What Should an Effective Law Firm Marketing Plan Include?
A strategic law firm marketing plan will provide a blueprint for the firm’s future growth. It will identify which areas the firm wants to grow and address how to streamline the process, including law firm marketing automation. After all, if you embark on a journey without a map (or GPS), you may not get anywhere, much less to your desired destination. Digital marketing for law firms can help define the direction you need to take.
But before we explain what the 6 components of a marketing plan are, let’s get back to the basics – why is law firm marketing so important?
Why do law firms need marketing?
Marketing your law firm is essential to the success of your practice and an efficient way to consistently find and retain clients. A law firm marketing plan should include a combination of digital marketing, SEO, blogging, social media messaging, and digital ads. In addition, to save time, increase efficiency, and help ensure success, a firm should leverage law firm marketing technology to automate various tasks.
What are the 6 elements of a marketing plan?
Law firms interested in growth need a personalized legal marketing strategy that includes marketing strategies for individual lawyers and law firms, and typically includes websites, branding, social media, blogging, emailing, and more. You can use these elements to create a marketing plan template unique to your firm:
1 A detailed description of your goals
Your marketing goals need to align with your firm’s quantifiable business goals. The ultimate goal of law firm marketing strategy is to acquire and maintain clients. Achieving this goal requires building brand awareness with your target market, generating leads through marketing efforts, converting leads into clients, and promoting repeat business and referrals. Ensure that your goals are measurable to track their progress as you reach milestones.
2 A definition of your target market
Creating targeted messages is much easier once you know who you are marketing to. Your target audience will typically include past clients, current clients, industry contacts, other attorneys and law firms, professional groups, referral sources, and the media. Your messages must express what makes your law firm (or you as a lawyer) unique, so develop messages that will communicate the value you bring to your clients to differentiate you from the competition.
3 A realistic marketing budget
A carefully planned marketing budget is critical to any law firm’s marketing efforts. To decide on a number, you’ll need to determine your goals and how much revenue you will need to reach them. Then, to figure out your overall marketing budget, examine how many cases per year you will have to manage to meet that goal, factoring in potential costs such as the marketing technology you will need to produce social media scheduling and email marketing campaigns.
4 Knowledge of current trends
When developing a marketing plan, it is essential that you familiarize yourself with the current marketing trends present in the legal industry. One of these trends is video marketing, which is very effective for personal injury advertising that uses emotional marketing as a strategy to obtain clients. Another is to create a legal podcast – marketing experts predict that there will be 504.9 million people listening to podcasts by the end of 2024. Legal podcasts typically discuss various topics, including current legal cases, significant legal developments, and explanations of legal concepts and terms.
5 A focused brand identity
A law firm’s brand is how potential, current, and former clients, referral sources, and others perceive the company. Law firm branding incorporates your logo, website, and marketing materials. It should include both written words and a visual presentation of who you are and how you want people to feel when interacting with you and your law firm.
6 A plan of action
Marketing activities include content development, advertising, social media, email marketing, and more. Although you might decide to roll out different tactics on a scheduled basis or launch everything all at once, either way, the successful execution of your plan depends on the utilization of law firm marketing software.
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