Marketing For Law Firms

Impressions, interactions, engagements, impression share and market share are are all important, but the bottom line statistic you want to share with the rest of your business is how many enquiries and paying clients you've got from your law firm's marketing efforts.

Key metrics around this are:

• Total number of enquiries
• Total cost per enquiry
• Conversion rate of enquiries to paying clients or case opens
• Total case opens
• Revenue from case opens

All of these stats help you to assess the return on investment of time and money from your marketing efforts. And this is the same whatever type of law you specialise in.

There are a series of proven steps that work to more legal clients. 

We created a step-by-step digital marketing guide for law firms which is applicable to marketing in general. It takes you through the steps from branding and determining what your USP is, to competitor analysis and which channels you should be using to help you achieve your business objectives.

It’s worth investing time in reviewing what your product (your legal services and expertise) is and where it sits in a competitive market, including the price and the people you need to help you deliver a marketing strategy.

The types of law firms and legal services that you want to market are similar in the UK to the US and North America. From this point of view, the behaviour of potential clients is the same.

• can I educate myself on on the problem I have?
• can I find an expert to help me?
• can the experts provide services that are effective at a low cost?

There will be differences in terms of cost depending on where you are in the country, for example if you are in the south of England, particularly in London, you'll find there are more law firms competing for space in search engines such as Google and for advertising space.

The beauty of being a law firm in the UK however, is that we can look to how law firms have succeeded using digital marketing in other parts of the world particularly in the US.

There are loads of tools you can use to increase enquiries and improve your conversion rate.

A competent marketing department for your law firm could be your best tool, whether you choose to employ a specialist to create and deliver a strategy or use an experienced agency.

There are however, a number of great marketing tools you can use to help promote your law firm, particular things like research on competitors and research on how to present yourself online and offline.

Google is a great place to start. Enter your brand name and see how you appear or search for a service and see what suggestions Google makes. These suggestions will be what people are looking for in relation to your services.

You can use that data to see who's doing what, well. If a competitor is doing something well, there is no harm in trying to replicate their success. 

If You want to get into the nitty gritty content marketing then you should look at the Google ads keyword tool to help you decide which search terms there is demand for in Google.

You can reverse engineer the online journey you want your users to take, from initial interaction through to landing page and enquiry.

The best marketing strategy is one that helps you generate enquiries in the long-term.

The best digital marketing strategy for is one that strikes a balance between planning and action.  

It depends on the size of your law firm and the nature of the services that you're offering, for example you may be offering family Law Services, but that differs to offering Family Law Services to High net worth individuals, in which case you will have a higher margin on new client enquiries as well as looking at slightly different audiences.

If you're an established law firm you may have been working in marketing for a while, in which case you'll have some existing data, particularly on what has worked and what hasn't as well as how you shape your brand. 

You may also have greater capacity to achieve your marketing objectives in a shorter space of time, providing that you employ or use the correct people as part of your marketing mix. 

Some people will tell you that radio, TV and newspaper ads are dead. And while the spend on them is certainly in decline, if you have a budget, you may still find that they can be an effective way of reaching those people with less of a digital footprint. Believe it or not, not everyone is on Facebook. 

Improving your online presence is a great place to start your strategy. Reaching potential customers online gives you the power to reach people at scale, at a lower cost. What's more if you have your digital campaigns managed by someone who knows what they're doing,  changes can quickly be made to campaigns that aren't performing as expected.

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Both can play an important role in how you generate new business.

Marketing can help create awareness for and should be part of an online growth process where you are aware of how many touchpoints that clients and potential clients need to have with you, before they're likely to enquire.

For example an introduction to a client could be a piece of online content to educate them about commercial property law and everything they need to know.  Then they may need your services a few months down the line they and Google “commercial property solicitors”. You’ll be on their radar.

Potential clients may have met one of your team at an event or in person and then gone on to Google or search for your firm and what they see needs to reinforce their first impression.

Ideally, law firms should focus on both traditional sales and networking as well as marketing, to generate awareness at various stages of the sales process. Both functions can complement each other.

Your law firm marketing strategy should be part of your overall business development. For example you may have an existing Business development manager who makes contact with potential clients or goes to events to generate leads.

Marketing can help create awareness for your business development team or it could be part of an online business development process where you are aware of how many touchpoints a potential client needs to have with you before they're likely to enquire.

For example an introduction to a client could be a piece of online content to educate them about commercial property law and everything they need to know.  Then they may need your services a few months down the line they and Google “commercial property solicitors”. You’ll be on their radar.

Potential clients may have met one of your team at an event or in person and then gone on to Google or search for your firm and what they see needs to reinforce their first impression.

Ideally, law firms should focus on both business development and marketing to generate awareness at various stages of the sales process and both functions can both complement each other.

Like a lot of industries, 2021 is proving to be a testing time for law firms with potential clients unsure about her how services and processes can be carried out during covid-19 lockdown and isolation.  

Law firms that I work with are continuing to assess how many people are looking for their   services at this time, ensuring their messaging is on point so as to not be perceived to be taking advantage of the crisis.

I've been using this time to reiterate the importance of SEO to drive traffic to your law firm's website.

If done well, the process can take around 8 months before you start driving real traffic to your law firm website. But once you’re site has some authority, you’ll see real results!

Chatbots on websites and social media messaging can give clients extra customer service without taking up your resource.

Having an automated set of responses can help website visitors to find what they are looking for faster and allow you to assess the value of an enquiry. 

Don't forget email marketing. An I don't mean email marketing where you have to have fancy software and endless automation. I mean simply following up with clients who you know have had a good experience and get them to give you a review. 

