Marketing Tactics For Law Firm Growth
Are you overlooking the power of marketing for your law firm’s growth?
While word of mouth and referrals are valuable, they can only take you so far. Marketing is about actively expanding your reach beyond your immediate circles. It’s important to consistently promote your services to a broader audience if you want to grow.
Without a strategic approach to marketing, you’re missing out on the opportunity to maximize your firm’s potential. Whether you want your marketing efforts to be simple or robust, you must have a strategy. Strategic marketing offers structure. Structure you can optimize and leverage to scale your law firm. Otherwise, you’re just tossing words into the wind.
Let’s dive into some tactics you should consider when it comes to marketing and how it can benefit your law practice.
Design Your Ideal Client
Who exactly is your ideal client?
Answering this question in detail lays the foundation of your marketing strategy. Without a clear understanding of your target audience, your message risks getting lost in the noise.
You must get specific. If you’re a family law attorney, consider whether your ideal client is a divorcee seeking custody or a couple looking to adopt. For estate and probate lawyers, your ideal client may be an adult trying to protect their assets for their family. But get more specific: Who are they? What are their demographics, interests, and pain points?
The more precise your ideal client profile, the better you can tailor your marketing efforts to resonate with them.
On the contrary, the more vague you are about your ideal client, the more inquiries you’ll have to filter out that aren’t a fit for the legal services you offer, which wastes time and resources.
Research Your Target Audience
After defining your ideal client, the next step is to delve into researching your target audience.
This step is crucial to understanding what will attract your audience to your content and convert them into a client.
Whether you intend to focus on one platform or expand across multiple channels, you need to know where your ideal client spends the most time online. This knowledge can provide valuable insights.
Performing market and consumer research on your target audience can help you:
- Gain a better understanding of what type of content they enjoy.
- Understand what they would find most relatable.
- Determine which topics and information they find valuable.
- Address their pain points and concerns.
- Educate them on common misconceptions or publicized misinformation.
These insights will empower you to strategize and implement an effective marketing strategy that will speak to your target audience, encourage engagement with your content, and highlight your professionalism and expertise. This approach will help ensure that your law firm remains top-of-mind when potential clients require legal services. So don’t underestimate this vital step.
Harness the Power of a Website
Opportunities are everywhere, especially when it comes to people in need of legal services. If you don’t have a website for your law practice, you are depriving your business of towering growth opportunities.
Your website doesn’t have to be complex or cost thousands of dollars to be effective. With a plethora of user-friendly tools and resources available, building and designing a website has never been easier. If technology isn’t your forte, outsourcing is a viable option. Whether you opt for a custom-built site by professionals or a more budget-friendly solution, there are ample resources at your disposal.
Platforms like Fiverr offer access to skilled professionals for various tasks, from website design to content creation. There are also groups within social media platforms, like LinkedIn, where you can find outsourcing opportunities.
Your website is like a digital headquarters for your law firm where you can showcase your legal services and expertise. It can be thought of as a centralized hub where potential clients can find you.
Drive Social Media Engagement
Use social media as a channel to communicate with your ideal client. If they were watching or listening, what would they want to hear? What would you want to share with them to verify your authority in the legal field and provide them comfort in your knowledge and abilities?
Share content that your audience will find valuable, relatable, and memorable. Providing content that resonates with your audience and ideal clients will enhance engagement and leave a lasting impression.
There are many social media platforms available: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), Pinterest, YouTube, and more. They are each one in their own yet so similar, which gives you two options:
- Register for all the platforms and post your content the same across the board.
- Focus on one platform and fully commit to it.
Option 1 broadens your reach but may require some customization for platform-specific formats.
Option 2 demands focused research. Concentrating on one platform allows for a deeper understanding of your audience and its algorithm. However, ensure your target audience is active on that platform before committing.
Social media success is a long-term endeavor. You won’t get 100,000 subscribers and 1 million likes overnight. It requires work, dedication, and consistency to yield results over time.
Content & Email Marketing
Now that you have established yourself through social media by creating valuable content, it’s time to start utilizing this content in other marketing campaigns. Compile your most valuable blog posts, articles, infographics, and videos to turn into email marketing campaigns or a newsletter.
Email marketing is a good way to increase brand awareness, nurture potential clients through their buying journey, and drive conversions. It keeps you top-of-mind with your audience and can expand your reach as readers forward your email full of useful content.
