We’re all familiar with billboards and television ads, but law firm marketing is evolving quite fast. There are nearly half a million law firms in the United States, making the competition quite fierce.
However, with the right services, you can secure both short-term and long-term growth for your firm. You’ll just need to find the right services, but don’t worry, we can help with that. Let’s talk about how to find the best law firm marketing services for your needs!
Establish Your Goals and Needs
Your brand message, budget, and goals are all important to understand before choosing a law firm marketing team. What message do you want to portray to potential clients, and what first impressions do you want to make? This has to be uniform throughout your entire marketing strategy, so determine these needs ahead of time.
Generally speaking, small businesses should spend around 8% of their gross revenue on marketing, but law firms are a little different. This is mainly because of the high competition. Depending on your area of practice, you may need to spend anywhere from 2% to 18% of revenue on marketing.
Of course, the goal of most marketing strategies is to generate leads. However, you may have other goals. Increasing brand awareness, traffic to your website, or integrating your marketing strategies are a few examples, but it’s entirely up to your needs.
From there, it may also help to understand your target audience, brand strategy, passive marketing goals, and more. Still, try to understand the essentials before choosing a service.
Determine Which Services You Need
This is essential. You will need to match your service needs with the services offered by the marketing team. Choosing your outlets is an important part of a law firm marketing plan.
For example, do you want to invest in SEO to help build long-term, sustainable, and organic traffic to your website? If you’re in need of fast leads to help grow your firm, you’ll need PPC and possibly an updated website. Either way, you’ll need to find a team that offers these services.
Take a look at your overall marketing strategy and try to find what’s missing. For example, if your PPC ads are driving plenty of traffic, but you aren’t receiving any from your email or social media campaign, that’s worth communicating to a team.
Find the Right Services
Once you’ve determined your needs, it’s time to start looking at marketing companies near you. Law firms should only use marketing teams that have experience working with legal firms, as there are several important distinctions in their marketing needs.
After you’ve found a potential lead, take a look at their services page and see what they offer. Generally, you’ll want to see some type of web design services, as your website affects your entire digital marketing strategy. From there, simply look at the other services and ensure they meet your requirements!
Read Reviews
We’re fortunate enough to live in a time with easy access to online reviews and testimonials. This is a great way to help make informed decisions about what you’re doing with the firm’s finances. However, it’s important to actually read these reviews and not simply look at the “stars.”
Anybody can leave a 5-star review, and anybody can leave a 1-star review. Neither of these will offer any value without context.
Reviews that say “Loved this team” are also not super valuable. If anybody mentions specifics, such as their effective communication or strong results, that’s what you want to see. The more specific, the better.
Let’s assume you’ve found a law firm marketing company that offers the services you need. Look at its online reputation both on and off its website. If nothing stands out as a red flag, then it’s time to give them a call and see what they can offer!
Ask Questions
Give your prospective team a call and try to understand how they will handle your marketing strategy. Ask the questions that you can’t find on their website, such as:
- Do you have references I can contact?
- Do you have experience with my area of practice?
- How long will you expect it to take to see results?
- Does your practice have the capacity for this scale of a project?
- What is your team’s background?
- Who will be working on my strategy?
The list goes on, and you can add any questions you want to know about.
The reason we suggest asking for references is that, while reviews are helpful, they aren’t perfect. You can assume that if someone has hundreds of raving reviews, they’re probably pretty good. However, references allow you to control the questions that you want answered.
When speaking to references, ask questions about the team’s communication, turnaround time, and results. You may also want to know how they were at following branding instructions and more.
If you’ve found a team that offers the right services, answered your questions to your liking, and has a good reputation with previous clients, then it’s time to get started!
Find the Best Law Firm Marketing Services Today
Now that you know how to find the right law firm marketing team, put these tips to use today. Marketing results don’t happen overnight, but with the right team, you can see results in as little as two weeks!
Stay up to date with our latest marketing tips for law firms, and don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or for help with your marketing strategy!
