Attorney’s are expecting a flood of family law, personal injury, and estate planning case demand as stay at home orders ease around the world. Positioning your firm to be ready for changes in demand is critical to long term success. In this article we provide marketing guidance for reopening and some insights from other attorneys.
Marketing Guidance For Law Firms
The legal field is extremely competitive and Stay At Home orders have been extremely distruptive to firms as demand and shopper behaviour has changed. Here are 13 tips for establishing marketing prowess in the new economy:
- SEO is a land of opportunity right now. We’ve seen 6 months of SEO improvements for attorney’s in the last 8 weeks. Every firm should be engaging in activities that improve Google search positions during this time.
- Website Improvements are best done when there is time available on your team to create articles that you can review and add your personal touch.
- Social Media Content is something most people don’t want to see in their day to day feed. However, when shopping for an attorney, most potential clients under the age of 40 will check one or more social media profiles before contacting the firm. This is a great time to get posts scheduled for the next 6 months.
- LinkedIn is the largest professional networking profile in the world. Take some time to Connect with peers, your team, and past clients.
- Infographics are a high value piece of content that is easily shared with other websites to generate links in to your website.
- Referral Partners are an incredible source of leads. It is time to reconnect with these people and companies to make sure they are ready to refer you.
- Marketing Partners that provide service to your business need a nudge to make sure they’re operating differently. The strategies that made them successful prior to the downturn are not necessarily those that will bring success going forward, the market is much different.
- Business Networking through organizations like BNI saw a surge of success at genering business after the 2008 recession and we expect this to be the case again.
- Online Reviews are a key aspect of shopping online. This is the time to make asking for reviews a standard practice for your firm.
- Email Newsletters are a great way to reach referral partners and past clients. The key to success is to create content that real people are actually interested in. That likely means two separate emails for different audiences. It’s better to send quality than length or frequency.
- Online Advertising, which is extremely competitive for attorneys, needs to be revisited and in some ways restarted, as search patterns have changed dramatically. Connect with your team member managing ads or your marketing provider to make sure they have a strategy for micro-managing your ads for a period of time. Set and forget ads will waste your money over the next few days.
- Community Awareness is extremely important again, as it typically is during downturns. Find ways to be visible in your community by supporting food banks, chambers, downtown associations, or jumping in on online events. The key is to generate earned media for your activities so the community hears from you.
- It’s Time For Video to become part of your marketing plan. Business video cards, office tours, and team features all help bridge the connection between potential clients, partners, and your team.
Insights From Other Law Firms
Andrew Jezic, Founding Partner, Law Offices of Jezic & Moyse
“We are planning on ramping up our marketing efforts, and we will continue to offer the remote services we started as a result of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. We recently decided that we will be allowing remote work at our firm in addition to in-house attorneys, and our remote attorneys will handle the remote clients we take on. We saw this new service addition as a great opportunity to capture new leads, and our increased marketing efforts will drive the leads to us.”
Robert Theofanis, Attorney & Proprietor, Theo Estate Planning
“After a few weeks at home with the kids (1 and 3) and a wife who’s big law attorney, it became apparent that filling my calendar with online appointments that required a quiet room would not be a workable strategy. I needed more flexibility. So, I decided to pivot to SEO/Content as my main marketing activity. “
Brian Pendergraft, The Pendergraft Firm
“I plan on ramping up content creation to generate new leads for legal services that do not require going to court such as business organization, estate planning, and real estate transactions. This way, if there is an extended period of time when the courts are closed in the future I’ll be perfectly prepared and not experience a significant loss in profits. “
Jolanta A. Zinevich, Jolanta Zinevich LLC
“Social Media and a great Website will play a vital role in generating leads for our Firm in the future and to ensure our success. Over the last month our Firm has been working on updating our website and adding content that is important to our clients. In the next few weeks we anticipate adding Video content, Testimonials, and How to Articles to our website.”
John Stocks, Partner, Van Siclen Stocks Firkins
“We plan to generate new leads by offering pandemic specials, or “we survived” t-shirts. We are working on Independence Day themed mailers, which will also be duplicated on our website and social media. We will emphasize our experience over new people trying to enter into our captured niche, such as our prediction that many lawyers are going to try to start doing family law out of desperation and due to expected demand.”
Jordan W Peagler, MKP Law Group
“To drive leads we’ve started to double down on our online reviews and focus on SEO to drive organic traffic. We’ve always had great reviews come in naturally after cases were settled, but we have a plan in place to be more proactive to generate those. On the SEO site we’re focusing on better positioning and content-depth on our services pages, in addition to acquiring new press mentions and links.”
While client count and case load may be down due to the current economic situation, it’s time to push forward on marketing to be ready for the growth phase. Make a plan for activities to start this week and get those activities to your team or on your calendar.
