Adopting and implementing digital marketing strategies within a law firm is not without challenges. According to our Law firm digital marketing survey conducted in September 2018, the biggest obstacle is convincing company leadership to try new tactics, with 57% of companies citing this as an obstacle. In addition, slightly more than half of the companies surveyed reported that they did not have time to expand digital efforts, likely due to overloaded marketing staff. Forty-one percent of respondents reported another challenge: keeping up with rapid changes in law firm marketing best practices due to new algorithms, platforms and new technologies offered by established players and startups, it’s no surprise given the great need for marketing training. within these companies.
Despite the many challenges of marketing a law firm, digital marketing is crucial for your firm, as the average person spends a lot of time online, including hours upon hours connected via their smartphone. Here are some of the most effective solutions to overcome the various challenges law firms face when marketing a law firm to potential clients.
What are some common challenges in marketing a law firm?
There are many challenges that legal marketers can face in the legal industry, including:
Not getting a return on investment with expensive channels Not being able to demonstrate the importance of marketing at senior levels Trying to keep up with the ever-changing scope of legal marketing Maintaining a sufficient budget Leveraging new tactics successfully (without ” throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks to the method)
recruitment talent Knowing which tools to use Being beaten by your competitors Lack of time
How to overcome challenges in marketing a law firm
1. Provide marketing education
The first step to making it easier for your business to gain widespread acceptance of digital marketing is to do it train both marketing staff and lawyers. You need to take steps to ensure that all of you and your marketing team understand digital marketing, at least at a basic level. This will help build consensus in decision-making as well as enthusiasm for digital marketing. Some simple yet effective methods of providing marketing training to your team include presentations at a retreat, online coursesmeetings and provision of reading materials.
In the educational materials, emphasize that marketing a law firm is based on building relationships and personal contacts. You should also make it clear that attorneys may take slightly different marketing approaches based on their individual strengths and expertise.
2. Measure and share success
Law firms are likely to invest in new marketing strategies without data to prove their effectiveness. Because success stories related to your marketing provide motivation for your team and needed attention from company leadership, it’s essential that you measure the impact of your digital marketing efforts. It’s not enough to count website visits or social media shares. Partners want to see concrete evidence of return on investment, and despite what some legal marketers think, this is possible. There is a lot of legal marketing tools which allow you to analyze and report on the direct impact that emails, content and social media messages have on new customer acquisition and lead conversion.
3. Get input from customers
When it comes to digital marketing, your customers are an extremely useful resource for understanding your target audience. They will be able to tell you about their experiences with your company and give you an honest assessment of what worked well and what they suggest you change. The easiest method to achieve customer entry is via a survey or something similar. If clients are interested, you might even have one or two speak at your marketing training retreat. The main motivation of lawyers is to generate new leads and attract new clients. By using real clients to demonstrate the value of digital, lawyers are more likely to understand the need to invest in this form of marketing.
4. Take advantage of technology
There are many marketing technologies that can not only make your life easier, but can also help improve the ROI of your marketing plan and help you gain an edge over your competitors. Many law firms are hesitant to use data to its full potential, and are often left behind once the top-ranked firms jump on the bandwagon. For example, one of the latest data technologies, intent data, allows law firms to see the intent of buyers based on their online activities. Imagine how much more streamlined and profitable your marketing efforts could be with the knowledge of who will convert and when? Leveraging this type of technology is an easy and cost-effective way to overcome many marketing challenges.
For a detailed overview of how law firms can harness the power of intent data, register for this free webinar: How law firms can use intent data to improve their marketing and business development efforts.)
5. Outsource when necessary
It’s okay to admit that you don’t have it all figured out. In fact, digital marketing has become such a vast and ever-changing field that even many solo marketers are not experts in everything. Consider outsourcing some of your deliveries. One of the best ways to make improvements in marketing a business is to outsource when necessary. For example, SEO is a slow and time-consuming strategy. And Google’s never-ending updates make “becoming a search engine expert” quite difficult. So consider looking to legal marketing agency or an SEO expert to help you in the departments you don’t have time to become an expert in. And surprisingly, this can even lead to saving money, since now you are not investing money in wasted efforts or hiring more employees on your own. own department
6. Leverage your employees
Do you have little involvement in social networks? Not getting as many referrals? Behind a writing blogs? Well, other members of your team may be able to help you with this. It’s no secret that lawyers are very busy people, but there are many ways to help you in your marketing and business development efforts that require very little effort. For example, you can use a platform like SocialHP to make it easy for your attorneys to re-share your social media posts and blog posts to increase engagement. Or consider training your lawyers in business development, so that meetings with clients will generate more revenue for the firm in the long run.
7. Understand what is a myth and what is a real concern
Many marketers avoid certain tactics or ideas because they don’t think it’s worth their time or money. But believe it or not, many of your fears or beliefs, even if they are based on some truth, may be a gross exaggeration of what will actually happen if you try new tactics. Here are 8 of them myths denied:
8. Automate, automate, automate
Marketing automation isn’t a new idea, but many law firms aren’t taking advantage of it as much as they should. With a robust marketing automation system such as HubSpot, you can automate a number of tasks and ultimately improve the ROI of your efforts, free up time for your team, and improve your relationships with your potential customers. You can automate emails based on user actions, schedule social media posts at best-performing times for your pages, organize your database into segments to increase ROI, and more. You should always look for opportunities to automate them and take advantage of them whenever possible.
9. Consider advertising
It’s no secret that digital fatigue is on the horizon and many consumers are numb to traditional advertisements for legal services. And also, due to the high cost of traditional advertisements such as television or billboards, many law firms avoid advertising because they consider it too expensive. However, there are many profitable forms of advertising, such as paid ads on social media or Google PPC ads, allowing you to limit your cost and work within your budget.
Take away:
For most legal marketers, the results of our surveys are not surprising. Law firm marketing teams are struggling to implement digital marketing initiatives due to a lack of buy-in from firm leadership and a lack of education. However, through proper training, in-depth measurement and client feedback, legal marketers can effectively overcome the many challenges they face when it comes to digital marketing.
This post has been edited and republished since February 8, 2019.
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