Marketing – Page 4 – Carmine Cloak

How to Increase Law Firm Brand Awareness

August 16, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Branding Marketing

Introduction

Brand awareness is a metric that shows the level of recognition of a brand or service among consumers. The greater the brand awareness, the more audiences will be familiar with your logo, messaging and services. Establishing a law firm’s brand awareness is valuable when marketing and promoting your law business. It’s important as it helps you reach a new audience and improve your marketing outreach.

If you can build a law firm brand awareness among your target demographic, you can help your brand become top-of-mind when these consumers are ready to make a purchase. Since customers already recognize your brand, they will be more likely to buy from your business than a competitor’s business.

The benefits of brand awareness

It can have tangible effects on your business performance

This will have a further impact on different layers of your organization, starting with marketing to design and customer service.

Brand awareness campaigns help you build consumers’ trust

Once a consumer bonds to your brand, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases. Brand awareness establishes that brand trust. As a result, customer loyalty has a direct impact on your revenue.

Brand awareness grows brand equity

Brand equity measures a brand’s value and is directly correlated with brand awareness. Positive associations can raise your brand equity. That’s why it’s important to build positive law firm brand awareness. Brand equity describes a brand’s value, which is determined by consumer experiences with and overall perception of the brand.

It makes marketing easy

Brand awareness enforces associations. The brand name connects actions or events with certain products or services. As a result, it is subconsciously encouraging us to replace common words with branded terms.

Brand awareness helps you reach your target audience

Reaching the right people at the right time is the key to success. Brand awareness is an important factor not only in brand building but also in increasing your consumers base. Well-known brands can spend less on marketing and still make sales and increase their consumers base.

How to Establish Brand Awareness

Strong law firm brand awareness is a result of multiple simultaneous efforts that extend beyond trying to get paying customers. Here are some ways to establish a solid brand awareness foundation and make a lasting impact with your audience:

Give your brand a personality

To leave an impact on your audience, you’ve got to define yourself as more than a company that sells services. When you market your services with personality, you will boost your law firm brand awareness. Treating your brand as a person and defining your narrative are the first steps to giving your brand a personality.
The next step would be infusing this personality into your marketing efforts. This is a great strategy when mixing your traditional marketing campaigns with brand awareness campaigns.

Tell a story

Crafting a narrative around your brand humanizes it and gives it depth. It can be the narrative of your founder, the tale of how your business had its first product idea or the story of how your small business made it in this big world. Authenticity is impactful, and it can lead to a big boost in law firm brand awareness. Storytelling is an incredibly powerful marketing tactic, whether you’re marketing services or promoting your brand.

Socialize

Research shows that over 50% of brand reputation comes from online sociability. Being social leads to greater law firm awareness. Therefore, post on social media about things unrelated to your services. Interact with your audience by asking questions, commenting on posts, or retweeting or sharing content you like. Treat your social accounts as if you were a person trying to make friends, not a business trying to make money.

Make sharing easy

Make it easy for your audience to share your content. This could be blog posts, sponsored content, videos, social media posts, or product pages. Word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective way to establish trust and familiarity among customers. If someone sees that a friend or family member is recommending your service, they’ll take notice of that service- alongside your brand.

How To Build Online Brand Awareness

Guest blog for other sites

Research blogs and publications in your industry via Google and social channels. A quick search of education guest blogging brings you this list of education blogs that accept guest posts. Or use platforms like MyBlogGuest and the collection of 500+ sites from BuzzBlogger to aid in your quest.

Make a list of the guest-post accepting sites that your brand is a good fit for. Check each site’s blog content, comments sections and social channels to understand their audiences and how they engage with the content. Make sure that you can provide content that fits into their offerings, while also offering a fresh take.

Brainstorm ideas for blog posts that can include your unique and helpful insights. Make sure they haven’t been covered on the sites you reach out to. Email each site with your pitches according to their submission guidelines. Use these ideas to gain access to an entirely new audience and let the publication you guest blog on benefit from free content from a new industry voice.

Improve your SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to a brand’s exposure online. A well-optimized website will rank high on Google, so the users are more likely to click on it. It involves getting your content seen by search engines like Google and placed on search results pages. Research keywords in your industry and content categories. Keywords are the words that your target audiences are searching to find companies like yours.

When optimizing for brand awareness, focus on incorporating informational keywords into your content. Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz Keyword Researcher to find the most important keywords in your industry and among your competitors. Afterward, build content around these keywords. Incorporate your keywords into the headline, body, and image titles of your post.

Start a Referral Program

Referral programs are a great way to spread the word about your brand or service around. A well-executed referral program can bring substantial value to your company and boost your brand recognition. In addition, it can improve your marketing efforts and create a foundation for your brand.

Referral programs can help you reach new customers that would otherwise be unaware of your product. One way to achieve a law firm’s brand awareness through word-of-mouth marketing is to help your loyal customers be your best advocates. A referral program not only increases your reach and the number of people who know your name but also brings that awareness from a source that people trust. 49% of U.S. consumers say friends and family are their top sources of brand awareness.

In programs like that, your existing customers and influential people from your industry niche, encourage others to make a purchase. Once people buy your product or service from their recommendation, they receive a commission, and you get new customers.

Optimize your social media channels

Use social media to gain a law firm’s brand awareness. Social channels make it easy to share content, which means you are reaching a new audience almost effortlessly. However, your message needs to stand out from the crowd to get recognition from your potential customers and existing audience.

The great thing about social media is that they give you a well-functioning platform to broadcast your message. All you have to do is send the right message to the right people at the right time. For example, a social media contest is a perfect way to reach new followers. Ask your followers to tag, share or re-post your content in exchange for a chance to win a prize.

Start a podcast

According to the researches, more than one-third of Americans 12 and older listen to podcasts regularly. Consequently, podcasts play an important role in marketing efforts.

Add a specific value to your consumers’ lives by starting a podcast. Podcasts provide a way to connect with your audience authentically. Instead of blatantly promoting your product or service, podcasts give you the opportunity to educate, inform, entertain or advise your audience and build trust by doing so.

When creating a podcast choose podcast topics that relate to your overall brand message or services. Doing this will help you relate the podcast back to your brand and continue to raise awareness. For example, interview coworkers or film an interesting behind scenes of a client’s case.

Consider which areas your team may be experts in or outside experts you could leverage, and create a piece of content that not only adds value to listeners’ lives but when branded correctly, can work wonders for your brand awareness.

Boosting your law firm brand awareness through campaigns gives you a chance to dabble in marketing and advertising opportunities you’d otherwise not invest in. Consequently meaning new, powerful ways to connect with your audience.

Give something away for free

Give your audience a taste of what you have to offer without the commitment of payment. By giving them access to your offerings can deepen their awareness. Content provides an amazing way to authentically connect with your audience while getting your brand name in front of people. You can create videos, infographics, podcasts, blogs and downloadable guides. For example, offer a subscription service in the form of a free trial.

Use native advertising

Employing native advertising is one of the most effective ways of increasing brand awareness and winning over new customers. Native ads are non-intrusive, easily scalable, and customizable with relevant messaging. You can use a content discovery platform, like Taboola, to increase brand awareness through native advertising. Taboola distributes your branded content — such as articles and videos — across top publisher sites on the open web. In this way, you can launch niche marketing strategies that reach your target audiences and fill the top of the funnel with people who are already interested in your content and products.

Run Social Media ads

By running brand-awareness ads, you can reach new people who might be interested in your client’s brand and even target audiences based on specific behaviors and preferences. On Facebook and Instagram, you can launch brand-awareness campaigns that improve your reach and recall. Furthermore, you can target audiences by categories such as age, location, gender, interest and device. On Twitter, you can launch brand-awareness campaigns by promoting your tweets and paying for impressions instead of engagements. You set your bid amount per 1,000 impressions and Twitter optimizes your campaign for the best possible reach.

Partner with influencers

If you’re having trouble connecting with your target audience, reach them through their favorite creators and influencers. Consumers trust recommendations from influencers more than traditional advertisements or even celebrity endorsements.

Start an influencer marketing campaign by finding influencers in relevant industries and reaching out with partnership ideas. You can do this by simply searching relevant keywords on social channels and locating posts for influencer content.

In addition, search #sponsored hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to see which influencers are already working with brands in your industry. Furthermore, use influencer-marketing platforms like Upfluence and Traackr. Once you find the right influencers, you can gift them free products in exchange for reviews.

Influencers can help you reach consumers, spread your content and build brand awareness, but also legitimize your message with their authority. When choosing influencers, make sure they align with your brand’s core values and have the same target audience as you do.

Sponsor events

Sponsoring events is an effective way to get your brand in front of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people that likely fall into your target audience. From banners to flyers to water bottles, your brand name will be everywhere if you sponsor an event. Sponsoring an event also allows you to pin your brand name on an event that matches your personality, interests, and passions. Meaning consumers will then associate your brand with that event and its aesthetic and character.

Use media listening

The critical element of increasing brand awareness is to be aware of what your potential customers expect from your brand. Building long-lasting relationships will help your brand thrive in an extremely competitive world. When it comes to media monitoring for brand awareness, you should set up at least two projects. One for monitoring the mentions regarding your brand and services. The second project will monitor topics concerning your industry niche.

Use customers’ testimonials

Customer testimonials are a great way to build brand awareness:

They help establish your credibility as a brand
Moreover, they drive sales
They are highly effective and free ads

There’s nothing more convincing than reading success stories from other satisfied clients. Therefore, don’t forget to include your client’s testimonial on your law website!

Implement remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns are paid marketing campaigns where your target audience has already visited your website but left before converting. This is a pro approach to building a law firm brand awareness. The premise behind this technique is that it’s easier to boost your awareness among the people who have already heard about your brand.

