Benjamin Franklin stated, " If you fail to plan and you are planning to fail." Lawyers who don't develop marketing plans are indeed setting themselves up for lackluster growth and shrinking revenue.
Who are you? In what areas do you specialize? Do you have satisfied clients? What makes your law firm unique?
These are all questions prospective clients are asking. Can they hear and see your responses? If you're not responding, another law firm will.
So, where are these clients, and how do you position your law firm as the best option? Whereas billboards, tv ads, and community events were once the best way to meet and engage audiences, those strategies have shrunk in favor of new ones. People are online today - and a robust digital presence is necessary for engaging 21st-century clients.
We'll show you how to attract, engage, and delight audiences by creating a diverse, digitally-savvy marketing plan. The results will produce more law firm interest and happier clients - ones who will continue feeding your customer pipeline long after you settle their case.
Why Use Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a modern approach to engaging a modern consumer. It embodies the idea that customers want to engage with businesses they have a relationship with. Offer the opportunity to get to know your customers, and they will want to get to know you. In turn, you ensure you spend precious time and money interacting with the right audience, resulting in meaningful interactions. Customers will trust your organization to solve their immediate needs, as well as future ones.
In addition, inbound marketing is a proven MIT-backed methodology that helps companies attract the right kind of visitors, convert them into leads, then close them as customers.
The inbound approach will take planning and patience, but the results speak for themselves. It's no wonder law firms across the globe are trying a strategy rooted in research and continually strengthened by annual marketing effectiveness reports.
Take a look at just a few of our firm's success stories in developing marketing strategies for law firms:
What You're Currently Missing
Running a law firm is a demanding task. As a business owner and attorney, you're not only responsible for your clients' legal challenges, but also for running a profitable and self-sustaining practice.
Having worked with many attorneys over the years, we've found that law firms often have a tough time generating quality online leads and converting them into customers. We live in a digital world, and technology is continually changing. This reality means you're marketing strategies need change to as well.
It's essential to use new tools and approaches to automate and streamline your lawyer marketing. This adoption will save you time and generate more revenue for your firm. Additions to your marketing strategy in 2020 should include:
Business Development Basics
According to a research study conducted by Bloomberg Law and the Legal Marketing Association, "67% of attorneys and marketing and business development professionals agree that their law firm is increasing its emphasis on business development and marketing efforts."
When adopting an inbound approach to lawyer marketing, it is incredibly important to first focus on aligning what YOU want to accomplish. Whether you're using an in-house team or hiring an outside group, there needs to be clarity on business development goals.
Some critical areas you'll need to plan out include:
Developing Buyer Personas
Now that you've learned about the basics of inbound marketing and begun the process of developing a healthy business growth plan, it's time to identify your target audience.
Creating digital content and throwing into the Internet void is a quick way to drain resources and discourage your marketing efforts. You have a fantastic law firm, but it's not for everyone. It would be best if you spent time placing yourself in front of an audience with the HIGHEST chance of becoming interested in your services. This approach relies on developing what is known as buyer personas.
What are buyer personas? These studies (also called customer profiles) are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They embody all the information you need to know how to reach a specific type of consumer honestly. In short, they help you understand your audience.
This persona will drive how you create your content, the products you create, your sales strategies, and any other function that relates to attracting and retaining customers. Don't worry, however. Creating a buyer persona is easier than it sounds! Here are the necessary steps to creating your first buyer persona:
Research your existing contacts database
Begin your information quest by sifting through your current contacts database to find any trends about how past leads or customers find and consume your content (blog posts, social media posts, downloadable guides, paid ads).
.png)
Talk to Your In-House Team(s)
Sometimes the best way to find out about a horse is to go straight to the horse's mouth! You'd be surprised how much insight your existing employees have on customer data and trends. So gather and use that information!
.png)
Create Opportunities for Customer Feedback
The most effective way to do this is by conducting interviews. You won't find a better way to identify your target audience's backgrounds and behaviors. Begin by interviewing existing customers, then attempt to interview some potential candidates. Finally, look into using other options, such as interviewing personal referrals or social media audiences for feedback.
Once you've completed the data-gathering process, it's time to take all that feedback and look for patterns and trends. Your goal is to create at least one buyer persona from the information you synthesize.