You already have their email address and this is a great way to show them you care. 

This is a great way to show new clients what it is like working with you. 

This is similar to having your own marketing department. The marketing agency should be able to stand over what they have achieved and what they plan to achieve because they know what they're doing.

Naturally if you ask another marketer to review someone else’s strategy, they're always going to come up with suggestions and potential holes, but my feeling is it's always worth a second opinion.

If you're wondering what it is that your marketing agency is doing for you on a monthly basis particularly when it comes to results, then make sure you start asking questions.

This doesn't mean that you're suddenly letting another agency run riot and trample all over your existing efforts, annoying everyone in the proces. 

There could just be part of your marketing mix that is missing. 

For instance, someone who's great at creating content across social media and for your website could still need help promoting it. It could be that you have a specialist in paid media who needs additional help regarding strategy and implementation.

If you know how to market your law firm then you should have a clear understanding of what your marketing objectives are and be able to create a marketing mix that involves the right channels, people and products that go into that.

You should therefore be looking at specialisms for example a key part of your marketing mix might be an SEO for solicitors in which case you need to get the SEO strategist and content specialist aligned to create a plan for the next 3 to 6-months. 

It should demonstrate an increase in relevant traffic and consequently enquiries on your website.

For small law firms, an obvious barrier is money and resources to achieve your marketing objectives. You therefore need to determine what the best use of your time and money is in the early stages. How much can you achieve with the resources that you already have?

How can you get the best out of a platform such as Google ads and can you find somebody cost-effective to manage it for you whilst you oversee it?

Traditional advertising and marketing are often referred to as “offline” using media such as TV, radio and newspapers. Digital marketing has been around for long enough now that it probably shouldn't be referred to as digital. This new marketing should just be called marketing.

The key thing for your law firm as a business is the cost, resources available and return on your marketing budget. So if you can be sure that advertising on radio, TV or in local press (or national press for that matter)  is going to get you more clients for less money vs online marketing,  then it’s a good choice!

The advantage that traditional advertising and marketing has is that it can reach people who aren’t as active online. Take people who spend their days driving vans and might be out and about listening to radio during the day. Or a demographic of slightly older people who might be watching television in the afternoon on a weekday. TV, newspapers and radio allow you to reach lots of people in specific geographic areas and that has its benefits. Your message is likely to stick with some of them and they may even turn out to enquire with your law firm. 

The different is that you are interrupting people in most cases. Anecdotally,  most of us don't look forward to having our radio or TV programmes interrupted by adverts. When it comes to TV  most of us are watching things on our own time.

Online advertising and marketing allow you to reach people at the right time and on the right device. 

For example, conveyancing solicitors can serve ads to people who have been actively engaging with estate agents. You can bet that they’ll need your services if they are buying or selling a home, so your ads become more relevant. 

While advertising on social media such as Facebook and Instagram may appear to be interruptive, it can also provide value to potential clients and create an interaction that might lead to an enquiry.

To say that traditional marketing and media are dead as channels is a statement that cannot be proved. But it is clear that investing time and money on digital channels is an area where you can see a clear return on investment, if measured and tracked correctly. Online marketing is also an area that can quickly be changed for example if you're not happy with a graphic after a day then you can change it. 

If you have a small (or non-existant) budget, firstly, you aren’t alone!

But you’ll want to quickly test things to make sure that they work. 

Digital marketing is perfect for that.

For example, don't go all guns blazing and invest £12,000 on a TV advert.  Start off with a fiver a day on Facebook ads or 100 quid using free credits on Google ads. That way you’ll start to see what is working and understand the opportunities more. 

For firms with small marketing budgets or no marketing budget at all, it's essential to prioritise tasks and try and determine what strategies are going to get you the biggest return in a short space of time.

The beauty of digital marketing is that there's little mystery in terms of how your competitors are succeeding. You just need to be aware of what they have done to get where they are and then how much of that you can replicate or do better. 

For every business objective there is a priority to help you achieve it, which is often about working smart (as well as hard) and trying to do the thing that has low competition and takes less time. 

It's also a good idea when considering budgets to think about how much your competitors pay and why they pay that much. Ultimately if you're prepared to invest in good marketing then you should start to see a return on investment and it will be money well spent. 

Smaller law firms with reduced budgets are likely to also have reduced resources.

See if you can dedicate 20 to 30 minutes a day day  creating content or learning something new or telling more people about your business online.

You could start by showing them the search results from search engines (Google is the most popular search engine by a distance) when you enter a relevant search term to your business. Make sure you show them that your legal sector competitors are there and you aren't.

Next, take a look at the volume of search terms for that term using the Google keyword planner. 

If there are 1000 searches each month in search engines, in your local area, it's quite clear to see how many potential visits your law firm's website is out on. 

If you need help persuading your colleagues you can contact us here

Yes. Some legal services have far more competition than others. For example personal injury and accident claims may cost 50 times more per click to show Google ads to people vs services such as Wills or employment law. 

But like everything else with marketing you have to weigh up the cost vs the potential value of the claim should you be instructed by the client. 

So while the national accident claims firm might be prepared to pay £80 for one person to click on one of their Google ads,  they know that if that person converts into a paying client, it could be worse a couple of thousands pounds to them.

Depending on the service, you need to also be aware of the buying or enquiry cycle. Criminal law carries with it an urgency and so clients are likely to choose based on things like availability promises and track record.  

Accident and injury claims cases can be investigated up to three years after the event and so people may be slower to reach a decision and have more of a desire to educate themselves before enquiring.