5 Ways To Market Your Law Firm

It may seem like today’s legal market is evolving more quickly than the market of five years ago, ten years ago, or even twenty years ago. If you feel this way about marketing your legal practice — like the market is moving more quickly than you are — I’ve got good news and bad news for you.

The bad news is that five, ten, and twenty years ago, your peers in the legal industry felt the exact same way that you do now. The market is moving quickly, and if you want to establish your practice as one that people recognize — better yet, as one that people recognize and trust — you have to do some fast footwork.

The good news is that you can keep up! Even as your client base is changing, there are a few basic marketing practices that are evergreen – no matter what the climate, they’ll stand strong and tall. With a few tweaks, these age old marketing practices can be adapted to fit the needs of your firm. Add some brand new marketing channels into the mix, and you’ve got a basic plan for how to market your law firm.

You want your clients to see you as someone with a good character, who is willing to help people solve their problems no matter what it takes. Participating in community events, volunteering with local organizations, and supporting other regional endeavors is a great way to show off your worth.

When I say show off, I mean show! Demonstrating your value as a caring and committed individual through action is much more effective than simply stating on your website “We are a law firm full of attorneys who care, and we want to do the best we can for you and your community.” If you really feel that way, prove it!

What area do you specialize in? Customize your community involvement to your legal specialty. For example, if you specialize in automobile accidents, put together a presentation for your local high school’s drivers education class or create ‘safe driving’ stickers to offer to local establishments that serve alcohol. Then, of course, remember to create a press release or blog post about your experience (see tip #4).

The same way you want your home to reflect your personal taste or your attire to reflect your personal style, you want the design elements of your legal practice to represent the personality of your firm.

This means you have to make important design decisions about your company logo, website, email signature, business cards, and office space, all of which could profoundly influence a potential client’s opinion of you and your firm. And yes, you do need to have a logo, website, email signature, and business card if you are planning on marketing your law firm to the modern client. Your own office space is optional, depending on the size of your practice and the needs of your clients.

For example, do you want your practice to appear modern and up to date, or do you want to seem out of touch and disconnected? Small, seemingly insignificant website cues could determine the way your business will be perceived. Difficult navigation, crowded pages, and clip art can make a website look old fashioned, even if it is brand new. Likewise, prominent menus, smart use of white space, and professional photography are marks of professional websites.

As an attorney who has run the gauntlet of undergraduate studies, law school, and professional examinations, you’ve likely earned your spot in various members-only organizations, including, for one, the American Bar Association. Now you have an expansive network of classmates, alumni, and fellow members. Use it to your advantage.

With all the other attorneys you know, many of whom you likely have friendly relations with, you have the essence of a referral network. It’s likely that many of these other attorneys are in practice areas different from your own, and probably even physical locations different from yours. Referrals are beneficial to all parties involved – especially when you think about fee sharing arrangements.

Whether it’s your law school suitemate who opened a product liability firm in Missoula, your best friend from undergrad who sells beaded purses on Etsy, or the new criminal defense attorney in town who you sat next to at a recent ABA seminar, don’t let your relationships flounder. Make sure you regularly keep in touch, whether it’s with a quarterly email or a monthly coffee date. You could wind up with a referral partner, a great friend, or at the very least, someone to say “hi” to every now and again.

Even though you already spend half of your day reading or writing, you’re going to have to do a bit more if you want to have a successful marketing campaign (or, if you have the budget, you can delegate someone to do this and step #5 for you). I’m talking about the ever-essential blogging, guest posting, and PR.

Remember how earlier, I suggested that it’s more important to show that you care than to say that you care? The same thing applies for your expertise. Potential clients won’t be convinced of your expertise if you just tell them that you’re an expert. However, if you show them that you know what you’re talking about by providing them with useful information, they’ll be more likely to remember your name when it comes time for them to seek out expert legal advice.

The more you write, the more people will view you as an expert. Plus — and this is a HUGE plus — the more search engines will remember your name!

Specifically, the more blog posts and articles you publish to your website (assuming they are of high quality and provide value to your visitors), the more pages that are indexed by the major search engines, which increases the chance that you’ll rank for industry-specific key phrases that you incorporate into your writing. This of course results in more targeted traffic, leads, and clients.

Furthermore, the more you blog about your area of expertise, the more authoritative and resourceful your site becomes. In addition to providing the search engines with more indexed pages and more opportunities to rank for important key phrases, lots of quality content increases the probability that other websites will link to pages on your firm’s website. Such backlinks have a positive impact on your site’s overall SEO and rankings in the search results.

I’m talking about your social media life, of course. You may not like it for a variety of reasons — it can be difficult to learn, it can be time-consuming, it can be flat out annoying — but having a social media presence can greatly benefit your law practice. Especially when you consider the different uses for different social media sites.

LinkedIn, known as the professional social network, is a great platform for attorneys to network with other attorneys or learn about the latest industry trends, without getting bogged down by the “fluff” that often accompanies social networks. LinkedIn’s newsfeed is primarily filled with news and industry articles, because those who post on LinkedIn are doing so with their professional reputation in mind. LinkedIn also houses industry-specific groups, which are moderated by group members. You’ll have no trouble finding a group – or many groups – intended for attorneys who practice within your specialty.

Social media is much more than just a tool for networking — it’s great for displaying information in an eye-catching manner. From a marketing standpoint, SlideShare and YouTube are great tools for the attorney who is interested in educating an audience and wants to go beyond the blog post. SlideShare, as the name implies, allows you to create shareable slideshows. YouTube is great for attorneys who are better speakers than they are writers.

Most social media tools can be used together, in some combination or another. For example, a presentation created on SlideShare, which used a few infographics created on Canva, can be converted into a video and then posted to YouTube. Then, that video can be embedded into a blog post (which is sometimes considered a form of social media), and distributed via an email newsletter and a series of posts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. The possibilities are endless.

You know all the steps required to successfully market your law firm – now start making your plan!

Photo Credit:  Kwak Law Firm by  Brad Clinesmith

Written by Shayna Keyles, edited by David Smethie.