Marketing Plans For Legal Services & Solicitors – Step-by-Step Guide

A law firm marketing plan is a solid foundation for making improvements that positively impact your business. Depending on your individual goals, you might target areas such as your law firm website, social media or paid search channels.

Whatever your unique goals, this step-by-step guide will help you create a comprehensive legal marketing plan to promote your practice and attract potential clients. Let’s get started.

Think about your business needs. What exactly is your legal marketing strategy going to achieve for you?

You might consider things like specific financial, growth or marketing goals that help your firm reach the next level. Some examples of macro goals include:

• Acquiring new clients through increased brand awareness
• Reaching a specific financial break even or profit point
• Using your marketing plan to increase pricing for your legal services
• Growing a specific service or adding a new legal service to your offering

Keep your macro reason in mind at all times — it’s the fundamental goal of your marketing strategy.

Next, think about your business plan and where there are opportunities for growth. Consider questions like:

• Can you increase sales for specific services with a particularly strong return on investment (ROI)?
• Could you do more business in your current region?
• Should you expand your practice area to new regions — or even internationally?

Deciding on a particular opportunity will help you target your marketing efforts more efficiently.

Once you’ve identified your macro goals and growth opportunities, it’s time to focus on your legal marketing strategy. Take a look at your marketing goals — is it possible to achieve them with your current internal resources?

Whether it’s in-house or a third party, speaking to experts in growth and marketing strategy can help give valuable insight into your goals. Speak to multiple providers and consider their suggestions. If you’ve got a specific area in mind, such as search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) or social media, then speak to a specialist in that field.

For expert help with your law firm marketing strategy, contact Legmark today.

Next, consider two things:

1. What is your target timeframe for achieving your goals?
2. How much budget can you allocate to your marketing activities?

At this stage, try to keep things realistic. Some strategies can take time and investment before bearing fruit and both can be wasted if the budget available is too small — think about how much of both you can realistically afford based on your answers in step three.

Then it’s time to choose a marketing strategy that helps you reach your goals. A solid law firm marketing plan should target micro goals that contribute to the bigger picture. You might focus on metrics such as:

• More high-quality impressions from improved organic search engine results page rankings
• Higher conversion rates for prospective clients or newsletter subscribers
• Increased website traffic from content marketing or backlinks
• A better cost-per-acquisition on PPC to lower your outgoings per lead
• Growing your social media following and engagement

Remember that these marketing tactics should contribute to your macro business goals. Try to be as specific as possible. For example, I wish to increase website traffic by 10 per cent in the next six months is a measurable goal.

Any good legal marketing strategy is grounded in data. After all, you wouldn’t expect a plan built on guesswork to succeed.

A typical law firm marketing strategy will look at:

• Keyword research to spot opportunities for new or improved website traffic
• Target audience research to drive your ideal clients to landing pages that meet their needs
• Competitor research to understand other law firms’ strengths, channels and lead generation strategies.

Together, this data will help highlight opportunities for your law firms’ digital marketing strategy, feeding back into your macro and micro goals.

Now you’ve made your legal marketing plan, it’s time to do the work. You might start small or slow — the important thing is to get the plan in motion.

Remember, the results might take time. Search engines can take a while to reward website design changes or content updates, for example. Work at your plan, stick to your goals, and the results will come.

No marketing strategy is perfect. Once you’ve implemented your plan, track your data and key performance indicators (KPIs). This will help you see where you’re on track — and where you might make further improvements.

The key to successful marketing efforts is to remain agile. If something isn’t working as well as you’d hoped, make changes. Likewise, if something is going better than expected, you might focus on that channel more. These regular reviews will keep you on track and get the best ROI for your marketing budget.

The final step is to stay proactive. The world is constantly changing, with new technologies, regulations and competitors bringing fresh challenges and opportunities.

In particular, you can monitor the following factors:

• Any changes to social media platforms
• Google algorithm and rules updates
• How the design and user experience of your website might impact your online marketing campaigns
• Any new law firm SEO requirements or opportunities.

Competitors, new and existing, are also playing the same game and will be looking to make ground against you. Keep an eye on where they are investing and react/pivot if needed.

Finding new business for your law practice is key to meeting long-term growth targets. By working with an experienced digital marketing service partner, you can create a focused, data-driven law firm marketing plan that fits your unique business needs. Contact Legmark today to learn more.