Build and maintain an email list of clients, prospects, and referrals. Downloadable resources and gated content are great ways to capture emails of prospective clients. Just remember, emailing should be a value-added activity, not a sales pitch.
Networking and Referrals
Cultivating relationships with other professionals can reap great rewards for all parties. By building a network of other attorneys, accountants, real estate agents, etc., you create a rolodex of trusted referral opportunities that swings both ways. Referrals from trusted sources can significantly expand your client base. Networking and referrals create a symbiotic relationship where each party gains new clients and strengthens their professional network.
This is a simple, fun, and cost-effective marketing tactic all professionals should leverage. We encourage you to strengthen your network by engaging in networking events, joining professional associations, or establishing referral agreements with trusted partners.
Showcase Your Expertise
Demonstrate your expertise by hosting webinars or workshops on legal topics relevant to your area of practice.
Webinars can be effectively repurposed in various ways. Break them up into bite-sized clips to share across social media or transform them into a multi-part course.
You can also host recorded webinars on your website, offering them as on-demand content in exchange for a name and email address, thereby expanding your email marketing list.
If you are not ready to do such a standalone project yourself, engage in other professionals’ or company’s projects. You can publish articles in legal journals, participate in other webinars or podcasts, or speak at conferences to establish yourself as a thought leader in your practice area.
Leverage Local SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a commonly used strategy that can be both simple and complex at the same time. In short, SEO helps search engines understand your content and helps users find your site. Local SEO helps your business be more visible in local search results.
Optimize your website for local searches by including location-specific keywords or local images with alternate text attached to them. Create a Google My Business profile and start obtaining client reviews. Having your law firm on the map improves local visibility and helps potential clients find you.
Optimize Your Online Listings
The resources are out there, and your ideal clients are using them. So why aren’t you?
List your law firm on legal directories such as Avvo, Martindale, Justia, FindLaw, Super Lawyers, etc. Being listed will improve your online visibility and help someone find you. Some of these sites allow for client reviews and colleague endorsements. Potential clients read these reviews and comments when considering your law firm for their legal needs.
Don’t let your listings become outdated and jeopardize your credibility. Keep your information up to date. Consider making it part of your standard operating procedure to update listings when something changes in your law firm.
Paid Advertising for Your Firm
Paid advertising can be costly, but it can also give you a great return on that investment.
There is a multitude of online options available for paid advertising. You not only have platforms like Google Ads or Bing, but you now have the ability to run paid ads or “boost” content on all the social media platforms. When running online ads, you can create a target audience to match your ideal client. This allows you to reach a market quickly and can give you the boost you need as you play the long game with website SEO and social media.
If you are hesitant to dive into paid advertising, start with a small budget. Many platforms offer reasonable daily spending caps, allowing smaller businesses to advertise without exceeding a budget of $15 a day.
Budgeting Basics
Budgeting for your marketing efforts doesn’t have to be costly or complicated. There are many cost-effective methods to market your law practice. However, some methods are worth investing in if you aspire to grow or scale your practice. Consider allocating 7-8% of your gross revenue toward marketing efforts aligned with your goals.
Whether your investment is large or small, regularly tracking the return on investment (ROI) is essential to ensure your efforts yield results. Monitoring data empowers you to make critical decisions, such as pivoting efforts or going all-in on a campaign idea.
Wrapping up
Start implementing these tactics to effectively market your law firm. There are many different avenues when it comes to marketing, so make sure you start by identifying your ideal client and thoroughly researching your target audience. Begin your journey with more cost-effective methods like creating valuable content, engaging on social media, and networking. Showcasing your expertise and obtaining positive client testimonials are great ways to establish your law firm’s credibility.
Having a website is becoming increasingly important so you can reach your intended audience. While using SEO and online optimization can be complex, learning in manageable steps will boost your online presence.
If you just can’t find the time, outsourcing marketing can be a beneficial option. This will allow you to learn from experts and reduce stress, positioning you to manage marketing in-house eventually. Whether you are implementing these tactics or working with an outside source, remember monitoring and adapting your strategies is essential for long-term success.
More Resources:
Getting Them in the Door – 12 Marketing Ideas
Marketing Tools to Build Your Law Practice
PPC for Law Firms – Getting Started with Google Ads
