Ben Paul, Director & Founder of The BD Ladder continues his series on Marketing for Lawyers. In Part 2, he highlights 5 practical ways to effectively promote your law firm. Follow the series here.
The basics of marketing for law firms have been in place for many years. While there are new marketing trends that are always worth tracking, the main key to the successful promotion of a law firm is to commit to delivering key activities, to ensure they are repeatable (the processes at least), and that you are, above all else, consistent with your messages and consistent with your frequency of delivery.
To help you with this below are 5 practical things you can implement and follow to ensure your law firm’s brand, and its people, are well known in the marketplace.
1. Build, Develop and Invest in your firm’s brand
It may feel like this is a ‘non-essential’ cost to many law firms. Most people will be aware of your firm’s name and what you do, so why should your firm start spending on branding and advertising?
However, does the market really know who you are, and what makes you different from the firm next door or down the road? In some cases, true differentiation may be difficult, however, think about your firms’ strengths or highlights. What are you renowned for? Which markets do you work in? I’d also urge you to consider your social good or pro bono schemes, and consider how these link into your brand story, and also how they are relevant to your clients.
Once you understand this, it pays to start investing in advertising and content marketing to promote your brand, and your people. The simplest part of brand recognition is familiarity, which means the more times people see your brand, the more comfortable they may be in considering you. In the digital age you can over do this, people may switch off if every time they view a website or social media platform, they see your advert. So, make sure the settings on your adverts are set appropriately, and adjusted when necessary.
2. Decide which channels-to-market you use.
Many legal firms are looking at investing in digital marketing, and certainly in overseas law firms of any size, you will find that most have a social media marketing manager. The reason is simple, this is an affordable and great platform to generate engagement with your audience.
However, not all social media platforms are equal. It may be tempting to generate a lot of likes or follows on Facebook for a very small budget, but if you’re a Corporate and Commercial lawyer, do you really believe your potential purchasers are looking for your services on this platform? On the other hand, if you’re a relationship and family lawyer, then Facebook advertising will make sense. For many others, LinkedIn will make more sense. This is, after all, where the business community hangs out online. However, it is more likely that they will respond to great content and thought leadership pieces over plain adverts. You’ll need an appropriate mix of both.
3. Provide articles with useful advice
You may well be doing this already. More than ever though, this will be really appreciated. Your clients want to read practical articles that provide them with something useful. This means that on reading it, they can take an idea from it and meaningfully use it in their business. I’m not recommending you give away your IP, or unique technical brilliance, but instead something practical linked to the services you provide.
If you really want this to have an impact, then, where relevant, get commentary from other experts, advisors, or even your clients in this sector. People engage more with content from a range of experts and perspectives.
4. Have a 12-month webinar programme
During the lockdown many people will have run successful webinar programmes, I’d urge you to keep doing this. In most cases they are marketing gold. Firstly, you get a captive audience, with numbers higher than most seminar rooms can hold. Secondly, you are not limited by your physical location, so your geographic outreach is wider. Finally, with most of the webinar technology available, you can record your own webinars. This means you can send recordings to those who missed it, and post the videos to your website and ideally your YouTube channel.
As a final point on this, on some webinar platforms, or even some CRMs linked to them, you can also issue attendance certificates, which is great for CPD.
5. Invest in content video marketing
The paragraph above gives you one simple idea on how you can produce video content via your webinar recordings. I also mentioned above that it is a good idea to use YouTube to host your videos. The reason for this is simple, putting videos here can work well with your SEO (search engine optimisation) strategies. Of all the video hosting platforms, YouTube is thought to be the best to use for this purpose.
Now is a good time to think about how you could get your message out using video. With more people working at home, the advantage of video is that it can help personalise your message. You, talking to your clients and intended target audience by its very nature is a much more personalised experience for your audience.
Summary
While the above is not an exhaustive list, the five areas we focused on, if executed well, will help you to effectively promote your firm. Marketing creates a platform for client interaction, whether that is online meetings, phone calls or traditional face-to-face meetings. It is in these conversation that relationships strengthen and deals are closed. Marketing is an important part of how buyers inform themselves and make decisions on who to meet with, early in their buying process. Use the five tips above to stay relevant, and to position your firm to be one that emerges in a strong position.
Ben Paul is the founder of The BD Ladder, a BD and marketing consultancy specialising in providing practical advice to lawyers and professional services firms. He has over 20 years’ experience in providing sales and marketing advice. He has worked in BD roles in several professional services and law firms. Prior to establishing The BD Ladder, he was the BD & Marketing Director at one of NZ’s leading law firms and oversaw their successful rebranding to Dentons Kensington Swan. Ben provides regular BD coaching and skills sessions to his clients which help them to grow their practices. One of his key strengths is that he brings active change to the way things are done, so that his clients can achieve the results that they aspire to. Connect with Ben via LinkedIn
