This platform is probably the lowest hanging fruit to see quick improvements in SEO. 95% of lawyers and law firms My Business pages are incomplete and this affects how Google looks at you.
Email Marketing – Emailed ads, newsletters, and notifications, when executed consistently and updated regularly, are great ways to attract new clients and solidify relationships with existing ones. The big challenge is to get people who are busy and drowning in information overload to actually read them.
Guest Posting – After compiling a list of relevant sites you believe align with your firm’s goals, apply to be a guest blogger to gain traffic to your own site and build relationships within your industry. Another underutilized tool that can provide great results
Offline
To establish your firm as a community fixture, or increase referrals by word-of-mouth, billboards, Tv and radio ads, business cards, sponsoring local teams, and snail-mail advertisements can be extremely effective marketing strategies when they are part of a bigger strategy.
It’s important to have a strong mix of both online and offline marketing methods and strategies, but not rely too heavily on one or the other. Give yourself room to adjust your plan as your goals are met and as your objectives change.
At Third Eye Insights we specialize in marketing for lawyers and creating content that connects with humans. To learn more about our business and to receive a free business audit contact us today!