The Best Practices for Marketing Your Law Firm Startup
In the second blog of our exclusive Attorney Marketing Network series dedicated to new lawyers and their quest for success, we are examining the best practices for marketing your law firm startup.
In this blog post, you will learn:
How to choose a law firm name that reflects your expertise
How to build your law firm’s brand
How your law firm’s website and online presence plays a major role in lead generation and client conversion rates
Increasing your law firm’s online rankings through SEO, PPC, and Targeted Ads
The importance of acquiring reviews and testimonials for your law firm
At the Attorney Marketing Network, we are here to help develop your success by providing tips, guidance, and proven practices for increasing your online exposure to help grow your law firm.
Let’s get started!
How To Choose A Law Firm Name That Reflects Your Expertise
As far as company names go, law firms may be the easiest to implement. If you are a solo practitioner, you may find that your name is the perfect solution.
The Law Office of John M. Doe, substituting your name, has a nice ring to it and provides room to expand, simply by changing the word office to offices as your practice locations grow. Keep in mind that everything you do, including printed stationery, business cards, online listings, your website, and its domain name, should easily accommodate your law firm’s name. This will become important when you begin adding staff or new attorneys, so you do not have to rebrand or change your domain name to meet your growing needs.
Think long term, and consider your areas of expertise when exploring your naming and marketing options.
If you are a DUI criminal defense specialist, there could be a way to incorporate your expertise within the firm’s name. Keep in mind, however, the competitive nature of settling on a singularly focused moniker.
The goal is to create a name for your law firm that reflects your character, integrity, and expertise that will grow with you as the years pass.
How To Build Your Law Firm’s Brand
Branding is much more than just a logo or a well-placed advertisement. To be successful in the competitive legal landscape, your firm’s brand must be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and evolve with your firm.
The first thing most startups consider when positioning their brand is their logo. For attorneys, their firm’s name is often their logo of choice, which is more about its typography than an image or icon, which is completely fine.
Do not pressure yourself to create a logo when your brand can be identified through colors and typography. There’s always room to grow the visual components when your identity begins to take a permanent direction as your success increases.
However, you must use the same law firm name — always. If you have decided on The Law Office of John M. Doe, do not refer to yourself — vocally, in writing, or print — as The John Doe Law Office. Consistency is the cornerstone of your brand identity.
Next: Identify Your Law Firm PersonaWhat is your:
Vision:Why your law firm exists
Mission:What your law firm does
Value: How do you solve legal problems for your clients
Third: Outline The Key Qualities & Benefits Your Brand Offers
Simply put: How do you want to be known?
Do you offer affordable rates for new clients?
Does your law firm work on a contingency basis?
Do you have a unique skill set that positions you away from your competitors?
Is your client contact or customer service superior to others in the legal community?
Is your experience or approach noteworthy?
Make a list of your law firm’s functional and emotional benefits, and how you would like to be perceived in the community, so your brand reflects your value proposition.
Fourth: Identify Your Target Audience
To successfully create your law firm’s brand, you have to know who you are talking to.
What types of clients need your services?
How do they communicate?
What do they care about?
What legal problems do they have?
Depending on your legal practice areas, the answers to these questions will differ. It is important to focus on your target market and to develop a voice that reaches that demographic.
Fifth: Identify Your Competition
It is impossible to be competitive if you do not know who you are competing against.
Identify your competition and how your brand compares, in both perception and presentation.
Keep in mind, just because your competition is doing it — no matter what “it” is — doesn’t mean you have to. Staying competitive is about identifying the value or your marketing position, not mimicking your competitors.
Your Law Firm’s Website & Online Presence
Plays A Major Role In Lead Generation And Client Conversion Rates
Law Firm Digital marketing is going to play a large role in your law firm’s success, simply due to the competitive nature of attorney marketing.
As a new law firm, you know you need a website — otherwise, it will be nearly impossible for your practice to be found by those who need it. Most of your clients operate in an online world, and your attorney website will play an integral role in your success in generating leads and converting clients.
