Many law firms have found themselves introducing concepts and policies outside their areas of jurisdiction, not because they wanted to but they are acting in response to the present competitive market. Learning the acts of being a law firm change agent can however help in bringing success to your law firm as well as your career in so many ways. Sales and service professionals know what they lack in a law firm but they are either not prepared to handle such problems or they are simply not aware of the kind of solutions they will give.
Effective law firm marketing and change agents will possess some qualities which will actually make them prepare for making such positive changes in their law firms and such qualities include; Strategic thinking and staging of law firm’s priorities, A strong work ethic, abilities to be patient in helping a law firm achieves its aims and objectives, Abilities to identify and understand the multiple perspectives existing in a law firm and ability to energize others and build a consensus with others. When an attorney possess these qualities then he or she can proceed and act as a law firm change agent and actualize his firm’s law firm marketing ideals for the general development of the firm.
There are several methodologies an efficient law firm change agent should employ in order to bring the right changes to a law firm. He must be able to establish an early and critical partnership with key leaders both within the law firm and outside, he must be able to identify the issues and challenges related to any objective, he must be able to identify the needs of the law firm as an organization and then needs of the individual staffs and clients, He should be able to communicate effectively, his plans and objectives alongside his visions and plans for the law firm and the clients, He must be able to develop a technical and systematic step-by-step mechanism for achieving the law firm goals, and he must be able to measure and communicate the results of his actions.
It is essential to make small and large changes to the policies in a law firm marketing strategy and share this result with other attorneys within the organization in order to convince them that you are indeed an agent of positive changes in the law firm. Many law firms are stocked to the successful marketing strategies of the past and they are not aware that newer challenges are being created on daily basis. A change is often the most needed law firm marketing strategy especially in periods of crisis, a law firm that is stocked to a failing marketing strategy will not be able to make any meaning changes when the need arises.
As a matter of fact, record keeping including database records are also essential when making necessary changes in a law firm marketing plan. This is important to keep records of market marketing successes and failures to make a much more ideal plan.
The keys to a successful law firm marketing strategies lie in the ability of a law firm to convince potential clients about its readiness to help them on their specific legal problems in a unique style. When it comes to the use of such marketing strategies, it is ideal to ensure that some key main marketing areas are focused upon. Domain name purchase{ especially if your law firm is operating or starting off a law firm website for the first time}, Search engine submissions, and Keyword optimized law firm website pages which should also include standard SEM audits to review performance of the law firm website are some of the keys to a successful law firm marketing strategy.
Putting legal information on the web should be aimed at satisfying the curiosity of individuals who are looking for law firms with great reputation and special abilities to handle their peculiar cases. Aside this special abilities, a law firm is expected to have a unique market differentiator, and must be located close to the potential client. A good law firm optimization strategy on the internet will draw qualified traffic from different parts of the world just like submission to top search engines will continue to yield positive feedbacks for a law firm.
The four major aspects of law firm Search Engine Marketing{ SEM} solutions include; Keyword research, law firm website Performance monitoring, Search engine submissions and a perfect law firm web design. Keyword research is a tool in law firm SEM strategy which involves the use of the most prominent law firm marketing keywords which will generate the widest traffic for a law firm on the web. It involves the identification of the right keyword phrases which are carefully crafted into law firm web contents . The use of the most popular keywords on your law firm website will ensure that your law firm website motivates potential clients in contacting you. You can make use of free keyword research tools online for this purpose.
Search engine submissions involves all forms of Search engine optimization techniques that will launch a website to the top of search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the likes. Search engines often change their mode of operation and ranking and search engine experts must follow this trend to ensure that law firm websites remain at the top despite the varying conditions used by these search engines in ranking websites. Search engine submission will also include the periodic evaluation of a law firm website contents{ this includes the updating of web contents and checking out for broken links, damaged files }. Search engine submission ensures that a website remains valuable online at all times.
Performance monitoring is the last stage in law firm marketing or SEM. It is a constant thing to continuously monitoring the performance of a law firm search engine on the internet . A hosted web analytics solution for instance is used to analyze visitors data on a law firm website . The monitoring of visitors data will ensure that you have a knowledge of the particular location from which your most valuable traffic are coming from. Performance monitoring ensures that you keep your law firm marketing strategies effective online.
Identifying where to start your law firm marketing strategies especially when identifying the right clients within a specified market often becomes difficult for most law firms. A good contact list is the one of the most potent tools for marketing and selling efforts . You contact lists include the names, addresses and any other contact information of people you have met, those you know and those you are about meeting. Such categories of people are potential clients, prospects and good referral source and they include; Friends, families, neighbours, Other lawyers, communities, religious organizations, acquaintances, charity organizations , school mates from college, high school or universities, and Business people.
