An attorney with impressive legal skills won’t always have the most clients. Talented law firms with proficient expertise will still need a successful marketing plan to convert leads. It’s not unusual for attorneys to fall short when it comes to marketing effectiveness. They may rely on word-of-mouth or reputation alone to attract clients, which often severely limits their potential. Some may not have the online presence needed to target their main audience. There are a few common pitfalls that you’ll want to avoid as an attorney starting a marketing campaign in order to guarantee steady growth.
Relying Solely on Word-of-Mouth
Client recommendations are an excellent form of marketing, but they shouldn’t be your only strategy. Word-of-mouth works well for those with a strong reputation, but this tactic alone limits your reach. You will want to balance marketing strategies to maximize your reach. Tap into the potential of online lead generation with digital marketing. Advertise your services in your local community. Overly relying on one type of marketing, especially word-of-mouth referrals, will keep your law firm from growing.
Little or Insufficient Online Presence
In the modern world, those who need legal help are more likely to search for it online. If your law firm isn’t an established presence there, you’re missing out on a ton of clients. Even if you have built a strong reputation in your community, you can gain an even stronger client reach when you tap into online spaces. Establish an attractive, legible, and responsive website that helps visitors learn about your area of practice as well as your law firm. Create social media profiles and update them regularly to create a well-informed audience that relies on your content. Ensure you have updated your online listings, such as your Google business profile, so clients know where you are, what others have said about you, and how to access your services.
Ignoring Content Marketing
In the digital marketing world, content marketing refers to the creation and posting of articles, blogs, videos, and other “content” that helps create awareness around the issues your brand or business is solving. For attorneys, content marketing involves creating resources that help audiences understand the law or their rights surrounding a particular issue or incident. Prospective clients will often use search engines to look up legal resources for their circumstances. For example, a personal injury client may look up, “What are my legal options after a car accident?” Personal injury firms can answer queries like these by creating content and using relevant keywords and keyphrases to draw in these audiences on search engines, known as search engine optimization (SEO). Using common keywords such as “car accident laws” or “workplace injury liability” is how SEO can help personal injury lawyers draw in their target audience. When you tailor your content and target common keywords involving your legal area of practice, you can generate leads more easily.
Poor Target Audience Research
Law firms need to know who specifically needs their services. “People who need legal help” is too broad a category for an effective marketing campaign. You’ll need to do market research to determine the gender, age range, location, lifestyle, and occupation of your typical clients. Specific research allows you to tailor your marketing strategy to better fit the needs of your likeliest audiences. When you address your target audience’s needs better, your marketing campaigns are more effective, putting more clients through your doors.
Not Following Up With Clients
When a prospective client reaches out to you, it’s a valuable opportunity to establish a connection. If you fail to follow up with a client, they’re more likely to respond to competitors who are more interested in their case. You always want to remind clients that you’re here for them. Inquire if they need anything else or if they would like to schedule a meeting with you. Even an automated email check-in can help keep you on a client’s radar. Failing to follow up with your leads makes it easy for them to forget about you.
Lack of Client-Focused Direction
Creating a marketing strategy around your expertise and achievements may help inspire confidence in your work, but you want to make sure you understand your clients’ needs. Many legal clients are in desperate need of assistance and resources. Some have gone through traumatic events and need to know that their legal team is on their side. Make sure your marketing content doesn’t just focus on you, but on your clients. Translate your achievements into empathy for the client. A certain percentage of cases won can mean a much greater chance of your client receiving justice, stress relief, or compensation for what has happened to them. What does your legal expertise give your clients? How can you bring empathy and solutions to your audience?
Neglecting Marketing Analytics
You don’t want to create a marketing campaign without a clear strategy. If you don’t have evidence and data on your side, you’ll lose a lot of overhead on marketing efforts that aren’t likely to work very well. Many digital marketing platforms offer data to help fuel your marketing decisions. Call tracking metrics can measure the effectiveness of your calling strategies and how to improve them. Social media analytics, such as Facebook analytics, can identify how strongly your social media ads and posts are performing. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can identify your strengths and weaknesses with your current marketing efforts. These tools can help you convert more leads, win more cases, and reduce your spending on ineffective marketing. You don’t want to go without them.
Conclusion
Spending a lot of money on a marketing campaign doesn’t automatically guarantee more clients. You want to make sure you’re present, client-focused, and backed with data for the most success. It’s easy to make mistakes in the legal industry when it comes to marketing. Lack of research or data can make it difficult to target the right audience. An insufficient online presence or poorly designed website can deter modern clients from seeking out services. Relying on a law firm’s reputation alone can limit your reach. Learning from these mistakes and hiring relevant marketing professionals can help you reach new heights with your law firm.
