Although unique from other businesses, law offices still have to compete in the marketplace to attract clients and make money. This means they have to find ways to market their brand and services to people who may need their help. In such a unique industry, business owners might find it difficult to accurately advertise their services without violating any of the numerous rules and laws surrounding soliciting business as a lawyer. The good news is, if you’re one of those people who aren’t sure what to do next, there are tons of ways to get professional, meaningful marketing into the marketplace and boost your client base.
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Build Your Brand
Whether you’re hoping people will find you by searching “immigration lawyer Las Vegas” or by driving past your billboard every day, anything you use to bring in clients should include a positive representation of your brand. Your brand is what makes your firm unique. It makes you the obvious choice among a sea of competitors because clients can trust you with their legal issues. There are tons of ways to build a brand, but if you’re just starting out, you can focus on just a few key elements. The first is to determine what makes your business unique and put that in front of the clients. Perhaps you’re the only immigration attorney who handles DACA cases in your area. Make that your statement. Put it on your websites homepage, on your billboards, and your business cards. This will help you to stand out from the crowd and also attract the right type of clients to whom you can provide meaningful assistance.
The next step in creating your brand is to clearly state your value. What is it you offer your clients that they can’t find anywhere else. Maybe you have a decade of experience working on immigration cases, or maybe you received a special certification or licensure in that area. Use that expertise to your advantage to show clients you’re worth the risk and know how to fight for them. It’s also another way to set yourself apart from the competition, because often your value is what makes you different from competitors. There might be four other immigration lawyers on your street, but none of them have your unique experience and qualifications. That makes you valuable to clients who need quality assistance.
Design a Website
It’s no secret that every business these days needs a website. The majority of consumers will do a web search to find all the businesses related to their needs if they don’t already have a person in mind. For this reason, you should make sure your website stands out among the rest. You want your law office to appear professional and reliable, so focus your design tactics on creating that feeling with minimalist or sleek designs. It can help to hire a professional to build your website, but you can also use a variety of online services to create it yourself. A few key components to include would be a brief “About Us” page detailing your law firm’s experience and highlighting your top staff members; a page that explains the services you offer and who to contact for more information; and a blog where you can highlight your firm’s successes and teach clients about various legal issues pertaining to your specialization.
When crafting posts for your blog, you want to be sure to follow at least the basics of search engine optimization, or SEO. This topic can get technical quickly, but all you need to know are the easy steps to keep your posts relevant and have them appear high on web search returns. The first is choosing your keywords. There are plenty of software programs and online tools that can help you determine what keywords to include in your articles so they appear higher in a web search. This is based on an aggregate of articles pertaining to similar topics. When you determine your keyword, place it high in the article so people quickly know they’re reading something relevant to their search.
Categorizing the blog section of your website is another helpful way to optimize your information. For example, if your law firm handles multiple types of cases, you could have a separate tab under the blog page for each subject you might have a blog post about. Or if you write on various topics of the same field of law, you could create different pages for each topic. The more specific you can get without it becoming too complicated for users, the easier it will be to implement SEO techniques.
Manage Your Marketing
One mistake some business owners make is setting multiple marketing efforts into motion without any way of monitoring their success. A key component to effective marketing is being able to track and analyze the data it creates. To keep yourself from sinking tons of money into marketing efforts but not seeing a boost in profits, make sure you have a system in place to record and analyze your data before you get started. This can be incredibly helpful especially if you’re running more than one campaign at once, such as print advertising, social media marketing, and a new website. You can use software or an outside company to help you capture the raw data during your campaigns, such as how many views your blog has, how many likes a social media received, or how large of a circulation your print ad reached. All of this can then be translated into a marketing report.
The overall marketing report is where you analyze the data from your campaigns and determine what’s working and what’s not. For example, if you see that your print advertising effort is only reaching 100 people, but your social media strategy reaches 1,000, you might decide to use the money you were spending in print and push it toward an enhanced social media campaign.
Marketing for a law firm contains some specifics, but overall if you can build your brand, design a website, and manage your marketing, you’ll be on your way to greater success.