The main aim of a remarketing campaign for brand awareness is not to broadcast your message to new audiences but to strengthen your message among your existing potential client base. It takes several touchpoints to convert a client, and a remarketing ad is a perfect one.

Partner with local businesses

Building a global business can be your dream, but you might get more conversion if you focus on the local market, at least in the beginning. Partnering with local businesses to build brand awareness works similarly to cooperating with influencers. You can expose your products to new audiences, which will tremendously help with increasing the awareness of your brand.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

You can divide brand awareness metrics into two subgroups: quantitative and qualitative brand awareness metrics. Measuring brand awareness will depend on your brand awareness objectives. If you are looking to increase brand awareness through native advertising, track metrics such as impressions, click-through rates, and website traffic. If you’re looking to build brand awareness on social media, track analytics contained on each individual social platform.

Most importantly, you’ll want to consistently monitor your campaigns so you can optimize according to people’s interests and behaviors and successfully increase brand awareness among your target audience. Once you measure the campaign, you will know the levels of brand recognition and will know how to improve them.

These metrics will help you understand your brand awareness among your audience and the general public. Tracking these measures will help influence campaigns and stay connected to your audience. Quantitative brand awareness metrics will give you a general understanding of your brand perception online. Qualitative can help you find out how many people are aware of your brand.

Quantitative Brand Awareness Measures

Direct traffic

Direct traffic shows you the number of people who typed in the URL of your website directly into the search bar. Moreover, this number will tell you how much your people visited your website. This is an important metric, as many consumers today discover brands through social media, advertisements, or by typing in keywords related to your brand or product. It’s a valuable metric since it tells you how many people know about your brand and are looking specifically for you.

Site traffic numbers

This number will tell you how much of the general internet population is checking out your content and spending time with your brand.

Social engagement

Engagement can refer to followers, likes, shares, comments, and more. It’s a reflection of how many people are aware of your brand and socialize with it, as well as how impactful your content is. For instance, sites like Sparktoro can give you a specific score for your Twitter impact.

Qualitative Brand Awareness Measures

Searching Google and setting up Google Alerts

Doing this informs you how your brand is being talked about online. In short, it will alert you to any news or mentions by the third-party press.

Social listening

Social listening is monitoring social media management tools for organic mentions and engagement. For instance, who’s tagging your brand, mentioning it in comments, or using your hashtag in their posts.

Running brand awareness surveys

This process involves getting direct feedback from your customers. You can collect valuable information from your audience, for instance – what they think of your brand. You can release surveys through SurveyMonkey or TypeForm and share them on social media or directly with your customers.

Conclusion

Creating brand awareness is crucial not only for start-ups but also for companies with an established position in the market. Brand awareness gives you an opportunity to show your services to a brand new audience. It is a powerful concept that can have a major impact on your marketing efforts, consumer perception and revenue. Therefore, brand awareness marketing should be an essential part of your marketing strategy.

Once you increase law firm brand awareness, you will see an increase in your brand’s core business metrics. Follow these techniques for establishing and building awareness for your brand. Consequently, you will achieve your law firm standout. In other words- you’ll find yourself with a loyal audience that recognizes your brand among competitors. And besides that, choose your products time and time again and recommends their friends and family do the same.

SEO Tips for Lawyers and Law Firms

August 12, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing SEO

Introduction

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of driving more visitors to your law firm’s website by increasing your website’s position in search engine results pages.

SEO tips for lawyers involve strategies, techniques and tactics that help attract more prospective clients to your law firm’s website. It is done by obtaining first-page ranking positions in search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. In other words, if your law firm appears near the top of search engine results, you’ll get more visitors to your website. When visitors click on your link within the organic results, they’ll reach out to you to learn more about your services.

SEO tips for lawyers will help you rank higher on search engine results pages for relevant queries. As a result, it will make it easier for potential clients to find you. In addition, you’ll generate more organic website traffic, build your authority and increase your conversions.

Hence, a website should be the focus of your search engine optimization strategies. Furthermore, it should serve as the representation of your work as well as the promotion of your law brand. Especially because 70% of law firms land new cases through their website. According to statistics, the first position in Google search results carries a 31.7% click-through rate.

Here are a few legal SEO tips for lawyers to help you stand out in the crowd:

1. Find Your Law Firm’s Keywords

SEO tips for lawyers start with determining the keywords you want to rank for on search engines. Therefore, start with your main practice areas and widen your keywords to related terms. Use SEO tools such as Moz and Semrush to help you identify, track and optimize your keywords. In addition, Google Trends can help you track keyword search trends over specific periods for free. Moreover, Answer the Public can help identify relevant searches and questions.

2. Incorporate Keywords Into Your Website

Once you’ve determined keywords with high search and low competition, incorporate them into your existing content. To help potential clients read your content, make it clear which keyword is targeted for each page on your law firm’s website. For example, your home page, landing pages and additional content such as blog posts. To fully optimize your content for keywords, place your keywords in the following areas of the page:

Title tag
Description tag
Headings and subheadings
Evenly throughout paragraphs
The web page’s URL

Furthermore, consider making separate landing pages for different keywords or phrases. This tactic helps you increase your visibility by providing more in-depth and beneficial information for each search query. Also, be sure to incorporate local keywords to let people in your service area find you more easily. If you incorporate your location in your web content it will be more likely to show up on a “near me” search.

3. Create Useful Content

Adding consistent, fresh, and relevant content helps to boost your rankings. By providing useful information that showcases your expertise in your practice areas you improve the overall user experience. Blog posts are opportunities to dive deeper into related keywords used on your homepage and landing pages.

They let you cover a variety of search queries, increase your online visibility and help you build your authority in the field. When you post valuable content, potential clients will have an easier time finding you online and be more willing to trust your law firm.

Your content needs to answer the inquiry or search term used by the user. Therefore, include specific content on your website that tells your potential client about your practice area. Furthermore, provide preliminary answers to the questions a potential client would have.

Search engines are looking to send users to the best place possible to find answers to their questions. So if Google thinks your site is likely to fulfill the user’s intent, it is more likely to feature it higher up in its search engine results pages. Accordingly, include clear descriptions of your services, transparent pricing, or customer testimonials.

Finally, make sure that the content and answers on your site are up-to-date. The words and other types of content, such as images, are on the pages of the website of your law firm. Ensuring your website has high-quality content will improve user experience and will contribute to improving your website’s search engine rankings.

4. Include Title Tags and Metadata

Title tags and metadata provide hints to potential clients about what your webpage is about. They also tell search engine algorithms about your site so they know how to rank you. The title tag is an HTML element that and denotes the title of your webpage. Title tags show up in search engine result pages (SERPs) so including high-volume keywords is a good way to increase visibility. The metadata provides details about your web page to search engines. Be sure to incorporate keywords into both.

5. Include Links

Backlinks are the referral links placed on other websites that point traffic to your website. Internal links and external backlinks are crucial for SEO. Internal links make it easier for users to navigate your website to find the information they need. External links help to build your domain authority and make you more visible. One way to build quality backlinks involve guest posting and collaborating with other businesses. Other examples include:

Legal directories, like Avvo
Local directories, like Google My Business
Social profiles, like Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Shares of your content on social media
Reviews and endorsements on other websites
Offer free legal expertise or analysis to a local media organization
Write interesting blog articles related to your legal expertise, and ask your network to share them
Present at local events

6. Provide Good User Experience

The first important factor for technical SEO for lawyers includes ensuring your website loads fast (aim for under 2.5 seconds). And second to renders well across a variety of screen sizes, especially mobile phones. Therefore, make sure your website is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive to use. There are free tools you can use to test mobile-friendliness and loading speeds to ensure you’re providing the best possible experience for your visitors.

7. Complete Your Google My Business Page

Completing your Google My Business (GMB) page also helps to boost your visibility. Your GMB page provides all the essential information about your business to potential clients and Google’s search engine algorithms. Along with contact details, location information, and hours of operation, you can also post photographs to humanize your law firm, list your specific areas of practice, and include other pertinent information.

8. Make your law firm website easy to navigate

Make sure your law firm’s website is easy for a person to navigate. As a result, Google will be able to find all your pages and understand what those pages are about. Create simple and easy-to-use menus, and link to other important pages on your website frequently.

How to implement SEO tips for lawyers

Start by reading the Moz beginner’s guide to SEO and Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
Write down all of your law firm’s specialities, services and locations
Do keyword research
Write and publish content for your website
Add your keywords in the title, meta description, and headings
Publish each summary on a separate page of your website
Use website calls-to-action to show clients where to go to book your services
Make sure your law firm website is technically set up when you start implementing SEO tips for lawyers
Build your presence and links
Claim all of your online profiles, especially Google My Business
Invest in a tool like Brightlocal to automate submitting your law firm to various local directories
Encourage your customers to leave reviews
Keep your content up to date by blogging and updating your website pages monthly
Pick at least five backlink building projects and aim for five new links every month

Conclusion

As shown above, SEO tips for lawyers are an essential component of a basic marketing strategy for law firms. Law firm SEO or optimizing an attorney’s website for search engines is crucial for any law firm marketing strategy. With SEO tips for lawyers, law firms can achieve better Google search ranking positions. They are, therefore, more likely to receive more cases from their desired practice area. Simply put, prospective clients use organic search to find and hire law firms.

If you’re a law firm looking to grow your business, organic search traffic is a significant marketing channel to focus on. According to the National Law Review, 96% of legal consumers looked for a lawyer via an online search. And 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action. As a result, besides increasing your visibility, SEO will make it easier for potential clients to find your office over your competition.

For a start, follow these useful SEO tips for lawyers in order to boost your online presence and overall business. However, there is another way to implement SEO and get your law firm’s website to rank well in the search engine result pages. You can hire a law firm SEO expert who has experience in SEO for law firms to help you out.

