Legal Marketing – A Primer
When marketing your law practice, your success in increasing traffic is determined by your ability to provide valuable services to existing customers, and communicate that value to prospects. This means you need to have an open dialogue with your customers and be tuned in to your market. Here is a full primer to educate you on the matter of legal marketing, so that you can build a campaign that works and drives customer traffic to your business.
1. Have a measurement system in place
In order to be effective in marketing, you need to have a way to track the performance of your efforts. This can be as simple as plugging Google Analytics into your website to track traffic, or more advanced methods, such as having an information capture when new customers come in so you can learn how they heard about you. Without measuring, you have no way to know where you are, what to do next, or if what you are doing is working. You need to have some sort of feedback system in place before you even begin a campaign.
2. Create value and authority
The best form of marketing is completely organic. You provide excellent service to a client, they tell all of their friends and family about their incredible experience, and suddenly you have two or three new clients knocking on your door. A great way to build this kind of branding leverage is to provide incredible value to your prospects and customers. Be willing to give away something, even if only information, for free. Volunteer to speak at local clubs and business organizations, or write informative articles and blog posts. Try to give your clients value before you have even met them.
3. Meet your prospects where they are
Marketing is not rocket science. It is simply communicating with your market, the people who are willing and able to purchase your products and services. Technology has exponentially increased the avenues by which you can accomplish this goal. Invest in marketing through multiple mediums. For instance, you can build and optimize your Website, use social media to reach your customers, or engage in direct mail campaigns. There are many different ways to reach your customers, find out which work best for your business.
4. Use feedback to readjust
Marketing, is in many ways as much science as it is art. That is why it is so important that you measure and record customer responses. With every campaign, you are essentially performing a social experiment, and measuring how people respond to it.
Measure the customer response to every marketing initiative you execute. Pay close attention to how, where, and when you execute each ad, email, or direct mail campaign, and attempt to measure the traffic generated from each. Using the information you collect, experiment with different campaigns to see what is the most effective in terms of cost and return on investment. Since there are infinite opportunities for marketing, you can constantly try new things and refine your approach.