You need to capture as many information on your prospects as possible { emails, phone numbers and addresses are most critical}. Do not forget the situation that brought you and the contacts together and how well you were able to related with them on your first meeting especially if they were introduced to you by another individual. Categorizing your prospects as clients, referral sources and prospects is one of the best possible ways you can memorize them. You must invest your time in organizing your contact lists to help you with making references when they are needed.
Using your list to identifying prospects is the next step after creating the list. You can do this by identifying which of such contacts have direct and indirect influence on other people and organizations that will benefit your law firm marketing and services. You must be as inclusive as possible in identifying the strength of your individual contacts to help you determine the areas where they will be needed more.
One of the questions often asked is that of How to define the limits of searching for clients. If you are operating a law firm basically with attorneys that specialize in family law for instance, you should streamline your contact lists to those who are able to find prospects, clients and referrals in that area only. You don’t have to be a “jack of all trade”. Depending on a realistic assessment of yourself, attorneys and law firm, you should be able to find out how valuable your referral network can be in helping you find the right market for your law firm products and services. Creating a narrower niche will help your law firm have a firm grip on your targeted market.
To identify a prospect worth pursuing, Lawyers need to streamline the kind of people that will be included in their contacts . Though this might look quite hard to do especially when a law firm has invested time and money in getting all the contacts, it does become difficult removing those contacts that might prove unprofitable to the law firm. Prioritization processes will help you review and build your law firm business and it is important that you stick with people whom you can stay in touch with for a long period of time to come.
One of the most critical step you can take in the integration of your marketing strategy and business development is to have a generally skilled personnel in managing large scale law firm programs and events – an individual who can act as a project manager of your law firm service campaign. Secondly, you will need a public relation expert who can effectively communicate your law firm’s point of view to the appropriate media and analysts. Next you deserve a digital media experts who will help your law firm leverage all Internet channels which include SEO marketing , online law firm marketing and several other law firm advertising channels.
As a larger large law firm, you will need the services of business developers who will sell services covered by your law firm campaign or those that can act as your liaison officers to the broader business development community. Most law firms do not understand the importance of an integrated contact management database in their law firm operations. This database will help your marketing and business development team managers to manage and track their interactions with prospective clients especially during the tenure of the campaign. Doing these things will ensure that the integration of a law firm marketing strategy and its business development ideas are in order and will bring more effective law firm campaign.
It is important to note that if your law firm’s campaign content is weak, such a campaign will naturally become ineffective, opinions based on few facts will make your law firm marketing strategy very weak, but compelling points of view will naturally make an irresistible appeal to your targeted clients. A law firm campaign that has no superior point of view regardless of how well such campaign is packaged will make no meaningful impact in the minds of your targeted audiences. But, if you legal team can create a powerful point of view to promote , then it can develop a consistent and integrated campaign which the bigger professional clients can subscribe unto.
A law firm should understand that professional legal clients will need some high degree of trust before they select a law firm for their legal representations. They know that much is at stake for such a decision maker and his company when selecting the most suitable legal representation. Therefore, professional legal services and sales campaign that can steadily increase trust should poccess some three important phases which will also correspond to the phases that will influence a potential client’s decision. The first phase is that an organization will start to look out for the law firm that can adequately cover a critical situation in its legal demands, secondly , the organization is looking for a law firm that can be an essential part of its own development, and lastly the organization wants a law firm that can permanently take care of its legal needs.
The success of law firm marketing strategy depends on how well a law firm can integrate its marketing strategy with a good business development plan that can adequately take care of its clients needs.
Owners of legal firms can increase their returns on law firm marketing strategies if they can successful get their law firm marketing and business development strategies on the same level and having the same game plan and score card for such partnership. Most law firms are not making much progress in their law firm marketing plan because they are not having their marketing strategies and business development goals on the same developmental plan and they often tend to forget that marketing and business development are the main points for expanding their clients base.
Researches have shown that , when marketing and business development are on the same page, a law firm will have a better competitive advantage. Putting your law firm business development and marketing on the same page will naturally boost your service sales and you will naturally also get bigger and more profitable projects. Before you put your law firm marketing strategies and business development on the same page, you must consider some factors;
You need to see marketing and selling as not independent entities but as integrated strategy which through which marketing and business development will have different but complementary roles to play.
You need to understand how to organize the demand for marketing and business development creation processes in which your prospective clients will always prefer to get the high-cost services and invest in higher stakes in your legal firm
Concentrating your marketing and business development services on fewer professional service will help you emphasize more on your strength and that will protect you from reduction in market exposure if you had focus on all professional aspects of the legal professional.
