Before reading this guide have you asked yourself: Are you prepared to market your law firm in 2023? If yes, then learn how to create a robust marketing strategy. Don’t skip it, this article is for you!

The legal industry, from full-fledged law firms to solo practitioners, is a competitive business that involves tons of planning, effort, and resources for its establishment. For a successful start, it’s important to learn how to run a business. Managing a law firm requires a set of skills from being an expert at client intake to internal auditing; administering an office and having expertise in marketing is integral for growth and success. Undoubtedly, legal marketing is a skill a lawyer should learn while planning to start a law firm. To distinguish yourself in the oversaturated legal market, a successful marketing strategy helps you stand out from competitors. Therefore, the most crucial step is documenting your marketing plan, which involves the groundwork for all the marketing tactics you need to initiate. It’s the plan that helps in defining your goals, pinpointing your target customers, and the methods to meet those goals.

Having zero experience in creating a legal marketing plan and its budget can be worrisome for some lawyers, a survey concluded. The American Bar Association report reads that less than half of law firms of all sizes, and only 14% of solo practitioners reported having a marketing budget. For lawyers, legal marketing means driving up the image and attracting more clients to your firm. Since lawyers are only taught law and not marketing in the law schools. We understand that kick-starting legal marketing plans can be overwhelming, and a gruesome process for some lawyers, who are already swamped with a plethora of legal matters and non-billable administrative work.

In this detailed guide, we’ll cover some of the best market practices you may require for developing strategies, budgets, and plans for the legal marketing of your law firm.

‍

‍Creating Marketing Strategies, Tactics, And Planning For Law Firms

The marketing strategy of a law firm shouldn’t be designed randomly, or overly reliant on one method. However, it needs time, effort, and attention to be strategic and based on data-driven experiments. As a law firm, you need to be aware of the difference between strategies, tactics, and plans. You need all three for successful marketing.

Strategies are more general long-term goals that are identified by a law firm to meet and tactics are more specific tools and methods helping you to reach those identified goals. Plans are how you intend to execute your strategies and tactics to meet your goals.  

For instance, you have a goal to attract more visitors to your firm’s website through a strategy focusing on improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To pursue this strategy, your tactic is link building, which is a primary way to increase your search engine ranking. Hence, you plan to take effective steps to hyperlink your articles by acquiring links from other websites.

As your firm grows older, your strategies, tactics, and plans should change over time as part of your legal marketing strategy. Nonetheless, it’s foremost for a marketing strategist to have a clear picture of where you want your firm to be, so they may come up with an effective strategy.

‍

‍

Set A Budget For Legal Marketing

It’s in practice to allocate a marketing budget somewhere between 2% to 18% of gross revenue. A Legal Marketing Association report found that an average of 6.7% of revenue is allocated by law firms towards their marketing initiatives. These numbers depict that there is still room to grow for investment in marketing a law firm.

To create your own firm’s marketing budget, consider the following steps:

• You need to be careful and realistic about spending on effective marketing techniques that can accomplish your three to twelve-month goals identified in your strategy.

• Your legal marketing budget should include the cost of business cards; digital advertisement expenses, website and logo designing, and hosting fees, if the budget allows then avail memberships of the bar associations or other groups. Also, hosting networking meals with clients and contacts of your target market can be a part of it.

‍

Develop A Marketing ToolKit To Grow Practice

Before developing a marketing plan for a law firm, you should consider building a legal marketing toolkit, which should include the following things:

Website: While creating a website, you need to Identify the purpose you want it to serve and customize it as per your needs and your budget. It should at least include your credentials, legal services provided, main practice areas, professional photos of the team members with their intro, and most importantly your contact information. Also, consider writing blogs on topics that are of your interest and focus on your practice areas to attract clients or work you like.

Business cards: Your B-cards should include your main practice areas and contact information. Make sure it looks professional and is printed on high-quality paper.

Advertisements: Consider what types of advertisements are the best way of reaching out to your target market. Perhaps, some authentic and popular publications can be helpful. Be careful: advertising can incur hefty costs but it has the potential to generate good returns on your investment.  

‍

How To Create A Marketing Plan?

Once you have designed the law firm’s marketing strategy and its budget. You want to promote your law firm. But your way of promoting depends on your marketing goals. Your marketing goals should be aligned with the following steps:

• What Legal services are offered by your law firm?
• Niche target market (look for the ideal clients to be serviced)
• Three to six and twelve-month    business development plan and identified goals
• Choose the best marketing tactics to address your target market
• Monthly or Weekly business development activities
• Setting up an initial marketing budget, and changing it with time

‍

Help Us With The Latest Marketing Strategies That Are Set To Take Place In 2023.

We have brought you the best legal marketing strategies and tactics that we recommend our clients to focus on in 2022.

Perhaps, you may have better ideas for legal marketing strategies that can help our clients.  

We’d love to hear about them. Email us and let us know!