Law firms that don’t adapt to the changing marketplace run the risk of being left behind.
Although most legal practices allocate a large portion of their budgets to their advertising, many are relying on outdated strategies that lead to average or poor results.
Today’s law firms must remain current with the latest tools and techniques for generating leads and converting those leads into paying clients.
Does Yesterday’s Advertising Still Work?
Lawyers have typically used television, radio, billboard, bench, and bus advertising to reach prospective clients. These methods may provide a high level of visibility, but they can have limitations as well.
Current marketing strategies must be targeted to the right audience in order to get a higher return on investment (ROI) with greater efficiency.
Television advertisements can cause your marketing message to become lost or confused with other firms offering similar services through this medium.
Billboards may be seen by many people. But this “shotgun” approach can increase the cost of acquiring each new client when compared to advertisements targeted at a smaller number of the right prospects.
Effective marketing techniques require a different approach that law firms must adopt in order to achieve continued success in their industries.
Positioning for Law Firms
Law firms must position themselves as industry leaders. Industry leaders provide value to its audience while demonstrating the skills and expertise related to their areas of practice.
Content marketing is the most effective way to deliver value on top of the services you provide. It allows you to answer the questions that prospects have while giving them practical and relevant information that meets their legal needs.
Your content can be delivered through blog posts, videos, white papers, infographics, and other formats.
The content you provide drives new traffic to your law firm’s website and builds trust among your target audience.
Define the Value of Your Services
It’s no longer enough to simply state what you do. Instead, today’s audiences need to know why your services are valuable.
This requires you to define your unique selling proposition (USP), which articulates the reasons why prospects should choose your services over those of your competitors.
Through clear and compelling copywriting, your advertisements and marketing materials can translate the value of your services into powerful messages that resonate with your target audience.
Create a System for Advertising
Law firms must establish advertising systems that create repeatable results over time. This consist of the elements that constitute your overall sales process:
- Lead generation
- Your sales funnel
- Converting prospects into clients
- Measuring advertising results
Lead generation and nurturing allow you to attract and build relationships with prospective clients.
Designing a sales funnel helps you move prospects through each new stage and closer towards your primary offer.
The conversions you achieve through your sales process depends on your understanding of the needs of your audience and your ability to deliver the right messages at the right time.
But you must have a way to measure the performance of your sales funnel. Analytics and other tools must be used to determine where you might be losing prospects and which actions are achieving the best results.
By measuring the results of your marketing campaigns, you can optimize them over time to get better results at a lower cost.
Knowing how to adapt your advertising to the evolving marketplace helps you establish lasting success within your industry.
Traditional advertising may provide benefits to your branding efforts, but a more targeted and measured approach gives you the results you need to reach a new level of growth for your law firm.