Having a well research and vigorous insights in law firm marketing strategies will help you redefine the way your target audiences think, . This will help your professional law firm to shape your leads to your advantage.
In creating an ideal marketing and business development goals for your law firm , you need to understand creating demand from one point of view at a time regardless of your marketing and business development plan is essential. When you incorporate such marketing and business plan into one single plan and then focus on one service demand area at a time, you will naturally generate more leads and then more sales rather than focusing on multiple areas the same time and generating fewer results.
You need to understand that collaboration is critical to the survival of your marketing and business development plan. It is more critical especially when you are operating a more complex and multinational law firm. Solving your marketing and business development problems should always start with the creation of multi-disciplinary group that is organized and set-out within a specific campaign.
A successful law firm marketing strategy should include components such as Conducting media relations, Holding meetings with your targeted service buyers and clients, disseminating marketing materials to your potential clients, Holding seminars and presentations among several others.
Many attorneys often think about getting new clients when they are about to sell their products and services, but many of them do underrate the existing clients they have and they do not know that such clients have more greater value when it comes to projecting their law firm services to a wider audience. Experts in legal practices do believe that it is much easier to sell a law firm product or services to people you already know compared to strangers. Many law firms do believe that spending more on hiring business developers , and spending more on their law firm marketing strategies will be the best ways to launch their new services-this might be true to some extent but nothing works better than making use of your existing clients in launching yourself into a bigger market.
One of the first steps you can use in using your existing clients for new prospects is by scheduling periodic meetings with them, asking them about their business needs and how well your legal services have changed their lives positively. This will help you build a stronger relationship with them and at the same time protects you in the face of stiff competition. Remember, in this present competitive market, other law firms are working tirelessly to snatch your best clients from you.
In measuring the progress of your law firm marketing and other strategies, you need to know that there is a much difference between activity and results. Assessing what you have been doing whether it is bringing a significant success to your law firm is very important. Tracking your activities through your client relationship management system{ CRM} is one of the ways of keeping yourself updated.
There are objective and subjective ways of measuring your law firm marketing success. When it comes to subjective measurement of the success your law firm marketing strategies, you might decide to measure the progress in the relationship you have built with existing clients. There are several ways of measuring objectively the success rate of your marketing strategies and that includes;
Conversion rate; this is the number of people who have hired you at one time or the other. Scheduling periodic meetings and numbering them in such meetings is one way of using this tool.
Number of meetings with your targeted contact and taking note of the attendance is also a tool in measuring your marketing success.
Calculating the number of new clients added to your list
Billable and billed hours for a particular client will help you ascertain how well you have legally represented a client
Originations and fee receipts can also help you calculate how much new clients you have gained
The number of new clients and new matters you received should be calculated periodically to ascertain how many new clients you have gotten and how well your marketing strategies are working
Other objective ways of measuring your marketing successes include; proposals, referral rates, clients satisfaction and loyalty , and many more.
Leverage networking is one of the best possible ways of making the most returns on what you invested in your referral networking. Most attorneys do go out seeking for referrals and at the end of the day , they get few people simply because they have not used leverage networking techniques. First of all you need to understand that you can’t catch large number of fishes with a small net. You need to understand how networking can create opportunities for you before seeking out for such referral networks.
You need to understand that networking is not always the use of people but the use of the personal relationships you have with others in increasing your exposure to opportunities and information. Most attorneys are making random contacts with those they believe will work effectively for them on their referral lists however they fail to make follow-ups, most of the people they meet often do not have any client to refer or they don’t have confidence in the attorney to whom they are referring potential clients.
The objectives of law firm referral networking are; Creating an ever-expanding relationship within the networks and potential clients, and gathering information that will be very helpful for your business. Being successful in your leverage marketing means you have to detect those you want to reach, you have successfully figure out those among your referral network that will help you contact such people, You need to ask the primary network members if they know any of your targeted potential clients, you need to have a personal introduction with the leverage contact and establish a relationship with him and have a follow up. When you follow these simple steps you will optimize your law firm referral network marketing to your best advantage.
Expanding your network is one of the major steps you must take in enforcing your leverage referral network. Remember, for each person you add to your network there is a potential of adding more than double the potential clients on your law firm services, your added clients will thus serve as the secondary referral network. Remember to ask members of your secondary referral network for potential clients after you have satisfied their needs- Doing this will help you create chains of referral networks through leverage network marketing. You need to seek out for people with leadership and people-oriented minds who are in professions that expose them to meeting different kinds of people.
As a solo practitioner or a small scale law firm, you know very well that you have lots of responsibilities on your shoulders and without proper management and planning strategies you may find yourself out of business or find yourself struggling with your operations. You will have to handle several issues at a time. You need to understand that a bulk of your revenue generation will depend on how well you can market yourself and your law firm.
