Whether you are a solo practitioner or part of a small law firm, it is important to market your law firm on a regular basis to generate leads and grow your firm’s revenue. One of the major problems is that most lawyers do not have a strategic plan for generating more cases and rely entirely on word of mouth. Word of mouth is great; however, if your practice is fairly new, it can take a few years to build up word of mouth referrals.
Savvy lawyers realize that in order to grow their practice they have to work hard at it; whether that means time allocated to networking and developing quality business relationships or investing money to market their firm. In reality, it is never a good idea to put all of your eggs into one basket, so the best alternative is to focus on a strategy that involves marketing, networking and nurturing your email list.
10 Marketing Strategies to Help Grow Revenue
- Write a column for one to two industry publications that would reach your target audience.
- Develop a marketing plan. If you don’t know where to begin, determine your marketing investment and get a consultation from a lawyer marketing specialist.
- Invest in a website. Not having a website is detrimental to your legal practice and referrals. If you already have a website, make sure it is mobile friendly (responsive) on all mobile devices and best represents your brand and legal practice.
- Don’t eat lunch at your office. Venture out of the office and use your lunch time to connect with any contacts that may be able to connect you to your target clients or send referrals your way.
- Grow your email list and distribute a newsletter or setup an email marketing funnel to provide value to your clients and showcase your legal expertise. At any given time, Google can change your rankings, take your pay-per-plick campaign down — Facebook can also take your campaign down and even LinkedIn — you do not own. The only thing that you do own is your email list, so it is very important to grow and nurture it.
- Attend marketing seminars so you have a basic understanding of marketing principles.
- Seek referrals from other lawyers who are not in your practice area. Referrals from other lawyers usually tend to be high quality and if you do a good job for them, it is highly likely they will continue to send more referrals your way.
- Be active on social media. More and more referrals are coming from social media and attorney groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. If you do not have a presence online, you will get left behind and your competitors will benefit instead.
- Be open to new ideas. Just because you tried something once and it didn’t work does not mean that the strategy is faulty; it just means that the implementation may have been off or there may have been other factors that caused failure. Certain marketing requires testing and tweaking and often there are external factors that may cause your campaign to fail.
- Differentiate yourself from other attorneys in your niche. Ask yourself, “What sets you apart from your competition?” and then, make sure that is clearly communicated on your website and when you meet people at networking events.
The most important step is to commit to something! Yes, commit to something and stick to it. Start with three to four ideas and commit to implementing those. Once you have mastered those, add another three to four ideas.
It is important to remember there are thousands of other attorneys in your city competing for the same business; ask yourself, “Why should they hire me?” Having a clear understanding of your legal expertise and knowing how to articulate that in a crowded room or online is an essential step in landing a new client.
One way to come up with the answer to this question is to make a list of all of your positive characteristics/personality traits, work ethic, career accomplishments, trial experience and review past testimonials from clients and attorneys that you have worked with.
The next step is to take this information and craft a compelling 30-second commercial. If you were in the elevator and someone asked you what you do, you should be able to eloquently convey a powerful elevator speech.
Take a moment to set aside a couple of hours on a weekend and come up with a strategic plan for your law firm based on the marketing strategies and networking strategies that were shared in this article. Make your firm a priority and give it the same attention you would to a high-profile client.
