So you’re ready to market your law firm? You’re 100% prepared to increase awareness of your practice! You’ve got the budget, the right staff, you’ve got the fortitude, but unfortunately … you have no idea how to get started.
Well, the good news is, there isn’t a magic bullet to marketing and advertising because if there were, everybody would be using it. Thusly, any “magic-bullet-marketing” tactic would cease to be magic because it would be commonplace. This fact brings us to the heart of what effective marketing and advertising mean for your law firm – the goal is to get noticed.
The bad news when it comes to choosing which marketing and advertising strategy is best for your law firm is, and I hear lawyers say this A Lot to their own clients, “it depends.”
As a former law firm marketing director, and now as a content strategist here at Consultwebs, I’ve experienced both sides of the legal marketing dilemma. Here are my five tips on building awareness for your law firm.
1) Discover what your brand is.
Everyone thinks they know what their law firm’s brand is, and I hate to tell you, you probably don’t.
Your brand is not a logo. Your brand is not the slogans you came up with in a meeting with share-holders. Your brand isn’t based on your love of tigers, sharks, or bulldogs, and it isn’t what you “stand for.”
Your actual brand is defined by the client experience at your firm. Your brand is what your clients say about your firm. Every lawyer knows the importance of word-of-mouth referrals. Indeed, they are cited as the number one driver of new business. However, very few lawyers do the necessary work to capture what those mouths are actually saying. Why did they refer you specifically? What was it about the experience at your firm in particular that made the referral feel necessary?
So the answer is easy – ask your clients what makes you special. You can use this handy survey we created for you. And if you think gathering client insight and feedback is a waste of time because a) clients don’t know good lawyering anyway, and/or b) other lawyers aren’t wasting time listening to their clients, you’re not alone.
Check out these polls our legal marketing podcast, LAWsome, asked of legal Twitter….
OK, so over 60% of lawyers polled are not asking for client feedback. This makes sense when you consider that the majority of lawyers don’t think clients know what “good lawyering” actually looks like. So think about this: If the majority of your clients don’t know what good lawyering is, how can “just doing good work” be the answer for increasing word-of-mouth referrals?
How could “good lawyering” be the cornerstone of your law firm’s brand, when clients don’t even know what that looks like? The answer to this is simple – ask your clients what makes you unique, and that’s your brand. Your clients may not know what good lawyering is, but they know what good service is. Collect information on the firm experience and client perception, and build your brand off what attracted your current clients. You’ll be doing what your competitors aren’t, and thusly, you’ll be getting the client referrals that they are missing out on.
Once you have your brand defined from client experience, what do you do with it?
2) Use branding to create memorable and repeatable structures in the minds of your target audience.
Awareness isn’t something that happens overnight, although many digital marketing companies will sell you on the idea of quick, viral success. Say you do pay for traffic, you pay to get to the top of Google, what ad are you serving them? Is it unique to your firm? Does it stand out in a sea of distraction? Does it look like everyone else’s law firm ads?
The number one goal of advertising is to get noticed. But most lawyers and legal marketers think advertising is there to rationally explain why their law firm is the best. So they waste advertising resources on convincing audiences, rather than compelling them.
People are not waiting for an advertisement to show them the benefits of a product or service. They will do all their own research online. So the goal of advertising your law firm is to stand out, be noticed, and encapsulate, in a compelling and attention-grabbing fashion, the way your law firm delivers on its brand promise.
Apart from advertising, one great way to set your law firm apart from the competition online is to invest in Creative Assets for your website: A video game about safe driving for your personal in-jury firm. A visually enhanced collection of highway safety statistics on trucking in your state. An interactive map of your city, listing the locations of all the motor vehicle accidents by type. These are just a few of the creative assets we’ve launched for our law firm clients.
By providing unique and valuable experiences to users, creative assets draw an audience. More eyes on your law firm’s site mean more brand awareness, more potential clients, and more authority for your firm. It separates your law firm from its competitors and helps establish your authority on a given topic. Your firm can become the “go-to” source for certain information.
So be bold. Be creative. And don’t look at your competition for inspiration. Awareness never came from being “industry standard.”
Next Month We Will Cover:
3. Be of the community, not blasting sales messages constantly toward it.
4. Consistency is key.
5. Measure what can be measured, and accept what can’t.
And our conclusion to What I can do to increase awareness for my firm…
