Marketing For Solicitors

The Best Forms Of Marketing For Solicitors

Whether you are looking for help with family law marketing, probate services marketing, personal injury marketing or marketing business legal services, these ideas will work, if you put in the work to allow them to do so.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to marketing legal services, but that is not to say you have to spend tens of thousands and wait years for them to produce, that is not the case.

How To Quickly Assess Good Or Bad Forms Of Marketing For Solicitors

I want to start by giving you a method to assess whether the form of marketing that you are considering undertaking is a good one that is likely to work, or whether it is one that will use a lot of time and budget and not produce new clients for you.

This is explained in more detail in my book, but I make this my mission for solicitors to understand the difference between Attraction Marketing and Interruption Marketing.

Once you understand this, it will be much easier for you to decide where you should spend your money and your time when it comes to marketing your law firm, and where you most definitely should not.

Interruption Marketing

Reasonably quite self explanatory, interruption marketing is when the person whose attention that you are trying to sell to has not asked for information about your legal services and 9 times out of 10 has no need for your services at that time.

As you might expect, with interruption marketing, you have to show your marketing to many, many people to gain any interest in what you have to offer.

Types of interruption marketing include:

• Social media (all of it). Think about your own use of LinkedIn, facebook or Twitter. Do you head to these time zapping places to buy a service from someone, or for other reasons? Usually, it is to while away some time, or to see what your colleagues have been up to. If you advertise on these platforms, you have to fire wide and far to hit anyone who might be even remotely interested in what you have to sell.
• TV, Radio, Newspapers. Someone heads to the media to read/watch or listen to the content of the publication or station. Most people in those places will have no need for a solicitor at that precise moment in time, so at least 99 out of every 100 people have no need to read/watch/listen to your advertisement. Once again, this means that these methods of interruption marketing will take longer and cost more to make them work in any way, shape or form.

The key question you have to ask yourself when considering undertaking a new form of marketing is ‘Has the person who is going to see my message gone searching for a solicitor?’. If the answer is no, you are looking at interruption marketing.

Don’t waste your time, effort or money.

There are much easier ways for you to win new clients and if you undertake all of those, you will never need to consider interruption marketing methods because you will be busy and profitable enough already.

Attraction Marketing

The key difference with Attraction Marketing and the reason it works so much better than Interruption Marketing is this:

BUYER INTENT!

With Attraction Marketing, someone actively goes out to find someone to help them with a legal issue.

They are looking to buy legal services or at the very least looking for a solution to a legal problem.

When you promote your services to someone who has actively gone looking for help, your marketing efforts are going to be much better rewarded in the form of more new client instructions.

On the flip side, when you promote your services to someone who has headed to facebook to watch a dancing squirrel, your efforts are going to be rarely awarded, and even if they show interest, because they had no ‘buyer intent’ getting them over the line in terms of instructing you is going to take a lot more work.

Before considering any marketing activity, ask yourself whether the people who are going to see your message have gone in search of a solicitor on that day, or whether they will see your message alongside the content that they have gone to read/watch or listen to that day.

With that in mind, let’s look at the most effective forms of marketing for solicitors.

1. Your 24 Hour Shop Window

I expect you know what I am going to say now, but I do not want you to skim over this, because this is one of the most poorly executed forms of marketing for solicitors by most law firms that I come across, and that upsets me, greatly.

Why?

Truth be told, most law firms could be as big and as profitable as they would like to be just by having a very good website (I don’t mean design wise here, more on that shortly) that grows consistently and makes it incredibly easy for clients to get in touch.

You may doubt this, but I can assure you that I have had many clients turning over many million pounds primarily generated withe new client enquiries and instructions from their website.

If your website isn’t doing this for you, this is where you should start, 100%!

If your website is not generating over 3,000 visitor sessions a month (Google Analytics) and 100+ enquiries a month for your services, your website is not doing what it is designed and able to do.

While on that topic, let me make another important point (based on my 100’s of conversations with solicitors each year).

If you are in charge of marketing for your law firm, you absolutely must know your numbers when it comes to your website visitors and the volume of enquiries and instructions you receive each month.

You need to know these numbers (and many more Key Performance Indicators) for two reasons:

• It will allow you to be confident that you will reach your billing targets in the months to come. Whilst every solicitor measures billing each month, this is ‘after the event’ measurement. If you measure the enquiries and instructions you receive each month, so long as your fee earners do the work and collect in the aged debts, the profits will take care of themselves. You must track your enquiries and instructions every month.
• It shows you that the efforts you are putting into making your website your primary source of new client attraction is working. This motivates you to keep going.

