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The aspect of marketing in the legal sector has not always been popular throughout the history. The legal fraternity used to consider itself as a ‘traditional’ sector, hence only valuing methods of marketing which we otherwise consider as outdated in today’s marketing world. The old-school thinking says that lawyers who advertise themselves lose their and the firm’s credibility. Additionally, these lawyers deal with sensitive matters, hence finding a billboard about a low-price divorce lawyer or for a car accident, might not sit well with potential clients. Adding to the list of factors which contribute towards this lack of law firm marketing is the firm’s negligence. If we particularly speak about self-employed attorneys, these are not likely to have a huge marketing budget, hence most of the times, their way of marketing usually depends on receiving references from their clients or maybe advertising themselves on LinkedIn or any other platform. If we stretch this point a bit, LinkedIn is surely a great platform, but for an attorney who works individually, taking out time for managing their social media handles is a difficult task.
If we consider today’s aesthetically driven and sensationalised world, professional service firms, particularly legal practices, truth, integrity and a professional business persona are prerequisites of developing a trusted business practice. In such cases, they can neither rely on old-school marketing methods nor ignore the marketing aspect entirely. Following a strict advertising regulation or having out-of-the-box marketing trick is not always the best option for such firms. Adding to the fact, that today’s market is driven by technology, it has also become important that we use this feature whenever marketing our firm. Below, we have curated a list for law firms which they can consider while constructing their efficient law firm marketing strategy.
1. Employee advocacy
One can understand employee advocacy as the use of employees to promote a business. However, using this characteristic to leverage the power of social networks, such as LinkedIn, is not something that we see regularly implemented by law firms, and therefore, should be a priority for 2023 marketing strategies.
Whilst posts published directly to firm pages on LinkedIn may reach a relatively limited audience of followers, this is where employee advocacy can come in. if posts will be shared or published by multiple employees and will also be engaged with, by their respective connections, it can have a huge impact on overall reach and engagement with a piece of content.
There lies no secret that lawyers, in particular, commercial lawyers are amongst some of the busiest professionals and, unsurprisingly, regular LinkedIn updates may not make their list of top priorities. Furthermore, getting employees to adapt to new digital activities can be challenging, especially when it is not essential to their daily practices. Hence, the key here is providing education and resources.
2. Be present when required
Professional service firms often have a tough time navigating today’s online-focused market. Unlike traditional forms of marketing, where marketing messages were filtered from businesses down to consumers, online algorithms across search engines and social platforms have put users in a prime position, allowing them more control over the type of content that they see and engage with.
Therefore, it is essential to become proactive about ensuring that prospects can find our firm when they need, which means making ourself come up on the page of Google’s search results and at the forefront of review platforms. Moving on, SEO has never been more competitive than it is today, and with recent algorithmic changes on core search platforms now prioritising sites that produce regular, high-quality content, the output needed for a successful SEO strategy can be incredibly demanding for organisations.
3. Nurturing Online Relationships
When considering SEO, it is also important to factor in ‘link-building’. This refers to the process of generating links from other sites towards our own site through articles, features and directories. The emphasis here should be to focus on links from high-quality, trusted sites.
Links are essentially like citing case law in an article or submissions. They indicate to Google that the source cited is a legitimate, trusted source. The more links to our firm’s trusted website that we build, the more Google’s algorithm will regard us as an authority within our industry. This eventually results in a top-page ranking on Google’s search results when prospects are looking for our services, or those which lie under our expertise.
4. Answering the Right Questions
So, we understand that content is paramount, that employees should be sharing it, and that inbound links will help ensure that our content is ranking for relevant search terms. But what comes next?
All the activities we discussed above, are only worthwhile if the content we are producing is relevant to our target client. When considering legal firms, one of the most common mistakes one finds with content strategies is that there is always an over-emphasis on producing content that is overly technical for a lay user. It is important to understand that while we are creating content to attract legal professionals to our site, we also need to act as an expert in attracting audiences from other niches, who might not be much educated about our vertical. Hence, using legal jargons might not always act as the key to attract audience, in order to gain their trust, we will need to educate them with our content, implying that we need to present it in a clear way. In doing so, we will be able to gain their trust. Google provides various tools which can be used to develop an extensive list of common search terms and queries which can then utilise to develop informative articles. These resources should then be reviewed, updated, and expanded regularly, including by adding internal links to related content on our site that explores other niche topics in more depth.
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