Marketing your law firm can be a tricky proposition, especially since many firms rely so much on customer and client referrals. But the question still remains, is there potential business out there that you’re missing? Are you trying to reach them on the right channels?
Effectively marketing your law firm doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. But first, you’ll need to answer these ten questions to determine whether or not your marketing efforts are as good as they can be.
1. Do You Know Who You're Targeting?
Knowing and understanding your audience is the first crucial step to any marketing strategy. By knowing who you’re targeting, your marketing will be more effective than if you’re simply sending out generic messages. The best thing to do is take a look at your current client base and analyze what common traits and characteristics they share. Also look at your “best” clients in terms of revenue and recurring business. Develop a target persona based on things like their age, gender, education, where they live, what radio stations/formats they listen to, and what their motivations are for needing your service.
2. Are Your Marketing Efforts Integrated?
You’ll want to integrate your efforts between traditional mediums, like radio, with newer mediums like social media. Your radio ad, for instance, should contain similar wording and messaging as what appears on your website. If your website says you’re “The Oldest Personal Injury Firm in Mid-Missouri,” and that’s one of your strongest value propositions, make sure to include that in your radio ads as well. In fact, recent research shows that 95% of marketers feel that having an integrated, multi-channel approach is important for marketing their organizations.
3. Are You Utilizing Social Media?
Whether you like it or not, social media is something you can’t afford to ignore. However, choosing the right social media channel for your firm is the biggest key to success. While you don’t need to be everywhere all of the time, LinkedIn and Twitter are probably the best suited and effective channels for law firms. In fact, according to a recent survey legal professionals congregate on LinkedIn more than any other social network. That being said, Facebook is still huge — especially for firms in the mid-Missouri market — but make sure to follow Facebook best practices for law firms when setting up and executing your marketing.
4. Are You Using Email Marketing?
What’s great about email marketing is that those people in your database have already opted in to receiving your marketing communications. With email marketing, you can distribute engaging content that your audience finds helpful, and also segment for further customization. No matter what area of law your firm practices, you likely have different segments and subsegments of potential clients. If you handle tax law, you might segment customers based on corporate and individual clients, and within those segments you can further separate them by industry, or company size. The point is, once you’ve segmented your client base, you can use email marketing to reach each segment with content that is most relevant and personalized to them. So instead of sending out a general newsletter about tax preparation, you can send out customized content about how taxes are affecting their specific industry. This shows clients that you actually took the time to understand their business and are likely to take a personalized approach to them if they sign on as a client.
5. Is Your Business Listed on Directory Sites?
As the digital landscape expands, you’ll want to make sure that your firm is listed on all of the appropriate directory sites. These sites help to make businesses more searchable (especially by location) and allow customers to provide ratings and reviews in regards to your product or service. For law firms, this normally includes the following:
- HG.Org legal directory
- FindLaw
- Lawyers.com
- LawInfo
- Yahoo Directory
- Yelp
- Google My Business
6. Are You Promoting Your Firm at Events?
There’s nothing like face to face interaction, and events are a great way to engage your potential clients in person. Odds are, there are a number of local events available for your firm to participate in. Also make sure to ask your media partner about upcoming events that their radio stations might be hosting and about any opportunities for sponsorship.
7. Are You Tracking Your Marketing Efforts?
Without having some way to track your marketing efforts, you won’t have any way of knowing what’s working. Tracking is just as important as your actual marketing because it’s the only way you’ll truly know how well your advertising is performing and what adjustments to make. If you’re advertising on the radio, your media partner should be going over what your firm’s goal and objectives are and develop tracking methods based on those goals for growth.
8. Are You Creating Content?
Having a business blog focused on your practice area is a great way to improve your results in search rankings, while also providing useful information to your potential customers. Your content can also educate consumers about your services, and yourself as a thought leader in your legal specialization. For example, video content is a great medium to communicate more complex information quickly and easily. Consider creating a series of videos that address specific legal topics or problems common to your clientele.
9. Are You Monitoring the Competition?
You definitely want to keep an eye on the competition to see what they’re doing well, and what strategies they’re using to reach the same audience. If you hear one of their ads on the radio, resist the urge to change the channel and listen to what message they’re using. You might be able to pick up something for inspiration. Also, follow them on social media and even sign up for their newsletter so you’re constantly in the loop.
In reality, marketing is something that many law firms tend to perform sub-optimally or ignore altogether. By answering these questions and formulating an integrated strategy that includes things like live events, email, social media and radio, you’ll be putting your firm way ahead of the pack in terms of marketing. Those other firms still running ads in the Yellow Pages won’t know what hit them.
Want to learn more about integrating radio into your firm’s marketing plan to reach potential new customers in your target market? Contact Zimmer Radio & Marketing Group today for more information!
