5 Legal Marketing Tips to Grow Your Practice
The legal industry is competitive. Attracting and retaining new clients can be tough and keeping your pipeline full of the right leads challenging. However, it’s essential to do both in order to drive revenue and grow your practice. The following five legal marketing tips will help you to do just that (and much more).
- Use AI-powered Automation Tools to Improve Speed to Lead
When a client wants to reach you fast–you need to be there! Automation tools like customizable IVR menus, virtual agents, and intelligent chatbots make that possible. These ‘smart’ tools are able to perform a number of customer service tasks like scheduling appointments and sending reminders, resetting passwords, gathering retainer information, and more.
Utilizing these tools can help support a small contact center and a large, busy one. When all agents are active or after normal business hours these tools fill in. This not only means you never miss a lead with effective, scalable lead management, but you also deliver exceptional customer service–a must to win (and keep) clients today.
“35% of the time calls from prospective clients in the legal industry are not answered.”
But that’s not all.
Automation tools paired with conversation intelligence tools can automatically determine which calls are the highest priority, assign them to the agent who is the best fit, and have them in the queue when that agent is available.
- Integrate Call Tracking and Google Ads to Maximize Your Budget
One of the best legal marketing tips with multiple benefits is getting closed-loop attribution data.
Marketers report getting a lot of data, but they also report not getting the right data. This is even more true for industries that get a lot of phone calls. In fact, many legal marketers overlook attribution for the all-important phone call that so many attorneys receive.
But that’s a mistake.
If you aren’t getting closed-loop attribution that includes both online and offline activity, you aren’t seeing all the facts in regard to marketing efforts. Making decisions on only part of the evidence can be costly.
Paid ad keywords, like those on Google and Bing, can be expensive and without visibility into which of these ads and keywords are driving the most valuable cases you could be wasting a lot of money and time.
Call tracking and dynamic number insertion (DNI) used as part of a multi-touch attribution strategy, deliver closed-loop attribution and reveal precisely which ads, campaigns, and keywords are driving the most calls, form fills, texts, and chats–and which aren’t.
DNI works by automatically or ‘dynamically’ swapping the phone number the viewer sees based on what source (Google Ad, organic search, social media post, etc.) they came from. Vanity, toll-free, and local numbers can all be used with DNI and call tracking so you can keep the numbers you have and add other phone numbers if needed.
With the comprehensive data you get from call tracking, you can maximize ad spend, attract the right leads, and stop wasting money on efforts not working.
- Use Conversational Intelligence Tools to Unlock Deeper Ideal Client Insights
Conversation intelligence tools give you insight into your prospects and current clients you probably didn’t have before. This first-hand insight comes directly from their conversations and interactions with your practice.
This information is critical to help you understand which callers are the best-fits and result in the types of cases you want. You’ll discover:
- Which ads they saw
- Which channels they visited most
- What keywords they searched
- How many times they’ve called before (if any)
- Their location
- Outcomes of conversations
You can then focus on which of these efforts work the best to attract, nurture, and convert your ideal client. Paired with other tools like AskAI, you can get answers to even more questions like:
- Have they paid a retainer yet?
- Are they scheduled for an appointment?
- What was the outcome of the call?
This information can help you understand your target audience better and provide them with what they need quickly and effectively. In addition, you can determine if any of your messaging is off-target resulting in unqualified leads and adjust for better results.
- Implement Omnichannel Communications to Nurture Client Relationships
Attracting a prospect is just the first step, if they aren’t ready to immediately engage with your services (or they choose another law firm) it’s vital to continue to nurture your relationship with them.
Consistently creating valuable resources like blogs, newsletters, social media posts, eBooks, checklists, case studies, guides, etc. that are relevant to your ideal client is a great way to do this. Not only are you staying in touch with them and at the top of their mind, but you’re also showing your expertise in areas that interest them.
“Only 37% of law firms have a blog on their website.”
In addition to these types of resources, you can also engage with your clients regularly by using SMS text messages. Use these for reminders as mentioned above but you can also use them to send holiday messages and good wishes further nurturing your relationship with them. This is another great legal marketing tip to drive more business long-term.
- Use Local, Toll-free, and Vanity Numbers to Connect with More Clients
The final legal marketing tip is to go local. If you are a local law firm, that’s relatively simple to do just make sure you’re Google My Business Profile, Avvo, and other local listings are up to date. Be sure to regularly check up on these listings to ensure ongoing accuracy.
Only 25% of law firms have claimed their Avvo Profile.
If you have a larger firm with multiple locations, you should be sure those listings are up to date. In addition, it’s important that your clients and prospects know you are local. If they come to your site or ad and see an out-of-town number you could lose them.
Using vanity numbers (yes, they work with call tracking and DNI) and phone numbers with local area codes is a great way to assure callers you are in their local area.
Legal Marketing Tips Your Competitors Don’t Have
Many of these legal marketing tips are strategies your competitors aren’t using so they will give you a competitive advantage. And, that’s a must in today’s legal industry. Teams should re-assess their current strategies, as well as supporting tools, and implement some of these legal marketing tips to maximize budgets and drive revenue.
Learn more about tools that help the legal industry make smarter marketing decisions and connect with more ideal clients.