Law Firm Marketing Defined
In the legal profession, marketing often takes a back seat to the practice of law itself. This is counterintuitive. Without clients there is no practice, and in order to get clients your law firm must have an effective law firm marketing plan. This is where you must spend time and resources to ensure that your company not only survives but thrives.
Legal marketing is different than other types of marketing in some important ways. First and foremost, you’re not trying to sell a product or a service. While it may seem like that’s what services law firms provide, offering legal advice is really the product all firms are selling. This nuance is unique to legal marketing and requires a different approach.
Another consequence of this nuance is that competition is different too . While you do compete with other law firms, you more directly compete with yourself. What this means is that each and every time you meet with a new client, you have to reestablish yourself as the premier provider of the legal services they need. You always have to prove that you’re better than other attorneys within the law firm you operate.
The objective for your law firm marketing plan should be the same as your personal and professional objectives. Many objectives fall into four basic categories. These include:
Having objectives allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to achieve a specific result. At the same time, it ensures that your objectives remain aligned with your personal and professional objectives.
Components of a Marketing Plan
The crux of any business, including law firms, is how to attract more clients. The goal is to focus your attention on the reward to your firm for a little money and time spent. This post lists the elements that should be included in your firm’s marketing plan. These basics will help you create an effective "Create Your Own Law Firm Marketing Plan PDF".
- Target Audience-A target audience identifies the demographic group you are trying to reach. You may find it beneficial to have several different target audiences. Your target audience will drive many aspects of your marketing plan including where you place your ads, what location to have your firm’s events and possibly how your firm’s website is laid out.
- Competition-Understanding your competition is an important part of developing a successful marketing plan. You can learn why potential customers may choose your competition over your law firm. This knowledge will help you create a more effective marketing strategy.
- Marketing Strategies-This is where you articulate how you plan on reaching your target audiences. It covers the what, when and how much as well as other information. Consider how you will use your website, social media, email marketing, direct mail, public relations, paid advertising, high visibility events and promotions. Don’t forget your existing clients. They are important when it comes to cross-selling and repeat sales.
- Budget-In order to maximize the return on investment on your marketing you will want to carefully set a budget. This line item drives what type of marketing strategy you should be using and how far you can expand your reach.
- Included in your plan should be a list of the metrics you will use to measure the success of the marketing strategies. Everything from calls received to sales generated.
Craft a Law Firm Marketing PDF
Creating a Law Firm Marketing PDF And How to Formulate Your Law Firm Marketing Plan Online
In our world today, many articles are produced for the web. You read over information and it is gone. Your purchase orders are sent online and tomorrow they are hard to find. When I saw that I would be interviewing the author of 33 Days Marketing for attorneys, I went into action and started to assemble my Law Firm Marketing Plan in PDF format.
Unless you are like me, you probably are wondering – why would I need it in a PDF format? The answer is simple. The benefits of using a PDF format are:
o PDFs can be opened and read on any device – mobile or otherwise.
o It has the added benefit of being password protected.
o You can view any PDF using a free program (Adobe’s is free).
o PDF’s can be merged or disbursed easily.
It was a snap to pull all of my Law Firm Marketing along with my other marketing documents together to formulate a PDF. By using cut and paste from my Word document, I merged documents. This became very easy once I used Adobe Acrobat and for the most part, their instructions are self-explanatory. The software really works well.
If you involve others in your plan, it is a lot easier to just send one email and have everyone open the same document. This is particularly helpful with people who work "off site."
No matter the case, you should try putting your law firm marketing plan together in this fashion. You won’t regret it.
Online Marketing
The digital landscape offers a variety of effective methods for increasing brand awareness and engaging potential clients. While the tools are numerous and ever-changing, they range from search engine optimization (SEO) to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to social platforms like LinkedIn to email marketing. As with print or broadcast media, to get the best results from your digital efforts you need to develop a strategy for your law firm marketing plan PDF that focuses on your goals, and what you know are your key prospects and targets . SEO involves developing an effective content strategy that creates well-written, unique, keyword-focused content that is optimized for Google and other major search engines. With PPC (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc.), you can create ads and set a budget to appear to the prospects you want to reach. Social media platforms offer opportunities to engage and build relationships with your target audiences. While there is still a place for print advertising and traditional media such as television commercials and radio spots, the new opportunities for digital advertising and online lead generation have made it essential for you to hand these responsibilities to someone you trust, with verifiable results.
How to Measure Success
Measuring Success: Tools and Metrics for Law Firm Marketing
Since my prior blog post on Getting Started with Your Law Firm Marketing Plan made it fairly clear that you need to set the right law firm marketing goals, it makes sense that the next natural step is to consider the best way to measure how well you are doing. One of the challenges is that with so many measuring tools available to law firms we are often challenged with looking at the right ones. The starting point is simple – track your numbers – all of them. This is a little more involved and typically involves the use of free tools that the top web analytic tools that I am referring to are Google Analytics and the Space Age Social Marketing Toolkit. These two tools provide comprehensive metrics of website and social media activity. With measuring analytics it is easy to track your progress from any marketing activity including pay-per-click advertising and search engine rankings. Google Analytics maps how visitors navigate your website, showing you what information people are seeking. There is a great deal of data available as well as the ability to integrate tracking from other sources. Analytics can help you increase your website conversion rate so you can determine how quickly you are growing your legal practice. It is also useful to view other analytics to determine how well you are building your reputation as a law firm and whether people are speaking highly of you. You will want to track your clients to determine the strength of your relationship with them. If a client talks about a lawyer and mentions your law firm name, this is a good sign. Also, try to find out if you are being recommended to a new business. If so, then you know you are heading in the good direction.
The Plan Must Evolve
An effective law firm marketing plan is rarely a one-time proposition. Most successful lawyers will tell you that part of the magic of successful law firm growth is "repeating and refining." It’s important to review your plan regularly – at least once per year – and make adjustments to reflect the changes that have occurred. In the ever-changing world of legal marketing, it’s also important to stay abreast of emerging trends and best practices. That means you need to allocate some time to updating your knowledge about how legal marketing is evolving. Browsing blogs, subscribing to email newsletters , or attending the occasional legal marketing seminar will help keep you in the know. Also pay attention to the feedback you get from existing clients and referral sources and on new plans that are gaining traction in your competitors’ activities. Finally, don’t lose sight of the fact that part of your job as a law firm manager is managing your firm’s marketing plan. Make sure that those responsible for tracking the metrics assigned to your "benchmarks" are doing so and reporting their results to you at least once a month. Ideally you can automate the process and get the information sent to you electronically.