Legal marketing is not about immediately spending thousands of dollars for immediate client calls, or being a charming person who is always outgoing. Legal marketing is something that takes time to grow, must have a solid plan, and must target the audience that needs the service your law firm provides. While it may seem like having a good track record of cases and a detailed knowledge of the law will get the clients to come, they won’t do anything if they are neither informed, or constantly reminded, of your practice.
If you are going to focus on marketing for your law firm, you need to take the internet in account. While many people who need a law firm are going to ask friends and family for a referral, a significant amount of them are going to be doing their research to make sure they are making the right decision. There are also the people who will not know who to ask for a legal referral and naturally will move to search engines like Google for an answer. For you, this means building a website. Not just a website that says who you are and what you do, but a website that is easy to navigate, and one that offer general information that a potential client can use. Examples of this information include focused web pages, newsletters, eBook downloads, videos, avenues that allow you to explain particular facts about your practice area. A website that stays fresh through content updates also has the benefit of being favored by the Google algorithm, and may give you an opportunity to appear higher on search result pages. Again, keep in mind that this process takes time.
Beyond the website for the firm, you need to have an understanding of how your potential clients are looking for what they need. What search terms are they using? How are they navigating your website? Using marketing tools like Google analytics allow you to research these questions in depth so that you can focus your efforts. In general, every legal marketing strategy should have some way of measuring whether or not your plans are working. Doing so let’s you save money by disposing of those that don’t work, while putting more funding on practical plans.
The reality is you must do all this while balancing your business development efforts such as finding new leads, new prospects, and working on current cases. It if it turns out that you may not have the time to do this research, a marketing team can help carry the load and consult you on the right way forward.