Read about the top legal directories in 2021.

Top Legal Directories for Lawyers [Guide + List]

August 11, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing

Introduction

In short, a legal directory is a searchable database of law firms and lawyers. The directory serves as an online source to locate a law firm near a person’s location. For example, individuals may search by practice area, location and other characteristics. Claiming your presence in the online legal directories can help your law firm rank higher. Both in local and organic search results.

In fact, reputable legal directories have high PageRank or Page Authority scores. Hence, it makes it more likely that your law firm shows up in local searches in your practice area. By claiming profiles on these websites, you can establish yourself as an authority in your field. Ultimately, this will help your law firm gain more exposure.

How to increase SEO rankings and online presence

1. FIND RELEVANT LEGAL DIRECTORIES

To determine which legal directories you want to target and claim profiles on:

Read guides that provide you with the information you need
Do a Google search for more localized or industry-specific directories
Take a look at the suggested lists below

2. CLAIM FREE LAWYER DIRECTORY LISTINGS

Claim all of your free profiles on the top lawyer directories, listed below. Furthermore, ensure that the information is correct and consistent. Moreover, claim profiles for your practice in your specific legal area. Finally, don’t forget to claim your free profiles on state bar websites and legal associations.

3. CHOOSE LEGAL DIRECTORIES WITH FEATURES THAT BENEFIT YOU

Some legal directories may charge for extra features. These features can help you create backlinks and increase SEO rankings. Hence, carefully analyze and compare each directory and its cost. Afterward, determine which directories have the features that benefit your law firm most.

Features that make a legal directory more desirable include:

A trusted and reliable source of legal information
High traffic and domain authority
Features that attract potential leads such as free Q&As, legal articles and more
Websites that are user friendly
Ability to add content to your profile with backlinks to your website

4. INCLUDE ONLINE REVIEWS

Reviews are one of the most influential factors in choosing a law firm or an attorney. In fact, 89% of people use reviews as a tool to help them find a service. The statistics show that:

Three-quarters of web users trust online reviews just as much as input from people they know.
A law firm with 5 reviews is 270% more likely to be reached by a prospective client.

The best reviews give specific examples of how the law firm assisted the client. Hence, focus on exceptional customer services to obtain valuable customer reviews. Finally, respond to reviews to show you care.

5. BE CONSISTENT

Consistency is crucial to increase SEO ranking. Therefore, your firm’s NAP information must be identical on every profile. In addition, your law firm’s details and social medial URLs should all be identical too.

Hence, list the basic information on each of your legal directory profiles. For instance, your law firm’s name, address and telephone number. However, many of the top legal directories allow lawyers to add additional information to their profiles. For example:

Law firm name
Law firm description (i.e., number of attorneys, year established, etc.)
Contact information (i.e., address and phone number, fax number, email address, etc.)
The physical location
List of attorneys
Fields of practice
Website URL
Social medial URLs
Reviews and client testimonials
Awards and recognitions
Photos and logos
Other information and links

Finally, remember that all details must be accurate and consistent. When updating information, ensure to update all profiles and websites accordingly.

Top 10 Legal Directories

These top legal directors are well-known for locating local lawyers and law firms. Furthermore, they are also respected sources for legal information.

Top Personal Injury Directories

There is a great deal of competition among personal injury law firms. Listing your law firm on a personal injury directory can boost your online presence. Some of the top personal injury legal directories include:

Most importantly, adjust this listing by listing your firm with the top legal directories.

Top Criminal Defense Directories

Individuals seeking top criminal defense law firms might turn to directories that only feature criminal lawyers, such as:

In addition, make sure to appear in your local and state criminal bar association’s directory.

Top Family Law Directories

Family law includes all matters related to marriage and families. Some of the top family law directories include:

However, always research the directory to determine its ranking and reputation. Listing your profile on a low ranking or poor reputation directory could hurt your online rankings.

HOW TO IDENTIFY GOOD DIRECTORY?

Legal directories impact your SEO strategy, marketing strategy, and brand recognition. Below are some things to keep in mind when identifying a bad legal directory versus a good legal directory.

DOMAIN AUTHORITY

For a start, good legal directories have high domain authority (DA). The higher the domain authority, the more likely the website ranks high on SERPs. Accordingly, the lower the domain authority, the less likely you will improve your online ranking and reputation. You can check the domain authority of a legal directory using a tool like Alexa, Ahrefs or Moz.

PAID VS. FREE LEGAL DIRECTORY LISTINGS

Directories with a good reputation and a high domain authority benefit you to claim your profiles. However, some top legal directories charge fees for claiming profiles. Your profile may include photos, ratings, reviews and legal content. In addition, you may be featured in a legal Q&A. Or your photo may appear at the top of local searches.

Furthermore, your law firm and attorneys may receive special recognition in the form of badges. As a result, they might appeal to individuals searching for a lawyer or law firm. Consider paying only if the legal directory offers more benefits that will result in an ROI.

KEYWORD RANKINGS AND TRAFFIC

A good legal directory has a high volume of keyword placements on the directory site. When a legal directory has plenty of legal keywords, it is more likely to receive increased traffic. Accordingly, poor legal directories have low keyword rankings and low traffic. You can check keyword rankings and traffic with tools like Keywords Everywhere, SEMrush and Moz.

TRUSTWORTHINESS

Besides seeming trustworthy, top legal directories should be well maintained and updated regularly. Furthermore, you should recognize your competitors listed there. Most importantly, you should feel comfortable giving your credit card information to the directory.

Top legal directories can be an effective way for attorneys to grow their online practice. For example, they provide consumers with the right attorneys. Besides, they provide a backlink to the attorney’s website. This ultimately helps grow its website’s online presence. The backlink is considered one of the most valuable parts of each lawyer listing. In addition, it can help pass the authority of the lawyer directories website to your law firm’s website.

BACKLINKS

One strategy that can help improve your online presence is to obtain more backlinks from legal directories. Backlinks are referral links on a website that directs traffic to your website. When you have a backlink from a credible, reliable website, it validates your online reputation. When your law firm has backlinks from several high-rated legal directories, your law firm’s SEO credibility increases. Consequently, as your SEO credibility increases, your rank in searches also increases.

A strong local SEO strategy that includes backlinks from legal directories will drive more traffic. This will increase the number of visitors who come across your website. The search can be conducted through searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing. As a result, these clients will contact you about their legal needs. Therefore, focus your resources on creating content on these websites that result in backlinks to your firm’s website. In fact, try to obtain backlinks from all of the top 10 legal directories.

Backlink Resource Examples

Top legal directories that allow you to publish articles with backlinks can be the most valuable. The website needs to be a trusted legal directory. Moreover, it should be considered a top authority for information related to legal matters. For example, Nolo allows you to publish articles on your law firm’s profile. Ultimately, that increases your law firm’s authority online, which in turn increases search engine ranking.

FindLaw is another example of a valuable source for backlinks. The website’s Q&A forums, articles, and free legal guides allow you to create different kinds of content. Accordingly, that content will create valuable backlinks to your law firm’s website.

When obtaining backlinks from legal directories that can improve your online presence and reputation, make sure to:

Choose legal directories that have excellent reputations and high traffic
Are consistent across every website and each profile page
Carefully consider the return on investment before paying a legal directory to add content to your profile
Add as much relevant information as possible to free profiles

RELEVANCY

Authority is one way to judge a link. However, beyond authority, the next two measures to evaluate are relevancy and trust. Relevancy is related to how relevant the website is that links to your website’s article or page. Hence, when evaluating your law firm’s link structure, the best links would be legal-related links.

Conclusion

Top legal directories can be beneficial to your practice. Legal directories such as Avvo, Justia and FindLaw help law firms increase their online presence. For instance, they are searched by potential clients who need a lawyer. Also, they are used by law firms who need to refer a potential case to another law firm.

As a result, using legal directories will increase traffic to your website, which can lead to new business. Consequently, legal directories play a role critical role in your SEO strategy. Before you join any, make sure the analytics they are providing is measurable and meaningful.

Managing online profiles can be time-consuming. It can also be overwhelming for someone who is not familiar with online strategies. Seeking help from professionals can sometimes be the best option to maximize the use of legal directories.

Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Lawyers

August 10, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing

Introduction

Email marketing for lawyers is an online marketing approach. It is designed to help businesses keep in touch with a large network of people. Furthermore, it is considered to be one of the most effective types of digital marketing to grow a law business. Moreover, it is believed to be more effective at reaching your intended audience than social media channels.

In fact, when it comes to turning prospects into clients, email is almost 40x more effective than social media. Over the past few years, email messages reach their destination inbox 90% of the time in comparison to Facebook messages. If done correctly, email marketing for lawyers can be a key part of your overall digital marketing efforts.

Successful content marketing strategy and strategically executed email marketing campaigns are key tactics to reaching your target audience. When done correctly, email marketing for lawyers shouldn’t take a lot of time or resources. In addition, it typically brings in a high return on investment. A simple marketing strategy should inform the public know about your services and give you an edge over the competition.

Successful email marketing is effective on multiple levels:

Business development – an important part of creating a “sales funnel” triggered by following up with potential clients.
Customer experience – improving the experience of potential or existing customers with relevant updates, news and newsletters.
Increasing customer “touchpoints” – in order to encourage brand loyalty. For example, sending an automated “thank you” email for inquiries or a “meeting reminder” email.

Getting started with email marketing requires three basic elements:

Email List. A high-quality email list will ensure that you have willing prospects who want to hear from you.
High-quality content will engage your target audience effectively to take the action you want.
The right software allows you to get your information out automatically on time to the right audience. Moreover, to track your success rates and ROI.

Here are top email marketing tips for lawyers to help your next email campaign succeed.

