If you provide the best legal help in the United States, and you do so with ethical perfection, artistic presentation, aesthetic excellence, all the adjectives, and enough charisma to make a governor gargle, it still won’t matter if nobody knows. There are endless qualitative artisans, professionals, and journeymen out there who fail for lack of marketing.
Today’s marketing environment further complicates the issue by “moving the goalposts”, as it were. Twenty years ago, video ads, radio ads, magazine ads, and billboards could help get the word out regarding your legal firm. You remember the commercials. Someone would pick a somewhat funny slogan and show up late at night on TV.
“I’m Jim Blogadanovich, and I’m the settlement field-goal specialist!”, and then he kicks lawsuit documentation digitally shaped like a soccer ball past a goalie wearing a judge’s wig into the net. After that the commercial cuts to Jim behind a desk rattling off his specialties while a bullet list scrolls up the screen. We all remember those commercials. They don’t work as they once did.
Sure, there’s still a place for them, but the world has changed. Now everyone is online, and if you have any marketing whatsoever, this has to be your primary vehicle of outreach. Otherwise, you’re just not going to see the results you seek. Traditional “commercials” must reflect the zeitgeist of modernity. So with that in mind, the following are marketing tips for your law firm.
1. Decide On Primary Content Streams
You could create blogs, you could write white papers, you could design social media accounts that have the express purpose of stimulating engagement with target demographics in your area who need legal help—you could do a lot of things. But if you try to do them all at once, you’ll do none of them well.
What you should do is, perhaps after securing consultation, figure out what content stream best defines the sort of work your legal firm does. Start by designing marketing in that area, and expand out from there.
2. Be Regular About Content Production
Once you know what sort of content your legal firm should produce, the next step is assuring that you’re regular in its production. Presently, thresholds of production are somewhere between 16 and 50 individual pieces of content per month, depending on budget, industry, and overall effectiveness of outreach. However much you produce, be consistent.
3. Distribute Content To The Right Places
If you put the best article in the world in front of someone who is illiterate, they’ll never read it. But such a person may respond to audio or visual marketing stimuli.
Who are the people who represent your primary audience, what is their threshold for understanding, and where are they most likely to encounter your content? Answer those questions and distribute accordingly.
4. Professional Best Practices In Content Design
A consultation was alluded to earlier, and we’ll briefly expand on that in this section. It’s a lot better to handle content design, distribution, and upgrade for marketing purposes using exterior agencies. To get the same sort of cutting-edge effectiveness internally will essentially cost as much as running your own agency.
It’s a lot better to just get some external help. For such needs, this lawyer SEO guide can be quite illustrative. There are general Search Engine Optimization practices that will apply to all businesses, but given your specific niche, there are also some you want to explore which precisely conform to the needs of legal firms.
5. Produce Optimized And Qualitative Content
Beyond SEO, you want to assure your content is qualitative—it has to answer the “pain points” of clientele. As an example, if you’re primarily operating in a criminal law capacity in defense of those who are fighting something like, say, a DUI, you want to let them know why your services are worth obtaining even if you can’t forestall a conviction.
Essentially, those facing a DUI may be able to get the charges dropped through your legal services if the police that hauled them in that night made any procedural errors. It’s important to communicate that to those who you may well serve. They’re thinking, “Shoot, the cops got me cut and dry on this one, why should I spend money on an attorney?”
But you know that, even if you can’t get the charges dropped, you can work with the judge, and you might be able to reduce the severity of the sentence overall. Well, your marketing would need to communicate that with tact, accuracy, and effectiveness. Furthermore, that content would have to have the right-sized paragraphs, white space use, and visual optimization.
6. Don’t Forget The Visual Element: Infographics
Speaking of visual optimization, smartphone literacy is not the same as basic literacy. There are children who know how to use tablets, but they can’t read. Unfortunately, many adults are like this as well. Hopefully not your clientele, but you need to allow for the possibility. To that end, infographics can be exceptionally effective.
7. Keep Data And Update Marketing Practices Over Time
Last but not least, you’ve got to assure the marketing you do is supported by the data. That means keeping numbers. You’re going to have to update your marketing over time. If you establish a system of collecting data from the outset, this will be much more straightforward. Again, consultation can be very helpful here.
Optimizing Your Law Firm Strategy
Keeping data, updating practices, incorporating the viral element, assuring content is both optimized and qualitative, exercising professional best practices in design, proper content distribution, being regular in content production, and making the right decisions as regards content streams all represent fine tactics in marketing for your law firm.
As you go about putting content into circulation, consider these strategies carefully. A little consultation through marketing agencies who specialize in solutions for legal firms can be very helpful.