By taking the time to understand who your buyer is, you're not just wasting money and resources trying to attract the wrong people! While it may be time-consuming at first, creating buyer personas as a beginning step in your inbound journey is a smart investment to make.
Learn more about creating buyer personas and download a FREE template by visiting our blog post: How to Build Effective Buyer Personas.
.png)
Optimizing Your Website
Creating a website for your solo practice or growing law firm is an essential foundational marketing step. The key to continual client growth is placing yourself where the customer is, meaning a digital presence is a necessity. This idea embodies the inbound philosophy.
While establishing that online presence is an essential first step in any law firm marketing plan, continually optimizing your site to attract, engage, and delight audiences are just as important.
Ask yourself three questions about your current law firm's website:
Law Firm-Focused Advertising Strategies
Any comprehensive lawyer marketing plan needs to include an advertising strategy. The proven method to attract, engage, and delight audiences are through inbound marketing, and digital advertising has become a precise means to place yourself in front of the right customer.
Gone are the days or untargeted ads landing in front of Internet users. Using the right outreach tools can turn digital advertising into a powerful arm of your overall marketing strategy.
There are so many different platforms to choose from when it comes to digital advertising; it can be hard to know where to invest. Using a combination of cost control and return on investment, we recommend using the following strategies to advertise your law firm online:
Starting a Blog
Blogs are so 2010. Or are they? While the term may seem relegated to a bygone era, blogging is alive and well. Most importantly, it's still a beneficial tool in your lawyer marketing strategy.
If your website doesn't feature a blog, we'll lay out why you need to start one and how to best optimize it to increase your client pipeline.
Blogging is vital to the growth of your business for three reasons:
Email Marketing
How prevalent is email usage in 2019? Have more modern communication methods eclipsed this medium? Is email even worth the marketing investment?
In short, yes! Email is still relevant. Let's look at some statistics to clarify. According to a 2019 study on email marketing from Hubspot:
- More than 50% of U.S. respondents check their email account more than ten times a day.
- There are about 5.6 billion active email accounts across the globe. "Active" refers to accounts accessed at least once daily.
Newsletters aren't a medium solely for older generations, either. According to this same Hubspot study:
- 73% of millennials prefer communication from businesses to come via email.
In terms of dollars and cents, email marketing is a strategy where law firms should invest. Email generates $38 for every $1 spent, providing you with a 3,800% ROI.
That, by far, makes email one of the most effective options in your marketing toolkit.
Today's issue for audiences isn't the number of emails - it's quality! There are so many emails in our inbox on a daily basis, and it can be overwhelming to sort through. You need to stand out from the crowd for an email to catch the reader's eye. Provide value, and you won't end up in the spam folder.
In order to provide value to your readers on a consistent basis, actively utilize the following practices for EVERY email newsletter:3
Video Marketing
Video content has become the premier medium for engaging with today's consumer. Google reports that 6 out of 10 people would rather watch online videos than television.
In addition, research firm Comscore reports than 85% of people in the U.S. watch videos online. Of that, over half of video content is viewed on mobile!
YouTube, the most visited site on the Internet, has over a billion registered users - almost one-third of all people on the internet!
Consumers are spending less time in front of televisions and more time online. It only makes sense to invest in advertising where the viewers are - and it’s increasingly not in front of the television.
Jumpstarting your video marketing efforts can be done more quickly than you might imagine -and with price tag every accountant will love. Just keep in mind the following tips when planning out a roadmap to creating video content:
Revitalizing Your In-Person Events
As we've discussed in-depth already, as customers spend the majority of our days online. Whether it's browsing on a mobile device, working in front of a laptop, or using a smart tv at home, we remain plugged in for the majority of our daily activities.
This constant reliance on the Internet has come to impact every aspect of 21st-century life - from socialization to purchasing our products. Undoubtedly, it affects how businesses attract, engage, and delight customers too.
So in an age of digital marketing, is there still a place for gathering leads and building customer relationships offline, face to face? Not only is this lawyer marketing strategy still useful, but it could also be the secret formula for success against your competition.