1. Define your strategy

Not having a strategic plan will highly unlikely achieve results. As a result, the content of your emails will be less focused and less interesting to your readers. Your audience will gradually lose interest and you won’t achieve your goals.

Therefore, start an email marketing campaign with a very specific goal in mind. For example, keep in touch with past clients or generate referrals from other attorneys. Furthermore, convert prospects into clients etc.

In the stated case, it’s best to have multiple email marketing campaigns running simultaneously. Moreover, segment your email lists for current clients, potential clients for professional relationships etc. To achieve relevance, segment your list into a group of smaller lists based on clients and their needs and interests or locations.

Be clear about what you are hoping to accomplish with each email marketing strategy from the start. Afterward, keep this goal in the back of your mind when sending out emails. Finally, include a relevant call-to-action in every email that will help you achieve your goal.

Your call to action should be distinctive, clear and easy to use. The real purpose of your email is to elicit a response. Therefore, include the “Contact Us” or “Find Out More” button in your emails. If the button leads to an online form, keep that form short and easy to complete.

We help lawyers gain a competitive advantage in the connected world

Carmine Cloak is a law firm brand design agency for lawyers that provides services such as Strategy, Branding and Digital with Consulting.

We offer you design guarantee on all work and service done in less than 60 days. Our expertise applies new and proven trends and focuses on partner relationships and putting our clients first.

Schedule a free 30-min consultation with our team to get to know us and see how we can help you out on your journey. To check the compatibility of our services, click to view the complete process.

2. Provide valuable content

In short, your email content should do one or more of the following:

Promote your firm’s brand
Showcase your specialized services
Keep you at the top of your clients’ minds
Show that you are thinking about their needs
Make an offer that clients will find enticing

Your goal with any email marketing strategy should always be to create content that people actually want to read. Especially knowing that the average email open rate for the legal industry is estimated to be only 22.49%.

The best approach is to focus on providing as much value to your email recipients as possible. This can be done through nurture email campaigns. The idea behind it is that it nurtures your relationship with a potential client. In your case, you will send a series of law firm or legal-related email newsletters to your audience.

In contrast, nurture campaigns provide consistent value to the readers and solve their problems. The client may not buy your legal service right away. However, this will result in establishing you as an authority. And when he decides to go ahead with the buying decision, you will be on top of his mind.

Here are a few ways to implement nurture campaigns:

Answer common questions

Provide basic answers to these common questions. For example, if you are a DUI defense attorney, answer to “What happens to my driver’s license if I get a DUI?’’

Share your perspective on relevant current events

Share some legal analysis about current events which may be relevant to your clients. That way you will demonstrate your knowledge and position yourself at the forefront of your industry. If you run an estate planning law firm, explain how changes happening to tax policies could affect your clients’ estate plans.

Break down complex concepts and present them in a simple way

Help your clients understand the law process by presenting complex legal concepts in a simplified manner. As a result, you will establish credibility for yourself in the process. For example, if you are a personal injury attorney, explain the process of filing and pursuing a claim.

Types of email campaigns

Email Newsletters

Deliver valuable information relevant to your practice area to clients, potential clients and referral sources. For example, educate them about changes in the law or let them know about events your firm is hosting. Email newsletters are an opportunity to subtly remind people of your expertise.

Strive to aim your newsletter at the specific needs and interests of your audience. Customize your newsletter for your list segments—especially if you have different practice areas. Build each newsletter around the links you want readers to visit. Give readers a summary, then give them a clear link to learn more, download a resource, etc.

Put important links at the beginning because mobile readers, in particular, are less likely to click links that are further down. Use images that enhance the content of your emails. However, don’t rely on images to convey key information, because some email clients may block images entirely.

Keep your message in the body of your email. Get right to the point, because on average, people spend 51 seconds with an email newsletter. Finally, use a responsive email template so it is readable on any display and make sure your emails are mobile-friendly.

Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are a form of email marketing automation. If done well it can help you improve the quality of your engagement with potential clients. And as a result, increase the number of clients who eventually hire you. An automated campaign requires a trigger. For example, offer a free e-book download, webinar, or something else that your potential clients would find valuable.

To get your e-book or sign up for your webinar, a visitor to your website fills out a form with their name and email address. Then you can automatically add them to the relevant segment of your list. Your email marketing software will verify their email address. Afterward, you can start your follow-up sequence by sending them the thing they requested.

After that, you should continue to follow up. For example, if someone downloads your “How to Start a Business” e-book, send a series of educational emails related to starting a business. You might give them a link to schedule an appointment with you. With a targeted drip campaign, you can increase the chance that a one-time website visitor eventually becomes a client.

Law Firm Email Marketing Template

Contact Form Confirmation Email

After someone contacts you from your website, send a confirmation email immediately. Ideally, this should be automated. The confirmation email lets potential clients know that you got their submission. Moreover, it makes it likely that they will wait for your call instead of contacting another lawyer in the meantime. In short, a confirmation email should communicate:

Thank you for contacting us.
We will get back to you as soon as we can.

Your confirmation email can be as simple as this:

Hi [First Name],

Thank you for getting in touch. A member of our team will give you a call shortly. We look forward to speaking with you.

Best regards,

[Your Name]

Here is an example of a more targeted confirmation email:

Hello [First Name],

Thank you for getting in touch regarding your auto accident. We will get in touch with you shortly.

We know this is a very difficult time for you. You probably have a lot of questions and are trying to figure out how to get back on track after your injury. We will work with you to help get the compensation you deserve, but in the meantime, here are a few resources you might find helpful:

– Check out our lawyers’ profiles.

– Download our guide to the auto accident lawsuit process.

– See the awards our firm has received.

– We look forward to speaking with you soon.

[Your Law Firm]

“Win The Client” Email

Over the next few weeks, send emails that educate, engage and encourage the potential client to get back in touch with you.

Here is a sample educational email:

Hi [First Name]:

I thought you might find this article interesting. It’s an article our firm recently published about what to do if you are injured and can’t work. [link]

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

—[Your Name]

You should probably also send follow-ups geared towards reconnecting, like this:

Hi [First Name]:

I just wanted to reach out and follow up on our last conversation. Do you have a few minutes to talk about your matter? You can call me at [phone number] any time, or we can use email.

—[Your Name]

Reengagement campaign

To reengage with potential clients, consider an automated re-engagement campaign to remind potential clients that you are still around and available. A re-engagement campaign should start with a recent piece of great news to share. You can periodically update this email so that it is relatively current. Here’s an example:

Hi [First Name]:

I know it has been a while since we spoke last, but I wanted to share some great news with you. Our firm was recently selected as an Awesome Law Firm in family law for the year. We are honored to receive this award, and wanted to share it! Here is the full announcement: [link]

—[Your Name]

Consider sharing awards, verdicts, media appearances, committee memberships, articles published in major publications, etc. Once you reopen the dialogue, you can follow up with a casual email to check in and see if they saw your first email.

3. Keep emails concise and focused

It’s important to keep your emails short and focused. According to Constant Contact data, emails with 20 lines of text have the highest click-through rates. Therefore, keep your body content down to a maximum of 150 words. Moreover, use bullet lists to accentuate key points and keep paragraphs short.

In addition, include other media assets like photos or videos whenever possible to make the content more interesting. Furthermore, attach a link to a full article or blog post including a text snippet in the email body. This is an excellent way of keeping emails short, and it also helps drive website traffic.

4. Pick the right email marketing service

Proper marketing services need to have automation that can send personalized and targeted bulk emails. Also, it should be able to manage your contact list, segment users into groups and provide reliable analytics. At the core, email marketing software needs to:

Maintain lists of contacts
Have an email builder with templates you can work with
Send emails to your audience
Send basic automated emails
Track performance

Standard email marketing software does just that. Here are a few commonly used examples to consider. For example, start with using Mailchimp for your email newsletter. It’s free up to 2000 contacts and has generated email designs. It’s one of the most popular email services and it also provides track leads and monitors growth.

There are also other service providers like Constant Contact, Aweber, Autopilot which have their own features as well. Therefore, consider doing your own research and decide on the one that meets your law firm’s goals.

5. Measure your results

An important step during email marketing for lawyers is measuring your results. Hence, have in mind to measure your results and adjust your plan accordingly. Most email marketing software will provide you with analytics. Consider analyzing two important metrics to measure whether or not you are achieving your goals:

Open rate: the percentage of recipients who actually opened the email
Click through rate: the percentage of those people who opened the email that also clicked a link inside

Open rate

The open rate is a good indicator of how compelling your subject lines and email topics are. Also, understanding where the email will reach will help in increasing the discoverability of emails. Some factors to consider would be things like spam complaints, the volume of emails, email content and so on.

Click-through rate

The click-through rate is a measure of how engaging your emails are. If readers click through, they are definitely interested in what you are writing about. Use these metrics to find out what kinds of content your audiences like to consume. Afterward, adjust your email marketing strategy accordingly.

6. Optimize emails for recipients

Just like websites, emails have to be mobile-friendly too. And according to researches, 46% of email recipients are opening emails on their mobile phones. Therefore, it’s imperative to test your emails on mobile and tablets along with the Desktop. Furthermore, consider technical limitations and best practices when it comes to email service providers. For instance, in Gmail attachments cannot exceed 25MB.

Also, it’s recommended to have a maximum of 100KB in HTML size to have easy deliverability and no display issues. In addition, mobile data is dependent on network coverage and may be slow in certain areas. Consequently, it may end up ruining the experience of mobile users when the email doesn’t show up properly.

Here are a few email service providers who have mobile-responsive email templates:

7. Grow your Email List

The most effective way to grow your subscriber list is to capture contact details in exchange for providing free content. Also called “lead magnets”. They are designed to draw your target audience in with valuable content. Furthermore, they demonstrate your expertise on a topic and provide valuable help to your target audience. All while enabling you to capture their details.