This led to one of my more quoted phrases amongst my clients and members of my Marketing For Solicitors service:

What gets measured, gets better.

I have been working with some clients since the early 2000’s and still do to this day, and each of them has a website that they continually add new content to every month and that delivers the majority of their new client instructions.

They do this not to please me, but because they have seen that it works, incredibly consistently.

They do not have to worry each month if they will receive any enquiries for their services.

They KNOW they will, because they have done so for many, many years now.

Hopefully, if you are reading this, and your website is not producing 100+ enquiries a month, you know where you need to start now.

Let me give cover off some other points I raised above when it comes to your website.

Website Design.

The least important part of your website when it comes to winning new clients is your website design.

I have many clients who people regularly tell me have what they consider to be ‘ugly websites’.

I chuckle to myself because those so called ‘ugly websites’ produce hundreds of enquiries and clients every month for my clients.

You need to put yourself in your clients shoes when you think about someone buying legal services.

Buying legal services is an informed decision.

Pretty pictures do not convince someone that you know what you are doing when it comes to legal services.

Plenty of content that proves your expertise is the only thing that will persuade your prospects to part with their contact details.

I will make one final point on the topic of design vs content when it comes to marketing for solicitors.

The last firm I worked for I was in a purely marketing position. I managed to create a website that was pretty huge, with hundreds of pages, which was not what everyone else was doing with law firm websites at the time.

It produced huge volumes of new enquiries and instructions.

A year or so after leaving that firm to set up my law firm marketing consultancy, I bumped into the partner who had taken over the marketing role from me.

He informed me that they had got rid of the ‘large unwieldy website’ (as he put it) that I had created for them and instead now had a nice, clean, lovely designed 5 page brochure website…

“And your enquiries stopped overnight”, I said.

“How did you know that?” he replied.

Content wins over design every time!

You Must Make It Easy For Prospects To Get In Touch

If you have a good website that attracts a lot of people to it every month, then the fatal mistake I often see being made is not ticking this box.

You must make it very easy for visitors to get in touch with you.

This does not mean having a contact page. Why should a visitor have to click another button to see how to get in touch with you?

They shouldn’t, and more importantly, many won’t. They will hit the back button and go to your competitor’s website.

On EVERY PAGE of your website, you have to provide multiple methods for your clients to get in touch with you.

Usually, at best, I see a telephone number once on a page (usually at the very top, but if they have read your excellent content your prospect is at the bottom) or a giant REQUEST A CALL BACK BUTTON.

In my testing on many websites, no one wants a call back. They also prefer to be spoken with by your content, rather than shouted at by a button.

If your content has engaged your visitor, you should then explain how they can get in touch with you in the same vein that you have already been talking with them, for example, on my website I say at the bottom of this page:

If you would like to discover more about how I can help you to grow your law firm, please call 0117 290 8555 or complete a Free Online Enquiry and I will be in touch.

Notice that I offer a telephone number (hyperlinked so they can click to call me from a mobile or via skype) and an enquiry form. If I only offered one form of contact I would miss half of my prospects.

For legal services, I recommend that you offer all of these contact methods ON EVERY PAGE of your website to maximise the enquiries that you will receive from your visitors:

• A hyperlinked telephone number.
• A link to complete a free enquiry (don’t send them to the contact page, there are too many distractions there. This should be a separate page which only has your short enquiry form on it).
• Live chat (not a chatbot for legal services, please) hosted for your 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The cost is minimal but the results generally exceptional. Use my contact details above if you would like an introduction.

Your Website Must Grow Consistently

Often on a first call with a solicitor when discussing growing their law firm, they will tell me that they have one blog on their website which brings in dozens of visitors every month and a good dollop of enquiries and clients.

That’s excellent I say.

So how often do you add new blogs to your website? I ask.

Never, they reply.

…………………………

If this only happened once, it would make me sad, but sadly it happens dozens of times a year.

The law firm owner has proved that blogging works, but then stopped.

The secret to successful marketing for solicitors is to find what works and then keep on doing it forever more.

If you do this with your website, as I said at the start of this piece, you may well not need to undertake any other forms of marketing to grow your turnover and profits to as big as you want them to be.

What content do you need to add to your website?

In its simplest form:

Write content that answers your ideal prospects pressing questions.

So long as you do this, your efforts will be very well rewarded.

I always say that a law firm website is like premium bonds.

If you buy one premium bond, you have one chance of winning.

If you buy 50,000 of them, your chances of winning grow exponentially.

It is the same with your website.

One page, answering only one question your prospects ask regularly, you have a very small chance of winning new clients.

