Marketing for small to medium law firms

Large law firms have entire departments dedicated to online marketing and website content. Smaller firms may rely on a practice manager or senior partners to develop a marketing strategy for the firm. How can smaller firms possibly compete? What can you do to help your firm stand apart from the competition?

First of all, you need to find your position in the marketplace. You probably know the names of your top competitors, but do you know their strategies? Do you regularly look at their websites, check out their events listing, or browse their news, press releases and briefings? How do you stack up against them?

In order to develop an effective marketing strategy, you need to know what you are up against. Here are a few tips on how to find this out:

1. Research your search engine position – First, make a list of the 20 most relevant key phrases for your firm. Both the obvious ones and the not so obvious, for example “law firm Gloucester” and “personal injury claims Gloucester”. Think of how visitors looking for your services would find you. Now make a simple table of those terms, and go to Google UK. Type in each key phrase, and see where your firm ranks, and the top competitors for each key phrase.



2. Investigate social media – Go to the most popular social media platforms, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You may need to log in to your account to find your competitors (if you don't have an account, now is the time to create one using your firm's name). Try and find your competition. Do they have an active Twitter account? How many followers do they have? Do their partners have LinkedIn pages? Does the firm have a page, or a group?



3. Look at their website – You will get the most information on your competition from their website. If they have an events page, how many events per month do they run? If they have a news page, how do they use it? Do they post news frequently? If you see lots of press releases, look on Google for evidence that those are spread through online PR or social media. It might help to make a table or spreadsheet with information on their activities. Do they have a knowledge hub, or a place to feature thought leadership articles? Do their service pages cross link to partner pages and relevant publications?



4. Check out your analytics – You should have Google analytics at the very least on your firm's site, or some type of web analytics. If you do not, get that sorted through your web management now. If you have this, look at what is referring traffic to your website, search engines, emails, external sites, forums, blogs or social networks. Look at the bounce rate for each source (high bounce rates indicate poor performance from a referrer). Look at your top content, and the keywords people are using to find your firm.
   

Once you have all of this information (what our agency calls keyword research and competitor analysis), then you can begin to formulate a strategy. Ironically, the top result for “law firm Gloucester” is a firm with six partners, and the top results for “personal injury claims Gloucester” are all firms with between 12 and 14 partners. These are not massive global firms, but as the areas or cities get bigger, so do the firms.

If you did not rank in the top 10 search results for any of the 20 key phrases you chose, then you will need to include some form of search marketing in your plan. Paid search, or pay per click, can give you immediate visibility and instant results. You pay for those results in auction style bidding, where cost and placement is dependent on the competitiveness of the key phrases. Organic, or natural search, typically takes months to achieve, and is more of a medium or long term strategy.

Social media is an inexpensive way to engage and interact with potential clients. Asking your partners to create LinkedIn profiles will enhance their visibility in search engines, and allow them to create a network of clients and prospects. Forums and blogs allow you to showcase your knowledge, and to reach those people who are seeking advice in the decision making process. Forums tend to work well with subjects like divorce, immigration, or personal injury, but also for high profile topics such as the recent Eurostar fiasco in the run up to Christmas (where Russell Jones & Walker agreed to work on a “no win no fee” basis for people stranded by Eurostar).

Did you spot areas on your own site that your competitors have and you don't? If you are only running 1 event a month, and your top competitor is running 4, think about how you can include more events for your firm. Breakfast briefings, conferences your partners are speaking at, seminars, webinars, and mock employment tribunals are all very good ways to boost your events. If you don't feel confident doing more events yourself, why not take a page from the big firms and sponsor a few events? Charity or sporting events are great ways to help the community, gain valuable links to your website, and show support to worthy causes. These can then be put on your events page under “sponsorship”. It gives clients and staff a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Finally, from your website analytics, I will bet that what you found was that over half your traffic comes from search engines, that most of it is brand or partner driven, and that your top pages are your home page, your partner pages, and maybe a few of your service pages or news/events page. Ensure your pages are cross linked, and include a content strategy into your marketing strategy, so that clients and prospective clients can read articles showcasing your expertise, recent cases for the firm, up to date events information, and current partner bios (when were these last updated? They are some of the most important information on your site).

Resources:

Law.com Small Firm Marketing

Legal Marketing Services

Web Trends from the Top 100 Law Firms

DIY Marketing for Small Law Firms

Search marketing for solicitors

The Importance of Being Visible

Many solicitors don't realise that it takes roughly seven touch points to acquire new business. These can include meeting prospective clients at an event or seminar, your website, social networks like Facebook or Twitter, direct mail, print ads or emails. All of these factor into the decision making process, although some may be weighted more than others.

One of the most effective ways of using one touchpoint is by optimising your website for search engines. This puts you in front of potential clients who are actively seeking advice on topics, help with problems, or solicitor services. They are already looking, but can you be found? If you aren't visible, chances are a bigger firm, with more resources, will be.

Search marketing includes both short and long term elements. In the short term, paid advertising through Google Adwords or Microsoft adCenter can get you immediate results. You bid auction style for placement, create the ad copy, choose the key phrases that are relevant to your practice, and set the geographic locations and times the ads can run. Niche phrases are usually cheaper, and perform better than more generic key phrases. The key to paid advertising is relevance, a relevant key phrase should match the ad being shown. This in turn should lead to a landing page that matches the visitor's query.

Over the long term, organic (natural) search marketing includes optimising your website title tags and meta data, ensuring your URLs are search friendly, making your content engaging, cross linking relevant service pages with case studies, white papers, articles, and partner profiles, and getting links to your site from other websites. This is an ongoing process, which needs to be continued over a longer period of time for the best results. Six months or more should be enough to gain some visibility and increased traffic.

Online marketing is measurable and quantifiable. Because search algorithms change frequently, and new competitors appear in the top spaces over time, it is an activity that does require either consistent effort on your part, or an agency who is experienced in search marketing.

You spend money designing and developing your website, but it's little more than an online brochure unless people can find it. Search marketing is a fairly inexpensive way to generate traffic and leads to your site, but it should be in the context of an overall marketing plan that includes all touchpoints - email, social networks, social media, events, seminars, and face to face contact.

Resources:

Legal marketing services

Best law firm websites

Real lawyers have blogs

50 ways to market your practice