Give your prospects a reason to leave you their email address. The best way to do that is to provide a free asset that would help solve a problem for your users. As a result, it will help you build authority and trust. The free content could be a PDF, video series, or webinar in the area that you specialize in. If your expertise is real estate law, the free asset could be “Legal things to consider when buying a new house.”

When deciding what to offer, think about the following types of questions:

What does my target audience want to know?
What are they searching for?
How can I help them with a problem?
How can I provide something that is of high value?

Something of value that helps your target audience out with a problem. For example- eBooks, guides, worksheets, white papers, newsletter subscription, presentations etc.

Conclusion

Email marketing for lawyers is one of the best ways to market to people who are already in your network. For example, keep them up to date with the latest events happening at law firms. It can help you maintain strong relationships, drive repeat business from existing clients, generate more referrals etc. Consequently, email marketing for lawyers can be an effective way to motivate potential clients and referral sources to reach out.

This handy and cost-effective tool helps you reach out to your target market from any given location. There are several other benefits that your legal business can earn through email marketing for lawyers:

It requires a low operation cost.
Connect with people quickly and efficiently.
Drives a higher conversion rate than other communication mediums.
Builds credibility in the market by offering real value to the subscribers.

Accordingly, email marketing for lawyers is one of the best options for a law firm looking for clients. In many ways, it is proven to be an ideal platform for legal businesses to broadcast their message.

In addition to immediate views and actions, this marketing approach helps you build and maintain brand awareness. Hence, integrate email marketing strategies into your existing marketing approach to generate leads quickly. If you want to learn more about similar topics, we recommend reading SEO Tips for Lawyers and Law Firms.

Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing For Lawyers

August 9, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing

Introduction

Content marketing for lawyers is a type of digital marketing. It plays a key role for any law firm in sharing its expertise with the world. It involves using content to generate brand awareness, attract organic traffic and convert visitors into clients. As a result, it grows your business both online and offline. Content marketing for lawyers can take on many forms and generate many types of results for businesses. For example, it can utilize blog posts, articles, videos, social media posts and more.

Successful content marketing should fulfill at least one or all of the following goals to be effective. It should:

Increase brand awareness
Establish thought leadership and expertise
Create an online community
Generate leads and ultimately, sales or new clients.

Read below how to create your own effective content marketing strategy for 2021.

Identify Your Main Objective

Content can serve a variety of purposes – from attracting website visitors to increasing engagement on social media to growing your email list. Before creating content, consider your primary objective so you’re prepared to create content that helps you accomplish this goal. Accordingly, different types of content work to generate different results. Therefore, it’s more effective to identify your main objective(s) from the very beginning. For a start, answer these questions. Do you want to:

Attract website visitors?
Grow your email list?
Increase social media engagement?
Increase your law firm’s authority online?
Run a PR campaign?
Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy?
Turn visitors into leads?
Attract backlinks?

Afterward, consider these before creating your content marketing strategy. As a result, you create the right kind of content to achieve your goals.

Find relevant topics

The idea behind law firm content marketing is to publish content that will provide useful information to potential consumers. This implies developing content that will stay relevant for a long time. In other words- providing your audience with information that will always be useful and valuable.

When people have legal questions, one of the first places they look is online. If you have a piece of content that addresses the common questions that people ask, this can be a good way to attract potential clients to your firm.

When searching for content ideas, think about the types of cases you handle. What types of questions do prospective clients usually ask? What information would be useful to these clients? For example, someone involved in a car accident would probably want to know if he needs a lawyer.

Another way to search for topics is to develop audience personas. With some areas of practice, you might find that certain types of clients have many things in common. The more you know about your intended audience, the more likely you’ll be to choose topics and produce content that is relevant to them.

Conduct SEO Keyword Research

Optimize your online content for search engines. Optimized content will have a better chance of ranking in the search results for relevant keywords. In other words, clients will more likely find your law firm when looking for answers to their legal questions.

One of the most important parts of search engine optimization (SEO) is finding the right keywords. There are certain keywords and phrases for every topic that people may use when they search the subject. By using these keywords within your content, you can make your articles and pages easier to find.

For example, are your clients searching for a “personal injury lawyer” or “car accident attorney”? Identify keywords your target audience is searching for. Look for keywords related to your service area and the legal services you offer.

Once you have a list of keywords, decide whether they are best suited for blog posts or web pages. A keyword like ”Denver family law” would be suited to a service page, whereas “How to file for a divorce in Denver” best fits a blog post. Furthermore, use keyword research tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs to find keywords to you on your web pages or in your blog posts.

Update and republish

To ensure your content continues to attract visitors, keep it up-to-date. Regularly review your content on a yearly schedule or even every six months and make corrections as needed. For example:

Replace any references to old news articles with more up-to-date, relevant events. For example, if a study on a subject was released four years ago, check whether there’s a more recent version.
Test all links to make sure they still work and haven’t been redirected to a piece of content that’s now irrelevant.
Keep an eye out for changes that might affect your content. For example, if a law changes, update all posts this change affected accordingly.

Finally, republish your blog posts, YouTube videos and promote the content as you would have when it first went out. Republishing your updated content can provide plenty of value to your potential clients.

Repurpose your content

Many of the world’s leading marketers make repurposing content a part of their strategies. When you repurpose content, you get more out of the time and effort that went into developing the original piece. Here’s what repurposing content might look like:

Take written content, such as blog posts and turn these pieces into video content or visual content such as infographics.
Take a video and write a blog post based on the subject matter in the video.
You could take short facts and quotes from articles and turn them into posts for your social media accounts.
You could take old blog posts and repurpose them as newsletters to send out as part of an email campaign.

With an effective content marketing strategy, you can establish your law firm as a trusted source of information. As a result, people will turn to you when they need to learn about your area of expertise. This can raise the profile of your business, resulting in more clients contacting your firm when they need advice.

Research Your Competitors’ Content

Research your competitors’ content strategies to see what keywords they are targeting and what content they’re posting on social media. Use the same keyword research tools as above (SEMRush and Ahrefs) to search for their domain names and see what keywords they are ranking for. This can be a great way to find keywords you should be targeting on your own site.

Collect feedback

Ask your audience what topics they’re interested in. Furthermore, what questions do they have about the services you offer or the legal process in general? You can do this by sending out an anonymous survey on social media or a campaign to your email subscribers. Afterward, turn these questions into blog posts and create a Frequently Asked Questions page on your website.

The best way to generate fresh, engaging content ideas is to ask your audience what they want to read. Use Google Forms to create a survey to reach your readers and past clients. Include questions like:

What questions do you have about [legal topic] (e.g., divorce)?
What are the three biggest struggles you have when it comes to [legal issue]?
Where do you go to find law-related content online?
What kind of content would you like to see on a website?

Their answers to these questions will help you generate some interesting content ideas. Afterward, include these topics into your law firm’s new and improved content strategy.

Establish a Content Schedule

Your law firm’s content marketing strategy is more effective when you are publishing, posting and marketing your content on a regular basis. Project management tools like Asana and Monday can help you stay on schedule and organize your content details. They can also ensure that you’re distributing your content across multiple channels.

Focus on Lead Generation

When publishing and sharing your content, consider what actions you want users to take. Do you want them to download an e-book? Give you a call? Fill out a form? Make this clear so you can generate as many leads as possible. For example:

Include contact forms on the service pages of your website
Add downloadable e-books and infographics to your blog posts in exchange for their email address
Include calls-to-action on your social media posts to encourage followers to contact you
Add your phone number to your web pages to make it easy for prospects to reach you
Promote your email newsletters to collect more email addresses
Create downloadable “lead magnet” content in exchange for their contact information

Follow Up with Prospects

One of the important steps of content marketing for lawyers is following up with your prospects. When you collect information from prospects, record this information and outline a process for follow-up. This can involve having an automated email campaign or following up with the prospect directly. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools can help you keep your lead information organized, check follow-up status, send client documents and much more. Use these to ensure that you’re following up with every lead and aren’t missing out on new client opportunities.

Create Linkable Assets

A linkable asset is a type of content that works to attract backlinks to your website. Links from high-quality sites can improve your own site’s SEO, increasing your rankings and drawing in new website visitors. There are many types of linkable assets you can create. For example, e-books, guest articles, interviews, webinars and more. The great news is that your content can serve many purposes at once. For instance, publish an SEO-friendly blog post that generates traffic, attracts backlinks and increases engagement on social media. As a result, it will convert readers into clients.

Research Your Target Audience

Conduct market research to understand what your target audience wants, how they search, and what topics they are interested in. Here are a few questions you can ask:

What is your #1 legal struggle at the moment?
Which resources have you looked into to help you overcome this struggle?
What issues do you have with the resources/ solutions you came across?
Which traits are you looking for in an X lawyer?
What is your #1 goal when it comes to overcoming your legal issue?
What topics would you like to learn more about?

Users’ answers to these questions will help guide your brand narrative. In addition, you can come up with thought-provoking content ideas you know your audience will be interested in. As a result, it will turn passive website visitors into potential clients.

Establish a Brand Identity and Narrative

Establish strong brand identity and narrative that clearly defines what your law firm is about. It will affirm the types of clients you work with, how you work, your company values, your mission statement and what kinds of services you offer.

Be sure to create a brand statement that states:

Who your target audience is
What services does your law firm offer
How you work and deliver services
Your company values
How do you approach client support
Your mission statement
Your brand voice, style, brand tone, etc.
Anything else your team should know when it comes to your brand content

This brand identity statement can take the form of an internal document that you, your team, and any contracts you hire can refer to when creating new content. That way, all your content marketing will align with your brand identity.