Most solo and small scale law firm attorneys are at cross-roads when it comes to marketing. They often rely on running after individual clients to remain in business, they also rely in putting few ads on yellow pages and putting phone calls to their friends and they do rely on such for the constant generation of clients for their law firm practices. This is a step in the right direction but it is ideal for an attorney to understand that a solo legal practitioner cannot survive without collaborating with other law firms { especially the bigger ones}. Bulk of the jobs which successful solo practitioners and small scale law firms get when they start operations often comes from the “remnants” of jobs handled by bigger law firms.
Referral marketing is one of the driving forces that must be used by small scale law firms and solo legal practitioners . A small scale law firm will remain the same if it doesn’t expand its network beyond the initial stage it started from. Referral networking should be optimized in such a way that other attorneys and professionals from different walks of life are actively included and will continue to generate potential clients that will help the small scale law firm grow and expand.
Nobody else needs internet SEO optimization techniques and marketing more than a solo practitioner or small scale law firm. Online SEO optimization puts your law firm at a certain advantage where potential clients can locate you. A proper Internet optimization strategy will make your law firm looks bigger than it is actually and that can help your expand your scope of activities in a relatively short period of time.
Online SEO strategies will also ensure that you include all the components of your law firm on your web pages. You don’t have to spend much on brochures and other paper works to get your law firm noticeable, all you need is to include all information on your web pages and you get noticed.
Executing your law firm marketing strategies is one way of getting your desired rewards. In executing your law firm marketing strategies, you need to define your targeted clients and your practices. The latter comes first . Many lawyers do not define their law firm practices, rather they always want to concentrate on being an expertise in their legal practice area. This however has not lead them to the position they actually desire. Your law firm practice should be defined in terms of the individual clients you meet and not by your own obligations as an attorney-your clients should come first.
Whether you are a solo practitioner operate a larger law firm, you need to identify the area of practice where you hope to meet your client needs. You need to understand that when a client has a problem, it is an individual problem and not a general problem and should be handled individually. It will be ideal to be a specialist in a certain field of practice than handling a generalized legal problem. Hence the best possible way of defining your law firm practices is to focus more on your strength which makes you more perfect in handling some specific issues. When you try to make yourself a generalized expertise, there is a likelihood that you will miss something out when handling several complex cases and that will create a dent on your law firm marketing strategy and your reputation.
Once you have defined your area of expertise the next move you should make is defining your clients. You can’t execute your law firm marketing strategies effectively well without defining the target audiences and potential clients where the marketing strategy will be directed at. Your target demographics should be defined in terms of the composition of the people, their lifestyles, their educational levels, their profession and every other factor that may influence your decision in selecting them as your targeted audiences. Defining your target audience will help you in serving your clients better.
Once you have decided your targeted audiences and practice area, you need to choose the right marketing avenue for your law firm, you must understand that yellow pages are becoming more saturated and it takes a larger space to get noticed in yellow pages, you can choose widely accepted publications instead of such and then combine it with online and media advertising strategies to execute your law firm marketing strategies.
Creating a strategic law firm marketing plan is vital to your success in the competitive market. Many attorneys do not take law firm marketing because they feel they are in an unfamiliar territory and they often believe they have some big clients who will always pay their bills all the time. Many attorneys are always scratching their heads because their phones are not ringing as they have wanted, and when yellow page ads might not be pulling the kind of crowd they want, hence there is a need to work out a substantial law firm marketing strategy that will bring out the best in your law firm.
There is no doubt that offering and excellent service to your clients will cause your law firm to grow automatically. Aside this , it is important for an attorney to understand that the stiff competition is not generated by profession but by the market place. When potential clients have a choice, they will force you to work harder through service delivery and other forms of advertising your law firm and attorneys. You must therefore remain proactive in your approach to service delivery if you are to remain in business for a long time to come.
It is also important for you to know that the traditional attorney marketing approach is passive and reactive. This has caused a lot of attorneys to suffer especially from the market drifts, this means that most attorneys have to depend on the area of legal practices from which they generate a bulk of their profits. Good service is not enough, you need to market yourself effectively for the world to notice you.
If you are managing a larger law firm, you should know that larger law firms have the tendency to get trapped in the market drift especially when they have to rely on few “rainmakers” to cultivate their business, and as their businesses are growing so also are their expenses growing and they keep the pressure on their clients to bring in refer more clients, the problem is that when a prospective client retires or resign , then a chunk of their generated income is lost. This is where a proactive marketing plan comes in, lack of a proactive law firm marketing plan will lead to the collapse of a law firm especially when their dependent clients quit doing business with them.