We've discussed digital approaches to marketing your law firm thus far, but let's take a step and look at reasons why you still need to keep an in-person presence as part of your playbook.
Recording Podcasts
While billboards, TV commercials, and newspaper ads have been traditional means of growth, today’s consumer is different - more focused on an approach less intrusive and more helpful in nature. Like we discussed in the video marketing section, audience locations have changed. TV and radio aren't as impactful as they once were. In the same way people have shifted to online video, we're seeing the same trend in the popularity of podcasts.
So how are podcasts different from radio? To put it simply, this medium uses the same concept, but broadcasts shows to an audience using the Internet
- Episodes are pre-recorded allowing listeners to tune in on their schedules. Content can be consumed during a lunch break, on a drive home from work, while cooking dinner, or relaxing in bed before going to sleep.
- Podcasts can be tagged with keywords to allow for them to show up in user searches on search engines. This means targeted customers come to you - not the other way around!
- Listeners can pause, rewind, fast-forward, and download podcasts for later listening. With one button, podcasts can be shared with friends, family, or coworkers as well!
Is podcasting worth your time? Absolutely! Just look at these statistics:
Using CRM Software
A client relationship manager (CRM) is one of those pieces of software that may seem clunky and not worth your time at first. But the right CRM can mean the difference between a stellar client pipeline and a lackluster one. CRMs are repositories of information about both prospective clients as well as current clients. These programs manage data collected throughout the client engagement process, from initial an initial consultation to signing a contract.
We currently use Hubspot with every client we work with. As several of our clients are attorneys, we have experience in showing you how to onboard and customize the HubSpot CRM for Law Firms.
Our clients mainly use the HubSpot CRM for:
- Organizing contacts.
- Logging website visitor activity automatically.
- Viewing every interactions with a prospect and customer.
So why use Hubspot?
- It's simple to use.
- It always skyrockets marketing and sales results.
- It provides a way for you to measure marketing success.
- It provides one source of information containing contacts and prospective clients for every staff member.
Whether you are looking to organize your firm's contacts, improve efficiency, or manage the business development activities of your associates, the HubSpot CRM is an excellent platform that is built to aide your growth.
Learn more about how a CRM can help your business and see the software in action by visiting our blog post: Customizing the Hubspot CRM for Law Firms.
Continuing Your Marketing Success
Even if time is tight and resources are slim, take the time to build and grow your law firm consistently. Using the above-outlined ideas in your law firm marketing plan will produce results - because they have for others!
If you're looking to partner with an experienced, friendly and results-driven team to help your law firm's growth, check out Rizen Inbound.
We're a gold-tier, Hubspot-certified inbound marketing firm focused on removing the mystery of marketing and replacing it with cold hard numbers.
Our happy clients include law firms from a wide array of specialty areas. Just look at the results we've achieved for the attorneys at Trust Counsel and Loigica.
Learn more about marketing your law firm by checking out our blog just for legal professionals. You can also follow our adventures on social media. We're active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Connect with us in the car or while cooking dinner by checking out our "Inbound Academy" podcast. We publish a new episode every week, always filled with advice that will help you grow your business using inbound marketing.
Contact us today to begin a conversation. We can't wait to hear from you!
Social Media Strategies
Have you taken time to establish a presence on social media? If the answer is "no" you're missing out on a powerful source of attracting and engaging new and existing customers.
Your law firm should be active on the main platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Using these services effectively takes strategy and practice.
Which social media sites should you be using? Our advice is to choose a handful of services that your target audience uses most (remember the buyer personas?). Thanks to several research studies by large organizations, we can effectively discover which platforms are popular with certain pockets of the population. For example:
Once you choose 1-2 social media platforms, make it a priority to actively engage with your audience. Be where they are. Provide value. Create relationships. If someone is looking for an answer, be the best source of information.
Some our best practice suggestions for using social media effectively include:strong>
Law firms can continually attract new leads and secure clients by putting themselves where the customer goes - and social media undoubtedly where today's customers spend a large amount of time. Make a commitment to starting or growing your social media presence today - even if it's just a small step forward. Your efforts will yield results!
Learn more about how law firms can use social media effectively AND download a free social media calendar template by visting our awesome blog post entitled: Social Media Best Practices for Lawyers.