Do You Need a Marketing Agency for Your Law Firm?

Introduction

Many younger lawyers building their law firms bring along with them their tech-savvy and internet-age sensibilities and think that they don’t need a law firm marketing agency to help them. They think have it all planned. They will put up a website, create a blog, and establish a presence on multiple social media platforms. It seems so easy when you’ve been online and on social media for most of your adult life. But older and more experienced lawyers can always tell their young counterparts: are you sure you have time for that?

Yes, law firm marketing takes time and effort. Often, a dedicated employee or law firm marketing consultant or agency is the key to make it successful. Here are some reasons why that is:

• Any reputable law firm marketing company will have the specialized skills and knowledge from years of experience;
• Hiring a law firm marketing expert will free up precious time for the firm and allow them to focus on building the quality of legal representation that they are doing; and
• Lead generation is faster because of the existing and typically wide network that a law firm marketing agency has.

Some firms choose to employ a full-time marketer rather than outsource the task to a marketing agency. While this is not a bad choice, the better and more cost-effective choice would still be the marketing firm. There would be no need to invest in office furniture, computer equipment, and other overhead expenses that go with having a full-time employee. Aside from these, regular employees need to be given the mandatory benefits, leaves, and incentives.

As the world moves into the third year of the pandemic in 2022, the best law firm marketing companies have become more creative. They are now exploring the use of new media and channels to push for visibility and subsequent lead generation for their clients.

Current Approaches in Law Firm Marketing

While word of mouth and traditional offline marketing are still expected to deliver leads, since the start of the pandemic, more attention has been given to online marketing campaigns. With their limited mobility, people started relying more on websites and social media pages to search for solutions to their legal needs.

Here are some of the strategies and approaches that have been proven to be successful.

1. Optimize your website for mobile and hand-held devices. Many law firms do not realize that their old or existing websites do not display well on mobile phones and tablets. Furthermore, new content must be regularly added to the site. Timely and relevant articles that relate to current public trends will drive traffic to the site, including potential clients.
2. With thousands of websites on the internet, the average attention span of a netizen according to a study conducted by Microsoft in 2015 is 8 seconds. This is why videos will probably catch the attention of netizens better than the usual written words. Videos promoting the law firm may be embedded into the website or uploaded to a YouTube channel.
3. Speaking of channels, apart from YouTube, marketing campaigns may be designed specifically for Facebook, Twitter, and other popular platforms like Instagram. Social media users vary in socio-economic status, gender, and racial profiles. Thus, content must be well-planned and targeted, slowly establishing the firm’s credibility.
4. Client reviews are useful to build trust in the practice. Many law firm marketing agencies solicit these reviews and produce and curate them as articles or videos for their clients’ websites.

Choosing a Law Firm Marketing Agency

Considering the reasons stated above, hiring a digital marketing agency for law firms could be a good investment. But what is the best way to choose one? The key is to find the one that most fits the needs of the firm.

Some of the more popular and well-reviewed online law firm marketing platforms include the following:

• FindLaw offers a lawyer directory as well as a repository of legal information, including articles, news, and statutes;
• Nomos Marketing is currently at the top of search engine results for law firm marketing and specializes in building emotional connections between law firms and clients using technology;
• Nolo leverages 40 years of offline publishing of legal guides, which it has developed into software, targeting solo practitioners and small firms.

Small and newer law firm firms have different needs than bigger and more established ones. Without the benefit of experience and a wide network, small law firms stand to benefit more from online marketing. An online directory may be useful to place the name of the company out there. But such directories are just really a phone book directory using a different channel, the internet. An attorney-client matching online site would actually be more beneficial.

How LegalMatch Can Help

With a client-matching and marketing agency, law firms are given the advantage of convenient and regular lead generation. LegalMatch has built upon a tried-and-tested process of driving potential clients towards a well-organized online intake funnel. Member lawyers can then review case information submitted by the potential clients and decide instantly whether they are the best fit for them. This saves both lawyers and clients time and effort. Using their mobile phones, even as they go about other daily activities, lawyers can rapidly initiate communications and have better chances of converting potential into actual and long-term clients.

Many success stories of lawyers who signed up with LegalMatch attest to this. They cite their appreciation for the steady stream of leads that helped them to stay afloat during this time of crisis, more than any of the other agencies and online platforms that they had subscribed to before. For them, the question of needing a marketing agency has been answered. For this year and well into the future, it might actually be the best decision they made for their business.