Are you making any of these 5 legal marketing mistakes?

Recent data from Lexis Nexis reveals that regulated legal services providers see marketing as the third most important factor in helping to grow their business.[1] But for many firms, investing in marketing can feel like a waste of money when it’s not reaping results. Below, we’ve listed five ways your firm can stop wasting time and money and maximise your marketing success.

1. You’re not making the most of free marketing opportunities

There are a number of legal directories online that will allow you to list your firm for free. Thousands of potential clients use these directories to search for law firms that might suit their needs, so being listed on as many of these as possible could help you win new clients with very little effort or expense. Examples include the Law Society’s Find a Solicitor database or the UK Justice Directory, which has free as well as paid listings options.

2. You’re not effectively hitting your target client base

You may be pouring money into marketing your firm on social media, but it could all be for nothing if your potential clients aren’t Internet users. If you specialise in Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning, for example, it’s likely you’ll be targeting an older generation of clients who might respond better to more traditional marketing channels such as leaflets or other printed media.

3. You’re writing content as a lawyer, not for your clients

You could be writing really interesting, in-depth blogs on pertinent legal issues and wondering why they’re not getting more engagement online. For solicitors, it can be very easy to lapse into ‘legalese’ without stopping to consider whether the client will understand or engage with your content in the same way you, or other lawyers, do. When looking to produce content, try to think instead about how you’d explain something to a client face-to-face, then adopt this kind of language in your writing.

4. You’re not staying in touch with existing clients

Many law firms make the mistake of focusing all their marketing efforts on attracting new clients – but you could be missing a trick if you’re not reaching out to your existing ones. If you’ve assisted a client to purchase their first home, for example, the chances are they might use you again if they decide to move house in the future. The likelihood of them doing so will increase greatly if you make an effort to keep in touch with them in the meantime, perhaps by sending regular email newsletters or promoting relevant services via direct mail. You need to strike a balance though – nobody likes being bombarded!

5. You don’t have a marketing strategy

If you’re just chucking content out there and hoping some will stick, without having any specific goals, then your marketing will never take off. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase your referral rate? Attract new clients? Encourage repeat custom from existing clients? Promote your expertise in a certain practice area? How many new clients or cases will you need to take on to achieve your business objectives? And what marketing channels do you think would work best to get you there? Considering all these things and taking time to write a coherent marketing strategy will help you focus your efforts, so you’re not shooting in the dark.

By Chloe Wingate

[1] www.sra.org.uk/risk/resources/changing-legal-services-market.page