Create Your Website With A Developed User Experience
Your website must be professionally designed and optimized to help boost your rankings on the search engine results page. That means when someone searches for “(Your practice area) attorneys (in your city)” you want your law firm to appear on the first page — where over 95% of people choose products and services.
That type of placement does not happen by chance, it happens by design — ours.
Including:
Web design, development, and content marketing are a large part of your brand strategy, which will be specifically designed around your marketing goals. The content we create for our clients is unique — in both style and voice — which is imperative to your marketing outreach and how you pull people in.
Your content strategy dictates how you share your brand, and we provide definitive solutions that boost traffic to your website once your listing is identified by prospective clients.
Our search engine optimization, or SEO, for lawyers, involves an intelligently developed approach to increasing your website’s functionality and your overall ranking.
We create robust and unique site structures that safeguard conversion elements to maintain your prominence on the search engine results page.
Your local SEO ranking is going to determine your overall success as you vie for clients that your competitors are also trying to convert. So, how do you set yourself apart?
To enhance your local exposure, we develop maps and Google My Business SEO and expand your reach with link building capabilities that allow quality sites to link back to your law firm’s website from legal directories, news websites, education forums, sponsorships and more.
At the Attorney Marketing Network, we design unique marketing campaigns that allow our law firms to grow and maintain their competitive online edge going forward.
Creating paid advertising or targeted ad campaigns can boost your rankings to the top of the search engine results pages, and we are committed to the research it takes to get you there, and more importantly, keep you there.
Including:
Keyword research to ensure you’re hitting your target market
Money-saving techniques tailored to your audience’s overall needs and expectations
Developed PPC, Retargeting/Remarketing campaigns, with display ads on Google, Facebook, Bing, and Yahoo!
Split testing your ads to optimize your campaign’s overall functionality and performance that reduces your cost-per-click spending.
Of course, none of these services mean anything if we cannot track and report your progress, which is why we provide easy to read details regarding your campaign’s performance.
Including:
Website visitors
Phone calls
Form submissions
Downloads
AMN also provides third-party ranking authority for social media and review platforms that complement your ongoing SEO and PPC campaigns, to ensure your online exposure is unified.
The Importance of Acquiring Positive Reviews & Testimonials For Your Law Firm
In an online world, it is important to understand that each of your law firm’s touchpoints — whether it is a chatbot, phone call, email, or online form submission — is subject to review by not only your clients but those who have considered your services. Certainly, someone who claims to have a bad experience with an initial phone call to your firm may sign onto Yelp and tell the world about it. But they may take to social media and provide a less than favorable post about their interaction.
Is that fair? No. Is it true? Yes.
When it comes to converted clients, your client service skills will go a long way in acquiring positive reviews and testimonials that will increase your credibility with potential clients.
Here’s why:
97% of people read reviews for local businesses, including law firms
93% of people say online reviews impact their decisions when choosing products or services
91% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
3.3 is the minimum star rating consumers will consider when engaging with a business
A 5-9% increase in revenue can be attributed to a one-star increase in a Yelp rating
94% say an online review has convinced them to avoid a business
Only 13% of consumers will consider using a business that has a one- or two-star rating
Four out of five consumers have changed their minds about a recommended service after reading negative online reviews
When you are starting, a single negative online review about your law firm can be detrimental to your growth. At the Attorney Marketing Network, we provide online strategies for review management and customer relationship management tools that will allow your law firm to oversee your brand from every angle, so you can focus on your firm’s growth.
Read part three of our exclusive Attorney Marketing Network blog series dedicated to new lawyers: Setting Your New Law Firm Apart From the Competition, where we discuss how to outline and prepare for a highly competitive attorney market and the importance of personalizing client services. If you are ready to learn more about developing your law firm’s complete online marketing solutions,contact us today for more information about our services.
At Attorney Marketing Network, find a consistent approach to high visibility through our solution-based services today, including:
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