Establish a Content Distribution Plan

While SEO blog content can work to attract organic traffic, you should also have a distribution plan to get your content noticed on other channels. Software like Buffer can work to push your content out to social media platforms. You can share your content on Facebook, Linked In, Instagram, Twitter, or any other social site.

You can also reshare your content to your email list, repurpose it as a video, or turn it into another type of content asset. It helps to schedule your content distribution efforts so you stay consistent. This will allow you to drive views, attract website visitors, and, ideally, land new clients on a regular basis.

Experiment with Mixed Media

Content marketing for lawyers can involve a variety of mediums. It’s fun and effective to experiment with mixed media to see what works best with your audience. Here are some different ways to repurpose your content:

E-books
Podcast episodes
Email campaigns
Newsletters
Downloadable documents/ PDFs
Webinars
Case studies
Infographics

Try some of these out, add them to your content distribution plan, and see how your audience responds. Take note of the media types that generate the best results so you can be sure to create more of these in the future.

Measure Content Marketing Results

The goal of content marketing for lawyers is to generate tangible results for your business. Therefore, monitoring the progress of your content closely should be a part of your marketing strategy. Use Google Analytics to track website traffic, traffic sources, goal completions, website bounce rate and more. These will tell you whether users are converting on your site and where they are coming from.

Most social media sites have their own performance metrics regarding engagement, likes, clicks, etc. These will show you how users are interacting with your social media content. Finally, your email management system should be able to track open rates, clicks and more to tell you how your email content is performing. Use these insights to inform and improve your future content marketing for lawyers.

Conclusion

With the right planning and tools, you can create quality content that moves your law firm forward. The more content you create, the more your skills will improve. As a result, you will turn passive visitors into new clients. In addition, you can create a program that will generate leads and new clients in a more effective way than paid advertising. For a start, content marketing for lawyers is something you can do yourself with some dedicated time. However, there are also professionals who can help your law firm create a hugely successful content marketing program.

How to Create a Brand Story for Law Firm

August 4, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Branding Marketing

“Your brand story is the message that creates a powerful emotional connection between your company, customers and the general public”

Introduction

When promoting your business, audiences are much more inclined to connect with a good story than a good product. Nowadays, customers are attracted to brands they can relate to and that interest them. In other words- brands with a great narrative to tell. In order to brand a law firm properly, you need to create a brand story.

Brand story for a law firm is the narrative of your company and an important part of your brand identity. It represents who you are and what you stand for. It sets the stage for interactions customers have with your brand. Hence, a good brand story should encompass the values and ideals your brand represents. Furthermore, it should humanize your business, making sure people can connect with it.

Great brand stories allow smaller retailers to attract new customers, even without a big marketing budget. By telling a story and connecting with the reader, a storyteller can actually generate trust in the reader. That story is important because it resonates with your employees and with customers. That way it cultivates a community of brand advocates who stand behind and support your story.

Before you begin, keep in mind that you’ll eventually want to create your own website, content and other marketing assets. That way you can provide a home for your brand’s story and a place for people to interact with it.

However, the reality is that you have 6 seconds to tell your brand story and make a connection with your customer. A short opportunity to give your customers reason to care and to want to learn more about your offer. Therefore, your message needs to communicate simplicity, clarity and alignment.

In short, a great brand story should be:

Meaningful
Personal
Emotional
Simple
Authentic

To start, here are the top five guidelines to create a compelling brand story:

1. Determine Your Why

When writing a brand story for a law firm, start with defining your Why. Use these questions to help you discover your Why:

Why do you exist?
How do you contribute to the world?
What is your mission?
What motivated you to start your business?

Think about the story around why your brand exists in the first place. For a start, define a higher purpose for your brand, one that people can relate to. This means defining what drives your brand and how it benefits others. You will attract more customers by giving them a reason to connect with and support you.

When buying a product, people are usually trying to solve a certain problem or enrich their lives in some way. Therefore, figure out how to do this for them in a way that makes them feel good about themselves, and their decision, in the process. Furthermore, find a personality for your brand.

Think of what characteristics can be used to describe your brand and the people involved in it. Your brand identity is an extremely important part of growing your business overall and should influence your brand’s style, colors, brand name and marketing efforts.

2. Know Your Service

To know your brand story, you must also understand how and where your service fits into it. To figure out how your service fits into your brand story, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the quality and price point of your service?
Does your service solve a problem or make a consumer feel a certain way?
How is your service different from competitors’ products?

3. Understand Your Audience

To understand how to build a brand story for a law firm, you first need to know your target audience. This way, you’ll be able to craft the narrative that’s most likely to speak to the customers you’re after. Knowing what their passions and pain points are can help you determine how your brand story fits into their lives.

Start with answering the following questions:

What is at stake if a consumer doesn’t buy your product?
Who is your current customer?
Who is your ideal customer?

Narrowing down to your ideal customer is essential to carving out a brand story that will resonate. Don’t try to appeal to all customers, but instead speak directly to your target customer. In targeting everyone, you will get a few, because very few products are everything to everybody. Once you have your target market pinned down, think of what your brand can do for them. Moreover, what language will grab their attention and what methods you will use to communicate with them.

4. Choose the Right Format

The most important goal for every piece of content is to communicate your brand story as efficiently and effectively as possible. Therefore, choosing the right format is vital. Identify the best format for your story before you dive into content creation, as the format will influence the way you craft copy. Some of the most popular storytelling formats are articles, Case Studies, Data visualizations, E-books, Infographics, Motion Graphics, White papers, Video etc.

5. Build your narrative

Define the important aspects of your identity and its message, turning it into a story that will resonate with your audience. Construct a compelling narrative that captures people’s attention. Start with a conflict or struggle that your brand seeks to solve or overcome. Describe what caused you to take action. In general, audiences want to know what made you start your brand.

Next, you should describe how your brand works towards that vision. How do you plan on accomplishing your goals? This part of the brand story should highlight what your brand is doing now, and how it will continue in the future. Finally, explain how your products will impact people’s lives directly, and in the context of the bigger picture. How will it make their lives better? Furthermore, how will it improve the world?

6. Compose your brand story

A big part of making sure a brand story for law firm is seen as authentic and consistent is your origin story. Why did you decide to start your business? Talk about your mission and your passion, and how they influence the way your brand operates.

An honest story of someone going through the struggles of starting a business can be a great way to connect with your audience. Your origin story can really personalize your brand, connecting a human face and story to a brand. Present yourself not as just a company, but a person with goals and a mission, in order to establish trust.

To start, it’s always better to show rather than to tell. For example, focus on how your brand helped a specific person. You want your audience to connect with this person and know how your brand tangibly improved their life.

Next, when trying to form a relationship with your audience, you want them coming back again and again. Hence, write an ongoing, long-term story arc, rather than a short story. Think up some challenges that your story’s hero can struggle with but ultimately overcome.

Finally, make your values part of your brand story. Demonstrate why they are important and how you intend to abide by them. Keep your message consistent in all your different marketing avenues, and your brand will be seen as authentic.

During this step, you can use Gustav Freytag’s pyramid that follows an arc and ends with a resolution.

7. Tell your brand story in an effective way

Whatever story you decide to tell, it’s crucial to make sure that your efforts are having the desired results. Monitor how effective your story arc is at bringing traffic to your site. Be sure to keep an eye on your grammar as well. Sites such as My Writing Way, ViaWriting or the State of Writing can help ensure your grammar is correct. While you can use services like BoomEssays and Academized to make sure your content is well-written and proofed.

8. Share Your Brand Story

Once your brand story is complete, find the right platforms to broadcast it. For example, post a series of videos on YouTube, create social media posts, publish press articles and more. Optimize each media form for its platform in order to accurately communicate your cause and gain attention. In other words, create relevant content for each outlet.

Include your website in this step too by creating a dedicated About Us page. Introduce your audience to your business through brand storytelling. Show your customers what your law brand has to offer. Bring people in by creating a long-term story arc, being consistent and showing them what you care about.

Moreover, encourage your people to share your story by making it easy to do so. Publish to your blog or email list, test your social sharing buttons, optimize your content for SEO, etc. Finally, plan on updating your story periodically, along with your brand improvement.

Conclusion

By creating a high-quality brand story for a law firm, you’ll be able to develop lasting relationships with your customers. Furthermore, your brand story is as important for your marketing team as it is for your customers. A well-written brand story will help them come up with advertising ideas and campaigns that are aligned with your primary goals and purpose.

However, writing a great brand story requires time and effort. You need to share your history, values, passion, and ambitions in a way that will best establish an emotional connection with your target audience. Start with understanding your competitors, customers and employees and be clear on what defines your business and makes it unique.

What’s more important, your brand story needs to be honest and consistent. It must align directly with your mission statement to enable you to effectively establish a connection with customers who are genuinely aligned with your business. Finally, write a brand story for a law firm that is focused on long-term growth rather than short-term potential. That way you will have a strong brand story and establish a successful business strategy.

Law Firm Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

August 3, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing

Introduction

Over 80% of consumers use search to find local businesses—including law firms. To make advertising work for your firm, you must understand your clients and choose advertising methods that resonate with them specifically.

Knowing the lawyer advertising rules that apply to you is also critical in today’s digital age. From social media to law firm websites, advertising online to connect with clients is increasingly common for lawyers. And, with more business being conducted remotely, the ability to attract clients using digital marketing strategies is more important than ever.

Moreover, there are a variety of rules and regulations concerning attorney advertising that vary by state. At its essence, successfully navigating the rules requires three things: be honest; be careful and understand the rules of the states in which you are licensed. Adhering to those three principles should form the basis of creating ads that are compliant.

