In the past, legal marketing and law firm marketing barely existed at all. For a lot of lawyers, the mere thought of legal marketing sent them packing, as being a lawyer is a profession, not a business. As law firm revenues increased more and more, lawyers started realizing that their train of thinking was wrong. With competition intensifying, lawyers have started seeing themselves as part of the legal industry.
How Legal Marketing Began
To understand the future of legal and law firm marketing, one must first figure out how legal marketing began. When cellphones and the Internet became mainstays not even one-quarter century ago, law firm marketing consisted of about one to two people (if it even existed at all). These marketers were often lawyers that decided to take a step back from practicing law or lawyers that were forced into it by senior members at their law firm.
By the late 1990s, law firms started realizing the necessity of actually hiring a professional marketer to advertise for them instead of a lawyer whose profession does not involve marketing. In the early days, legal and law firm marketing was mostly reactive, such as responding to requests for proposals (RFPs), partner requests, and press inquiries. Today, legal marketing has shifted to become more proactive.
What is the purpose of legal marketing?
The main purpose of digital marketing for lawyers, also known as legal marketing, is to build and maintain a brand. The job of a legal marketer is to strengthen the reputation of lawyers and increase their audience so that it will be an easier choice for potential clients when it comes to deciding between the law firm that has been marketed for versus the one that has not. The best legal marketers as those that come up with successful ideas for targeting new clients and for keeping around current clients.
Evolving technology caused a legal marketing evolution
In today’s society, everything is becoming increasingly digitized and we are heavily reliant on our smart phones with Internet access. With the COVID-19 pandemic, our reliance on the Internet and social networking increased tenfold as many people and industries transitioned to remote work. The shift away from traditional business strategies and the fast growth of digital marketing has made it necessary for law firms to adapt more of a digital marketing approach.
Some trends that are growing and will likely continue to grow in the future include changes to the roles that existing marketing tools play and the importance of personalized marketing strategies. In addition, there will probably be an even greater reliance on mobile, voice search, and paid advertisements.
Why having a digital presence is important for lawyers and law firms
Especially during the coronavirus pandemic, face-to-face interactions became very limited. Even though lawyers couldn’t meet their clients and potential clients in person, it doesn’t mean that they can’t still foster a relationship with them. With more people spending copious amounts of time at home and online, screen time has drastically increased and so has the desire for more individualized content.
Consumers’ want for personalized content is making legal marketers change their approach when it comes to their digital presence. Instead of focusing so much on the business transaction, legal marketing is shifting towards more personal connections. This places the emphasis on the client experience. Relationship management has become a huge part of digital marketing, so its important for lawyers to connect and foster relationships with both potential and current clients. A great way to do this is by posting personalized content about your firm and the attorneys that work for it to allow for people to feel more connected.
Legal marketing and social media
Social media is one of the most popular ways for people to connect with each other. It is crucial to the success of law firms in today’s day and age to use social networking platforms to reach current and potential clients. Although social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have become fixtures in many people’s daily lives, they fail to be very effective in terms of legal marketing if the interactions are generic and templated.
When people are on social media, they don’t necessarily want to see advertising, which is why it’s important to be subtle with your legal marketing strategy. In order to effectively use social media to market your law firm, one should engage their audience directly. For example, you can do this through live discussions on Instagram or through posts on Facebook. This is a much better strategy than simply posting basic information and advertisements that users are often scrolling past. To take advantage of the phenomenon of social media networking, it is best to have a presence on multiple platforms as they all have different functions and purposes.
Mobile, Voice Search, and Local Services Advertisements
While using social media is a great legal marketing tool, nothing will ever trump the power of a firm’s website when it comes to generating leads. With search engines evolving and employing new capabilities and features, it is important to optimize your website to fit these new trends, which includes both mobile and voice search updates.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, mobile searching became more popular than searching on desktops, as cell phones tend to be more convenient. During the pandemic we saw a shift in this trend, but it is expected to go back to favoring mobile searches since people are out and about in the world again. The increase in mobile searches has also led to voice searches, as it offers an even speedier way to find the answers you’re looking for. Legal marketers should adapt law firm’s websites to match potential voice queries and also pay close attention to keywords and tone of voice.
Becoming fully available to the legal industry in 2020, Google Local Service Ads (LSAs) have increased in popularity due to their lower cost per client acquisition when compared to traditional Google paid advertising. LSAs stand out from traditional advertisements on search engine results pages and draw people’s attention as they appear on the top of the page.
LSAs includes information like the firm’s name, reviews, average rating, hours, and the year the firm was established (which increases a firm’s credibility). These advertisements are pay-per-lead tools, meaning that you don’t have to pay every time someone clicks on your advertisement, unlike traditional advertisements.
Legal marketing is a rapidly growing concept that many law firms are adopting in order to stay competitive in a very dense field. In order to maximize your law firm’s potential, it is essential that you use legal marketing strategies to improve your client base.