Law Firm Marketing Goals That Work

Congratulations on surviving another year in the legal profession.  Even though it might feel like you are keeping your head above water, you are building momentum as a business and, even more importantly, providing much-needed legal services to your clients. 

During the holidays and sometimes over the summer break, you may have just enough time to pause to realize how overwhelming the future of your firm is shaping up to be.  If you are a family law attorney, Divorce Monday could be right around the corner.  If you are a small business lawyer, business owners may be calling you in a panic about taxes or business planning.  If you are a consumer law attorney or a bankruptcy lawyer, it is likely you also have a lot on your plate and are expecting to be incredibly busy.

If you have not had the time to even start thinking about your marketing goals to grow your business or sustain your growth, most people around you would understand. However, before things get too out of hand and you get farther behind than you already are, it can be a good idea to meet with a legal content marketing specialist about marketing strategies for your specific need and goals.

Stick to What Works

If your law firm even has a website, you are on the right track to successful content marketing.  Your goal is to make your website useful to prospective clients and visible to Google.  For the first purpose, you need informative, easily understandable content that links to more in-depth information.  For the second purpose, you need to update your website frequently with new content, so Google knows that the site is still active.  Adding one or more posts to your blog is a good way to do this, as is adding new content to your site’s practice area pages.

Try Out a New Marketing Platform

Trying to follow all the latest marketing trends is a waste of time and resources, even if your law firm has its own marketing department.  Despite this, it is a good idea to diversify your content marketing strategy.  Instead, you might try your hand at video content, podcasts, or a social media platform.  Spend some time on trial and error with your newly chosen platform; for example, make videos of varying lengths, and see which ones get the greatest number of views and shares.  Experiment with varying ratios of talking heads and animation.

Outsource Your Content Writing, So You Can Be More Efficient

Reading about all the marketing strategies you should be implementing can sound overwhelming if, like most lawyers, you hardly even have a free moment to breathe.  The good news is that you and your law firm staff do not have to do it all by yourselves.  In fact, it is probably better if you don’t.  You can be more efficient at marketing and at operating a law firm if you leave the marketing to the marketing experts.

Contact Law Blog Writers to Increase Your Law Firm’s Visibility

The key to successful content marketing is being strategic.  The legal content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can help you plan and implement a winning content marketing strategy.

The Frugal Attorney’s Guide to Headshots

Some professions, such as social media influencers, attract image-conscious people who enjoy making genuine or false displays of wealth; pharmaceutical reps tend to be hired on the basis of their good looks, too.  On the other hand, librarians and computer programmers tend to be introverts who don’t care about their own image or anyone else’s.  

Making a good impression, with the appearance of professionalism, is part of your job as a lawyer. However, as any client who is still struggling financially after filing a lawsuit knows, it is easier to find lawyers who are good at looking like lawyers than it is to find lawyers who are thorough and thoughtful enough to help clients get a successful outcome and even harder to find lawyers who can do this for an affordable price.  The things that make you stand out as a lawyer do not come across in a picture; professionalism is on the inside just as much as beauty is.  Despite this, your legal marketing content is not complete without a headshot on your law firm’s website.

Headshots Are Not Just for Photogenic Lawyers Anymore

If you think that prospective clients care more about whether you can help them resolve a probate dispute or car accident claim or modify a parenting plan than they do about how you look, you are correct.  Despite this, you need a headshot of yourself somewhere on your law firm’s website.  It can be on your attorney bio page instead of on one of the pages of your site that you regularly visit so that, if you don’t like looking at pictures of yourself, you don’t have to worry about your own face staring back at you every time you look something up on your own website.  It is important for clients to see a picture of you because the conversation at the initial conversation begins in the client’s mind before the client even fills out the contact form; prospective clients need a face to which to address their imagined discourse before they meet you in person.

If your law firm operates on a shoestring budget, you don’t have to get the picture taken professionally, but it should show you look your most professional.  You should use a picture that someone else took of you when you were standing in front of a blank wall at a conference while dressed in a business suit, for example.  Google will recognize this as a picture of a lawyer, even if your town and your practice area lend themselves to casual dress so that when you meet clients for the first time, you are usually wearing jeans and a T-shirt of your favorite sports team.

You Only Need One Headshot, but You Should Update Your Blog Frequently

A headshot is just one component of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.  The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can create custom-written blog posts that show your true personality more than your headshot does.

Think Locally to Feel the Pulse of Your Target Audience

These days, we use apps to order groceries, and many of us have not set foot in a bank in years, even if we are fortunate enough to have a bank account.  This does not mean that local business is a thing of the past, though.  For example, you probably know your dental hygienist and the person who cuts your hair by name, and you might have even gotten recommendations from them about local restaurants that have since become your favorites.  Yes, it is possible to download templates of legal forms from the Internet, but when people realize that they are in over their heads and need to hire a lawyer, they look locally, and if your law firm’s website is sufficiently visible to Google, they will find you.  Your legal marketing content is your opportunity to show local clients that you can meet their needs.

One Afternoon of People Watching Is Worth a Thousand Customer Personas

Marketing professionals sometimes create customer personas for businesses; they sometimes call them buyer personas, but the attorney-client relationship is not really about buying and selling.  The classic example of a customer persona is Becky, the soccer mom, the target audience for the Contemporary Christian radio format.  No one wants to be a buyer persona; the idea of turning the beneficiaries of your services into a product is horrifying.

Instead of trying to create your customers in a thought experiment on a whiteboard in a cubicle farm, meet them where they are.  Spend a day people-watching; remember, you don’t have to market your services to the entire American public, only the ones in your city.  If you are a family law attorney, spend a day at an indoor playground with a hefty admission fee, where the children play with environmentally sustainable toys while one mom tells another, “I knew I wasn’t going to have any more babies, so I decided to get a puppy.”  If any of the parents here are divorced, what are their co-parenting challenges?  What are the child-related expenses they will have to fight about or cut back on if they get divorced?  To find out about the co-parenting challenges of working-class parents, go to Chuck E. Cheese.  You might not be able to hear over the noise, but you will see what it looks like when cash-strapped parents try to make room for some fun in their limited parenting time.  What do the parents at the pricey indoor playground and at Chuck E. Cheese need from you?

Local content marketing is not just about adding oranges to your logo if you practice law in Florida and adding crabs to it if you practice law in Maryland.  It is about responding to the needs of real people in your community, in person and online.

Your Local Focus Will Show, Even If You Hire Professionals to Write Your Blog

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can deliver custom-written blog posts that show your awareness of the needs of your local target audience.