Here are some of the most common law firm marketing mistakes examples to avoid:

Inconsistent branding

Your brand is more than your firm name. It’s your web address, your tagline and even your color scheme. Work to keep these consistent across business cards and email mastheads and do the same online as well. Your audience should always be clear about who they’re working with.

Not being transparent

One of the law firm marketing mistakes to avoid is not being transparent in your communication. Let your audience know what they can really expect from working with you. This can mean answering frequently asked questions or providing a clean bill of your services, in advance.

Not having a clearly defined target audience

One of the biggest digital marketing mistakes is not having your ideal client identified. Today’s digital marketing allows you to reach individuals who are in need of your services, at the right time. Take the time to define your buyer personas and align your digital strategies with their needs and desires.

Having an outdated website

When your website looks ignored and outdated, it becomes difficult to convert website visitors into prospective clients. Continually check your content, site navigation, responsiveness and update your website with the newest technologies and plugins. Most importantly, use your website as a marketing tool. Provide your visitors with new information and implement conversion rate optimization strategies to generate more leads.

Not capitalizing your customer reviews

In the modern era, consumers enjoy leaving reviews and more important- customers trust online reviews. Therefore, make sure to collect feedback, analyze it and then use it in the right way. Seek it out at the end of service provision with clients, and consistently ensure ongoing clients are happy with your work.

Afterward, build case studies and add favorable testimonials to your website. Getting positive reviews on your Facebook or Google pages also helps build credibility. Moreover, consider listing your business in Google My Business and popular legal directories.

Not utilizing search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO stands for Search Engine Marketing. It entails website optimization to make it easier for Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to find your website on specific keywords. The higher you appear on a search engine’s results page, the more visible your law firm becomes.

Develop a content strategy, keep your audience in mind and do thorough keyword research. That way you can incorporate the right terms and phrases that can help you rank on page 1 of Google. Furthermore, list the cities and your firm’s address on a few pages of your website. Finally, consider hiring an experienced SEO company to help you maximize your ranking opportunities.

Ignoring social media

Social media is a valuable marketing tool, therefore do not overlook it if trying to generate new clients. Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Instagram can be powerful mediums for driving client engagement and lead generation.

For a start, choose 2-3 top social media platforms that you know your ideal audience engages with. Create strategic posts and schedule them in a social media scheduling calendar. Use automation tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer and others. Build relationships with your audience in order to turn them into potential clients and track your results.

Inconsistency

One of the law firm marketing mistakes to avoid is inconsistency. Consistency is vital in digital marketing. Therefore, irregular updating is one of the most common digital marketing mistakes to avoid. Develop and stick to a blog editorial calendar and prepare a plan for your social media posts, either manually or with planner apps. That way you will stand out from the crowd and achieve more visibility.

Avoiding Paid Placement/ PPC

Strategic paid campaigns such as Google AdWords will allow your website & ads to appear to potential clients searching for your service online. There are different kinds of display ads such as visual or textual ads.

With Pay-Per-Click you can run a retargeting campaign for all your website visitors. Once they leave and go to other websites online, your brandable ad can appear on the sidebar, top and footer. This reminds them to visit your website again and entice them to contact you.

Ignoring Blogging

Use your brand’s voice to showcase your brand, expertise and law experience. Everyday searchers are looking for information in regards to their law needs. As a result, your blog can be super resourceful while bringing you organic free traffic.

Start with making a blogging plan and aim at blogging once a week. Furthermore, make sure your blog post has at least 500 words. In addition, don’t forget to share it on your social media platforms.

Not evaluating your marketing data

Use the data available in order to improve your marketing efforts. Check your statistics from your Google Analytics account, any social tools, inbound marketing programs and paid campaigns. Track progress against any objectives you’ve set and look for trends. Test everything from email subject lines to PPC ad copy to find areas where you can improve. Afterward, use those test results to dictate your next steps.

Conclusion

Effective digital marketing strategies are constantly evolving. Thus, there is a constant need to re-evaluate and review your analytics while avoiding common mistakes. Legal marketing is something that every law firm needs in order to gain more clients and improve revenue. The most important thing you can do is create a marketing budget and develop a marketing plan.

Moreover, stay up-to-date with current trends and follow the lawyer advertising rules. By knowing the correct legal advertising rules, you can create effective, ethical advertising. In addition, attract new clients, new business and achieve greater success in the future.

Law firm marketing mistakes are easy to make. However, by knowing what the most common errors are, you are far less likely to make them. Make sure that you know what you shouldn’t be doing with the marketing tactics that you adopt for your legal firm. The more that you understand the power of marketing and how it can transform your potential for growth, the more incentive you will have to get it right.

Consider using professional consultants to help you develop and present a clear message in an effective and appropriate way. Furthermore, to assist in identifying and reaching an appropriate audience while conveying a successful marketing strategy for your law firm.

Ultimate Social Media Tips For Lawyers

August 2, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing Social Media

Introduction

There are major opportunities for lawyers who take part in today’s era of human communications. Especially those who utilize the benefits of digital marketing for lawyers. There are various approaches for lawyers looking to better leverage social media.

In addition, the benefits to attorneys and law firms of engaging in social media are numerous. For example, by showing up online, you can:

Position yourself as an expert
Reach prospective clients
Build valuable connections
Increase networking opportunities
Stay up-to-date to a range of generations
Gain wider exposure to a large audience
Drive people to your website
Engage with the community

Here are some social media tips for lawyers to build an online audience of prospective clients and referrals.

Research Your Target Client

Start your digital marketing strategy with your target client in mind. Take the time to get to know them, do your research, and create a unique plan that works. Consider your target client’s demographics and refer to recent social media usage studies to find accounts that fit. Next, research your target client on those accounts.

Moreover, look at other professional firms and businesses to see how they engage their audiences. What is the nature of their posts and what posts receive the most interaction from your target client? Align your online strategy with your client’s needs and interests. In other words- your content should resonate with your audience in order for your strategy to be effective.

Claim your online presence

Claim a social media presence on the platforms where your potential clients are located. Research platforms that your potential clients are most likely to use. Furthermore, fill out your profile with relevant information about your business. In addition, include a link to your website, phone number and other critical information. If possible, add testimonials from satisfied clients to your profile to further demonstrate your reputation and value.

Moreover, set realistic and measurable goals. What do you plan to get out of your social media marketing efforts? Do you want to increase brand visibility? Maybe you want to attract new clients or you just want to engage your target audience. Either way, have a clear idea of what you wish to achieve through social media marketing.

Engage with your target audience

According to American Bar Association, 35% of lawyers who use social media professionally have gained new clients as a result. This makes it a valuable platform to engage your target audience and turn them into prospects.

Social media provides you with a platform to build connections and engage with your audience. In fact, consumers are highly dependent on social media as a brand-consumer communication channel.

Answer their questions, thank them for their client reviews, like their posts, and share their successes. In short, show the audience that you’re listening and that you’re there to help.

Tell your brand story

Utilize social media to tell your brand story. This can be highly effective for humanizing your brand and forming an emotional connection with the audience. As a result, you’ll have a much easier time winning their trust which will result in brand loyalty. For example, share stories about your firm’s achievements, its history and more. Introduce the public to your employees and put a face to your law brand.

Establish thought leadership

Being seen as an expert in your niche builds trust between you and your potential clients. Moreover, when clients can trust you, they’re more likely to reach out. Therefore, use your expertise to share valuable information. That will help you prove your credibility and win the trust of your target audience. For example, link to resources relevant to your practice area from reputable sources that bring value to your audience.

Share original graphics with useful facts and stats

This is also one of the useful social media tips for lawyers. Visuals play a critical role in social media marketing as they are more likely to stand out over text content. Focus your social content on creating visuals that will immediately attract and engage your prospects. For example, share inspirational quotes, useful legal tips and tools, basic legal information and industry updates.

Share valuable blog posts and news updates

The best way to use social media for law firms is to create content that informs, rather than solely promotional content. The more you provide credible and valuable information, the better you’ll be able to showcase your expertise. In the legal industry, your potential customers would consider several factors before they decide to hire you. For example, your knowledge and credibility as well as your experience. This makes it crucial to constantly share informative blog posts and the latest industry news with your social media followers.

Consider Paid Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer paid advertising options for businesses. You can pay to have an ad campaign displayed to your target clients who use the social platform. As a result, you can target your ads to very specific audiences, which is perfect for attorneys in unique niches.

Be a part of a legal community

Lawyers can also use social media to build their profiles within the legal community. That way they can stay up-to-date on what’s trending in the legal community and boost their thought leadership. People often use social media to search for recommendations, nearby businesses and local services inside groups. Therefore, join these groups to ensure your law firm is suggested. For example, join Facebook and NextDoor groups for your specific location or practice area.

Consider Social Media Tools

Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to schedule and automate your social media posts ahead of time. You could easily block an hour each week to schedule posts eliminating the need to do so each day. In addition, you can utilize Sprout’s engagement tools to save time and streamline your social media management.

Conclusion

In short, social media tips for lawyers can be a valuable digital marketing channel when used strategically. In addition, take the time to learn and adhere to ethics rules so you can stay compliant. When building a law firm marketing strategy, effective social media management is crucial. Accordingly, set goals, make a plan, be consistent and active on social media. That way you’re more likely to engage with your target audience and improve your law firm’s business.

Inviting guest bloggers is one idea for lawyers to try in 2021.

13 Blog Ideas For Lawyers To Try

July 30, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing

Introduction

One thing that can really help lawyers reach the right people is creating a legal blog and posting regularly on a range of targeted topics. Nowadays, lawyers have a unique opportunity to use blogging to reach the right people and gain more exposure than their competitors.

Most consumer attorneys tend to think that their entire audience is the potential clients who will hire them. While that’s probably mostly true, an attorney’s total audience actually consists of the following:

Potential clients
Attorneys or judges
Potential citation sources (backlinks from content creators)
Journalists researching a story
Professors and students

While writing your blogs, think of who you want to be the reader of a particular article. Knowing who to write for is just as critical as knowing what to write.