100 or 1,000 pages and your chances of winning new clients every month also grows exponentially.

The 3 Other Successful Forms Of Marketing For Solicitors

There are 3 other incredibly effective forms of marketing for solicitors, but I don’t want to ruin the suprise, so click the button below to have them delivered to you instantly:

FREE BOOK: The 4 Best Methods Of Marketing For Solicitors. Click to Download Now!

 

 

 

 

 

Other Marketing Ideas For Solicitors

• Send an email to clients old and new (anything related to your legal services, just to start a conversation that might lead to an instruction). I use a simple piece of software that anyone can use (no coding required). I share more details in the book available to download from this page.;
• Add a PS to all of your client letters leaving your office over the course of the next few weeks or months making an offer to use your services. Make the offer time sensitive to ensure that your clients take action, rather than put it to one side to use later.
• When you do as suggested in item 2 above and you see that it works, keep doing it each and every month but change the offer to ensure that you continue to receive instructions.
• From time to time, change the offer to your clients to be an offer to friends or business contacts of your clients if they are kind enough to refer you. Even just asking the question will get your clients thinking.
• Set up your LinkedIn profile promoting an offer for one of your services in your headline bio and connect with all of your business contacts and old clients; a nice gentle way to remind them of your existence.
• Make an offer to use your legal services on your blog and post a link to this on twitter, facebook and LinkedIn. Not only might this lead to some new instructions for your law firm, but it has the added benefit of letting Google know that your website is a living, breathing website (which it has to be if you want it to consistently bring new clients to you).
• Call old clients or people who refer to you for a general catch up and to see if they have anything in the pipeline for you. Ensure that the primary purpose of the call is to genuinely catch up with them and let the conversation lead on to your legal services if it is right that it does so.

If you are finding any of these legal marketing ideas useful, this is only the tip of the iceberg. For a more comprehensive book, showing you the most effective forms of marketing for solicitors right now, along with how to implement them, please do download my book by clicking the image to the right. I promise that you will find it incredibly useful.

The remainder of the 21 law firm marketing ideas for solicitors:

• Go to networking events and meet people. All networking groups are not created equal – some create “brain numbing insanity” – it doesn’t have to be that way. You might have to kiss a few frogs first, but persevere and you will find one that suits you and your business.
• Start a Google Adwords pay per click campaign to promote your core legal services.
  This is by far one of the most effective forms of marketing for solicitors. You can read more about it by clicking here: PPC for law firms»
• Add live chat managed for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week to your website to dramatically increase the volume of enquiries for your services. Ask me for an introduction if you would like to discover more. Members of my Marketing4Solicitors service receive a discount on the live chat that I recommend.
• Ensure that you tell users what you expect them to do on your website at the foot of every page. This one change alone can bring a larger volume of enquiries to you. Law firm websites can and should be responsible for up to 50% of your new client instructions. If your law firm website is not yet achieving this, whether you are a commercial law firm or a High Street solicitors practice, you really are missing a trick. Download my book below to discover more.
• Obtain an A Board and put it outside of your offices with an offer to use your legal services. They still work.
• Record a video about your services, add it to your website and post a link to it from all of your social media accounts and in your legal email newsletter.
• Send a letter to old clients who have not used your services for a while, making an offer if they come back to you within a set period of time.
• Write a free book which will cover all of the core concerns that your prospects will have about your specialist legal service and then make this available to your clients in your premises and from your website.
• Write a press release, send it to your local papers and follow it up with a telephone call.
• Rewrite that advertisement that you have been running in your local paper for the last few years to focus on only one aspect of your services. Include an offer to use your services with a deadline (no deadline = total recline).
• Offer to run a seminar, webinar or teleseminar for one of your referrers on a topic of interest to their clients. This gives you the chance of winning new clients from their clients.
• Join LinkedIn Groups that contain your target clients and start answering their questions so that you become seen as the ‘go to expert’ in your area of legal expertise.
• Add posters to your office windows promoting your various legal services.
• Email all of your clients and ask them for their help in improving your website (this will ensure that they see your full range of services, reminding them how else you can help them).
• Send out those brochures sitting under the desk in reception with every client and referrer letter leaving your premises.
• Master the incredibly profitable and effective marketing method of SEO for solicitors to have more of your ideal clients finding you at the precise moment in time that they are looking to hire a solicitor.

Clearly, in one short article, I can only cover so much, so my strong advice is that you download my free book below which shows you the most powerful marketing methods for solicitors. If you use at least three of these, you will always have a steady and consistent flow of new clients beating a path to your door.

FREE BOOK: How To Get New Clients For A Law Firm. Click to Download Now!