As a lawyer, there are times when business is so successful you can’t imagine when it might slow down. But eventually it will, and if you have slowed or stopped marketing efforts, then you may regret it. As with all business, marketing is important to the success of your law firm.
When you relax marketing efforts or practice inefficient marketing techniques, your firm will suffer. In some cases, the best way to ensure success is to outsource your law firm’s marketing.
The following is a guide to law firm marketing and all of the intricacies that are involved with producing a successful marketing campaign.
The Importance of Law Firm Marketing
In today’s world, the internet has become the go to source for all knowledge and all services. Whenever someone has need of a lawyer or a law firm, their first instinct is to go to the computer and look up law firms in the area.
Thus, while word of mouth is still a good way for a lawyer’s reputation to spread, good marketing and a strong presence online are necessary for a law firm to succeed.
One of the biggest advantages to strong marketing is a high level of visibility with the ability to raise awareness among your potential customers. With higher visibility comes the chance to establish your credibility with more clients.
Attorney Reputations – How It Work In Marketing
All companies rely on their reputations and their credibility, and employing good marketing techniques can help your law firm improve both.
Proper marketing also allows law firms to engage with their clients. Communicating with clients on a personal level and learning to listen to and respect the needs and advice of clients is one of the most important factors of marketing.
Social media is an effective tool for companies to engage with their clients and improve their visibility, helping them stand out among their competitors.
What Does Effective Law Firm Marketing Look Like?
A law firm’s website needs to look professional, be easy to navigate, and remain consistent in its messages to prospective clients. Make certain commonly requested information is easy to find and quickly accessible.
By making your website professional, you will impress your clients and give them a sense of the professionalism of your firm. Making use of social media to connect and communicate with clients is another way to practice effective marketing.
In everything that your company publishes, be sure you are associating your business with informative and well written content. Make a blog for your law firm, publish notices about recent developments in the legal world, and post notices regarding events or engagements in which your firm is involved.
Use Marketing Videos
Post video as well; people are drawn to videos and used to having information delivered to them by such means. By uploading content regularly, you will show the public you are an active law firm dedicated to your clients.
Another key factor for effective law firm marketing is that it will cost money. Set aside a significant amount of money and dedicate it to improving your marketing efforts each year. Keep track of the results your marketing yields each year, and spend the money necessary to improve the areas that were less effective.
Many services might spend five percent of their revenue on marketing annually, while 2.5% is a common amount to spend on online marketing.
How a Lack of Marketing Can Hurt Your Law Firm
As much as good marketing can help improve your firm’s reputation and increase revenue, not marketing at all can be equally detrimental. If you rely purely on word of mouth and customers’ recommendations to find more clients and continue to grow, then you will grow only smaller.
Some people believe that no marketing is better than bad marketing, and in an effort to save money and ensure they avoid mistakes, they make no marketing efforts at all. But while you can be sure to not create bad press, having no press at all will cause potential clients to question your credibility.
If you set aside an inadequate amount of money for marketing purposes, the advertisements and content you can afford will be low quality and hurt your company’s reputation. Even if you manage to produce a small number of high quality marketing tools, they will pale in comparison to the literature of law firms with larger marketing budgets.
Examples of Good and Bad Law Firm Marketing
The best marketing is always targeted to the customer. For best effect, a company should focus its marketing efforts on telling potential customers how their lives could be improved by trusting or investing in its product or service.
Instead of extolling its own qualities and explaining its trustworthiness, a company needs to always put the customer first.
Good law firm marketing consists of carefully planned campaigns featuring consistent and high quality content. Clients think of your firm as a group of people, ready to help them when they most need it.
There is a great degree of communication and interaction between clients and the employees of your firm, both online and face-to-face. When a client makes a personal connection with the employees of a law firm, he or she is more likely to trust them and recommend the law firm to others.
Good marketing is making promises
Good marketing is making promises that you keep, proving your responsibility and trustworthiness to your client. And perhaps most importantly, a law firm with good marketing strategies will always listen to their customers’ advice and criticism, implementing it when possible or necessary.
When a company sends mixed messages or conflicting impressions to potential clients, they are taking their first steps towards failure. Bad marketing happens when a law firm focuses too much on itself, appearing arrogant, entitled, and self righteous.
Just as people avoid self absorbed friends or acquaintances, clients will avoid law firms that don’t focus on their clients’ needs.
Some of the biggest mistakes a law firm can make when beginning a marketing campaign include overlooking details, failing to understand client’s needs or listen to clients’ feedback, and not developing a personal relationship with the client. A faceless law firm is much harder to trust than one in which the lawyers have made an effort to communicate with clients and make them feel comfortable.
Another of the most common marketing mistakes is not spending enough money. Too many law firms consider marketing to be an unnecessary expense, and consequently, their marketing campaigns are weak and unsuccessful. Similarly, many law firms don’t take the time to evaluate their marketing efforts and are unable to fix them in time when they fail.
One of the best ways to ensure your marketing efforts are effective is to continuously update your website. Companies with outdated websites are far less likely to impress their customers and potential clients. By checking your website and social media profiles on a regular basis, you ensure your company stays competitive. Be sure to address any complaints or comments that clients have made as soon as possible.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Law Firm Marketing
Managing an effective law firm marketing campaign is difficult. There is much to remember and numerous tasks that need to be accomplished. For many law firms, it is smarter and more cost effective to outsource their needs to a professional marketing company.
This ensures your company will not make any of the marketing gaffes that can be so damaging to a company’s reputation.
A professional marketing company knows all of the best techniques and practices for building a law firm’s reputation and its credibility. The law firm will not have to worry about hiring a marketer to their permanent staff. Furthermore, they save the time and money needed to train that marketer to become familiar with the best techniques for marketing law firms.
Outsourcing your law firm’s marketing needs leaves you to spend more time and energy on what you do best: counseling and assisting clients with all of their legal goals. Your business will function more smoothly when everyone handles the job they are most qualified to do.
Conclusion
Developing a strong law firm marketing campaign requires experience, skill, money, and an intimate knowledge of the best marketing techniques. If a law firm wishes to head their own marketing efforts, they will need to make sure they keep in mind the keys for good marketing.
They must have a consistent message, high quality content, an adequate budget, and most importantly, they must focus on the client. Listening to their clients’ needs and taking note of their clients’ feedback is one of the most important aspect of good marketing.
If, however, a law firm does not have the time or the personnel to spend on developing a strong internet marketing campaign, then hiring a professional marketing company may be the wisest decision. OneIMS is an inbound marketing agency that can help your law firm to grow in ways that may not have previously seemed possible.
With help from OneIMS, your law firm can see growth in visibility on the state, regional, or national scale. Engaging clients and nurturing positive leads is another of the benefits that OneIMS offers clients.
And above all, help from this professional SEO agency will allow your website to not only draw in potential customers, but to convert them into loyal clients.
For more information on how OneIMS can help your law firm, or simply to find out more about effective marketing practices, contact OneIMS or call 1-888-663-4671 today.