Here are 13 blog ideas for lawyers to help them reach the right people:

1. Give Legal Advice on Specific Practice Areas

Use your expertise in your practice area. To reach your ideal clients, generate blog posts about your specific practice areas. That way your clients can find some of the answers they are looking for. For example, if you are a personal injury lawyer, you could cover every niche of personal injury law.

Rather than write a single personal injury law blog post. You could create a step guide covering what to do if someone has been injured at work. Or what to do if someone has been involved in a car accident that resulted in an injury.

2. Write Step Guides

Step guides are some of the most popular blog posts online. They take a complicated subject and break it down into a task list that can be followed easily by readers. They are also ideal posts for search engine optimization because they generally cover the questions that potential clients might search for.

For example, if you are a DUI lawyer, you could create a post entitled, “What Should I Do if I’ve Been Charged with a DUI?” Or: “How to file for bankruptcy”, “How to apply for an expungement”, “How to write an air-tight contract” etc.

3. Present Recent Changes in Law

If any recent changes in the law have occurred in your area, you could post a blog about them to showcase your knowledge to potential clients. For example, if you are an insurance lawyer in Virginia, you could create a blog post covering changes to state insurance law that year. Because states usually publish this type of information publicly, you could also link to the state website.

4. Add Case Studies

Write a case study about your successful cases. It is a great way to build trust with visitors, as it shows that you’ve seen success in your practice. Sharing your client’s inspirational story is a successful way to reach people. Furthermore, it’s an opportunity to show them why being an attorney matters to you.

This gives your audience an idea of who your typical client is and what you can do for them. If you choose to pursue case studies as a major part of your marketing effort, create a separate web page devoted to housing case studies.

5. Consider Trial Process Guides

One of the blog ideas for lawyers is showing your audience how court proceedings work. One way to put your potential clients’ minds at ease is to create blog posts about trial processes. These could take the form of step guides, numbered lists or trial narratives.

6. Answer the Common Questions

Even if you already have an FAQ section on your website, you can still address those questions at greater length in blog posts. These blog posts help lawyers reach the right people by utilizing the keywords that get searched most frequently.

FAQ posts can also be used to build trust and provide your clients with a path toward a solution. Make a “question of the week” and answer your potential client’s questions submitted through comments or social media.

7. Legal Strategy Breakdowns

Revealing a little bit about how you operate in court can expose potential clients to your expertise. Most people may not know how a lawyer fights a case until they have a consultation and choose to retain the lawyer.

You can show your audience how you got started in your career or do a behind a scene of your workplace. People like to feel like they know you and this is a good way to teach them who you are in an authentic way.

8. Dispel a Legal Myth

Some people believe that tickets issued by a traffic officer are considered moot if the officer isn’t wearing their hat. If you’ve heard any such myths over the years of your practice, you can address them in blog posts.

Targeting these posts specifically for common search terms can help lawyers reach the right people. There is always a chance that the people searching for these myths hope that they represent a loophole to a legal problem.

9. Invite Guest Bloggers

Inviting a guest to write a blog post can establish trust with visitors. However, make sure it’s relevant to your niche. For example, a divorce attorney could have an immigration attorney guest post tips for divorcing when you are not a citizen.

If you invite a guest blogger to write for you and they have their own website, you can share backlinks. Backlinks are favored by search engines and they can drive more web traffic, especially if your guest gets high traffic on their own site.

10. Predict the Future

Offering insights into the future of their practice areas can help lawyers reach the right people. When the legal landscape is changing, people want to read about it. You could cover specific news items or you could write about changes you’ve noticed during the years of your practice. Offering insight into the future is a positive way to establish credibility with your readers. Moreover, it is a powerful way to address specific search terms.

11. Check out the news

Here is another one of the blog ideas for lawyers to try. Reading the newspaper, news websites or other blogs are excellent ways to come up with relevant topics that are definitely blog-worthy. Finding a headline that you can relate to what you practice will grab your reader’s attention. Especially if they’ve been paying attention to that headline themselves.

12. Conduct interviews with other lawyers

One of the blog ideas for lawyers is conducting interviews with your colleague lawyers. Think about interviewing other experts in the field, local judges or clients who have had success with your firm. This can be a worthwhile networking opportunity, as well as providing your readers with exciting, unexpected content.

13. Write Reviews

Provide valuable reviews on books, movies, services etc. Reviews deliver a lot of value to your readers. Moreover, reviews can bring a lot of new traffic to your blog. Furthermore, they can be the perfect opportunity to use affiliate links. That way you can get a fee for each person who purchases the service directly from your link.

Useful tools

When trying out these blog ideas for lawyers, several tools can make your job easier. Check out the following tools to discover your audience’s interests:

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a straightforward keyword research tool that allows 10 free keyword/ phrase searches without the need to log in. It can tell you if a topic or phrase is worth pursuing and suggest other phrases with higher search volume.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a plugin/ extension for your Google Chrome or Firefox browser. This software helps suggest high volume search topics right in Google search results. It is based on what you’re searching and highlights how many monthly searches there are.

Google Trends

Google Trends is another useful tool. It shows you the popularity of a given topic or search phrase has had over time on Google. This is good for broad topic oriented blogs and can help you with a place to start your research.

Conclusion

When writing blog posts, remember that your goal is to gain more exposure and attract new clients. Once people land on your post, you want there to be an easy transition from a website visitor, to a prospect, to a client. When writing, remember to mention the importance of obtaining legal counsel. Include contact forms, buttons, and other conversion opportunities throughout your blog.

A good practice is not to name your firm directly in your blog posts. Blog posts generally work best when they are helpful and informative, or address a question that you have the answer for. Whatever the business law blog topics, a targeted, well-maintained blog will always help lawyers reach the right people.

Doing keyword research and optimizing a blog for search engines should also be included in this process. In addition, don’t forget to promote your blog posts through your social media accounts and email. To learn more about similar topics, we recommend reading 18 Blogging Tools For Lawyers.

We help lawyers gain a competitive advantage in the connected world

Carmine Cloak is a law firm brand design agency for lawyers that provides services such as Strategy, Branding and Digital with Consulting.

We offer you design guarantee on all work and service done in less than 60 days. Our expertise applies new and proven trends and focuses on partner relationships and putting our clients first.

Schedule a free 30-min consultation with our team to get to know us and see how we can help you out on your journey. To check the compatibility of our services, click to view the complete process.

Check out the most popular market positioning flavors.

Law Firm Market Positioning Flavors

July 22, 2021

by Carmine Cloak Marketing

Introduction

The goal of market positioning is to gain a sales advantage over your competitors. It can be done by occupying a distinct place in the minds of buyers. Indeed, well-positioned brands grow faster and have bigger profit margins than poorly positioned ones.

Good market positioning benefits any brand, including law firms. However, getting your positioning requires considering lots of difficult questions. For example, which market segments to target and which ones to give over to the competition.

Answering these questions is especially difficult for law firms. For instance, many of them have a consensus-driven culture and serve different client types. However, law firms just need to use the right approach when facing the problem. To help firms achieve proper market positioning, they need to know about the flavors of positioning:

Law firm market positioning comes in three flavors:

Hard
Soft
Silent

The first challenge for any law firm is to determine which of these three flavors is the best fit.

1. Hard positioning

A firm clearly communicates what it does, whom it serves and what makes it different. In short, this is an example of hard positioning. Firms that can achieve hard positioning have the clearest message. Therefore, they claim the greatest marketing advantage over their competitors. In addition, hard positioning offers great business advantages. However, it is almost unreachable for those law firms that offer lots of services to many client types.

Law firm examples of hard positioning:

Quinn Emanuel

“A Global Force in Business Litigation”

Beveridge & Diamond

“The Environmental Law Firm”

2. Soft positioning

Soft positioning is emphasizing an aspect of the firm’s spirit or culture with a tagline or headline. These firms do not speak about what the firm does or whom it serves. Rather, they point out the spirit of their firm. Hence, their challenge is to avoid phrases and generic taglines that could be applied to any firm. Thus, it’s important to satisfy the following criteria for it to be successful. It needs to:

– Reflect factual information about the firm

– Express something that your clients care about

– Make your attorneys believe it and talk about it

– Demonstrate its authentication

Law firm examples of soft positioning:

Novack Macey

“Small but Mighty”

The Kasowitz

“Creative. Aggressive. Relentless”

3. Silent positioning

Silent positioning is the best option if you’re struggling to find a meaningful differentiator. To illustrate, it requires no explicit headlines or taglines. Instead- the firm’s positioning is subtly expressed using design and selective content. Silent positioning needs to have a theme rooted in clearly defined business goals. This market positioning type is often the solution for firms with political issues.

Law firm examples of silent positioning:

Skadden

This firm’s website uses lush imagery and power to reinforce the firm’s position in the marketplace. In fact, it does it with very few words.

Armstrong Teasdale

Their website features silent video graphics that positions the firm as modern, dynamic, and elite. Even though positioned as silent, some firms’ outlooks can speak loud to their audience.

Conclusion

Marketing efforts are much more effective when a law firm is well-positioned. To create a strong brand for your business, define your law firm’s market positioning flavor first. For a start, position your firm as a whole. Figure out which “flavor” of positioning makes the most sense for your organization. Next, position the firm’s practices, industry groups and attorneys as experts in a particular niche.

Finally, substantiate those positions. This is vital because positioning must be supported by enhancing content. For instance- articles, whitepapers, blog posts, and testimonials. If you can nail these three things, you are on a clear path to marketing success. Take another look at these examples before deciding which market positioning suits your law practice best.