Why Do So Few Law Firms Have a Marketing Strategy?
Legal services are always in demand, but the market is oversaturated by firms that make considerable income and attract big clients.
That’s why starting or growing a legal practice requires a detailed marketing plan that will help your firm get noticed. Below Helen Cox, a highly-experienced, CIM-qualified (Chartered Institute of Marketing) marketing consultant with MCIM status, discusses the potential law firms have when adopting a marketing strategy.
Earning a spot on the UK’s Top 100 largest UK-based Law Firms list takes years of constant growth, but each journey starts with small and simple steps. Defining the marketing strategy is probably one of the most important things you can do to ensure that the number of clients your firm is representing keeps growing.
Choosing the right marketing strategy for a law firm
Relying solely on referrals and word to mouth marketing, like a surprisingly high number of law firms in the UK do, is not enough to remain competitive on a market dominated by firms that earn hundreds of millions of pounds each year. Furthermore, law firms are often inconsistent in their marketing strategies, which results in an uneven stream of clients over the course of the year.
Knowing who your ideal client is, can help you tailor a marketing strategy that will attract the people who need the services your firm offers. By understanding who they are, what their pain points are and the types of marketing channels they will be using is going to be the main fuel to drive your marketing plan. If you don’t do this exercise you could fail at the first marketing planning hurdle.
Both offline and online marketing strategies have their advantages, and the trick is to make the most of them. Many people go straight for online but when it comes to law firms it’s about building trust and a long term relationship. For instance, attending local networking events can potentially help you meet new clients, but also you should have a website that is SEO optimised can help the clients find you. Choosing just one approach, and neglecting the other will reduce your chances of expanding your business. Instead, you should take every opportunity you get to make your legal practice more accessible to new clients. It’s all about having the right balance of marketing activity.
Defining the online identity
A website is the cornerstone of all online marketing strategies, which is the reason why it has to be structured carefully. The information about the services a law firm offers as well as short biographies of each member of your team have to be easily accessible to the first-time visitors, while examples of previous work should also be available in just a few clicks. Testimonials offer a convenient way to convey the experiences of previous clients to the new ones, and using them on your website can help you create a bond with the website’s visitors.
Embedding a video on the website’s home page may improve its SEO rankings and increase conversion rates at the same time. That’s why a lot of law firms use video content to present their services to clients. However, including too much information about your firm can have a negative effect, since the visitors of your website don’t have the time to read unimportant details about your practice. Striking a balance between too little and too much information may require some time, but it will eventually pay off.
SEO website optimization can play a large role in the process of establishing a law firm’s online presence, as it can potentially increase the website’s SEO ranking. Selecting unique keywords that are relevant for your legal practice is a sure way to improve the traffic on your website. You should also be thinking about local SEO by including the locality of where you work too for people that are looking for law firms in their area. Once you set up a website properly you can start employing online marketing techniques that will broaden the pool of your potential clients.
Set your marketing goals and make them happen
A continuous, and systematic effort to maintain the financial growth of your law firm will produce results sooner or later. The important part is to be patient and to resume executing your marketing strategy, even when new clients start coming in. Building a law firm’s public image takes a lot of time, and failing to pay attention to it can be a costly mistake.
Good article Helen. What I’ve found too often with law firms is that they fail to differentiate themselves from the competition. They fail to communicate their unique value proposition: what it is about their firm, what it is about themselves, that sets them apart from the crowd. By doing that they can become the obvious choice. A company video, of course, is a great way to deliver this message.