Marketing: every law firm needs someone to handle getting the word out there about the firm, but it's hard to figure out the best way to delegate this. Should you hire someone in-house to work specifically on marketing? Hand off some marketing tasks over to your current staff, but use outside experts to manage others?
How you structure a marketing department in a law firm depends on the size of the firm, the volume of work to be managed, and your overall budget. Some firms choose to outsource everything to a fractional CMO or a marketing agency, others manage it completely in-house, and other firms use a mix of both.
Most firms, especially small law firms, recognize that they don't need a full–time team in their firm, with over 83% of lawyers outsourcing marketing strategy and execution to an outside expert.
Here's a rundown of possible law firm marketing department roles to fill to help you think about the best way to set this up in your firm.
1. Strategy and Planning
A marketing strategist should sit at the top of any marketing department, usually manning the space between communicating with partners and firm leaders to other employees. This person is responsible for setting the strategy and ensuring that others have what they need to execute it. They will handle big-picture things like business development and running the law firm's marketing efforts.
This person may have a background in marketing execution across other industries but, ideally, will be familiar with legal services, too. Their job is to conceptualize the best ways to take advantage of the existing marketing budget and other resources, such as software and staff. As this is someone who comes in with a background in the marketing field, it is usually the highest-paid role in the marketing team. You might call this person your director of marketing or marketing manager, and they'll have the most decision-making power in the marketing team.
Not every law firm needs an in-house marketing manager, especially if the firm is smaller. However, it's a common mistake just to dump all marketing activities on the desk of an admin who might not have the experience or strategic insight to translate this into projects for other staff or outsourced marketing agency experts.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a role that should be filled either by an in-house staff member or managed by a knowledgeable marketing agency expert. Content marketing covers a broad grouping of important things, like search engine optimization (SEO) for the firm's website content and blogs, ad copy, email newsletters, and organic social media.
A content marketing expert will understand the places to connect with potential clients (known as channels) and the best way to do that, given the firm's practice areas and capabilities. Depending on their level of experience, sometimes the content marketing manager also drafts a legal marketing strategy or will execute a strategy created by someone else.
This person will manage all content marketing efforts, potentially even handling the tasks themselves. They should also review and report to partners or other firm leaders about the performance of marketing efforts. If there's a marketing director or manager in place above in the hierarchy, this person would review the work of the content marketing expert and provide feedback or change suggestions.
In most cases, law firms should partner with an outside contractor or a marketing agency to handle content marketing. Aside from firms with many lawyers, there's usually not enough work for an in-house hire. However, marketing professionals working in agencies or as freelancers can help to fill this gap and enable lawyers to focus on working with clients while still achieving marketing goals for the firm.
3. Paid Advertising
Paid ads are a great strategy for generating law firm leads, so long as the person running them knows how to do it.
Paid advertising could be run by the marketing director, the content marketing manager, or an outside marketing expert. Paid advertising is a unique skill set that requires advanced knowledge of the platform in question, such as pay-per-click ads on Google or Facebook ads. The person developing or implementing paid ad campaigns must be able to:
- Effectively communicate the firm's offerings through conversion-ready copy
- Understand and comply with national and state lawyer advertising rules
- Know how to set up and monitor campaigns and metrics
- Maximize the paid ads budget by reviewing and adjusting bids and ads
- Report on what's working and general return on investment
- Adapt ads as trends evolve
Since this is a highly specialized skill, it's very unlikely that an intern or admin in your law firm will be able to tackle it. Too many firms end up throwing good money after bad simply because they don't account for the high level of strategy needed to run effective paid ads campaigns. Since what's working, budget expectations, and platform rules can all change, you need someone who is willing and able to keep their finger on the pulse of what's happening right now.
Most in-house staff won't be able to track this, but marketing professionals who do this day in and day out remain on the cutting edge of their industry, which is why it's popular to outsource this to someone else.
4. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is ranked as one of the best ways to grow a law firm's brand awareness, but it's actually one of the lowest-performing channels. Having a solid social media strategy may not mean hiring a full-time employee to manage this for you.
Sometimes you can couple your content marketing manager with your social media manager, depending on their background and comfort level. In other cases, you might use an outsourced social media content creator to develop the content, allowing the marketing director or content marketing manager to review and post materials to save time.
Social media marketing includes reviewing what's outlined in your law firm marketing strategy, which may start with only one social media platform and grow from there. Whoever is responsible for this should know which platforms are most likely to connect with your ideal audience, such as LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.
This person's job may also require them to manage any social media inboxes and respond to any comments posted on these social media platforms.
5. Lead Nurture
Lead nurture refers to the process of taking someone from either no awareness of you and your firm or a little awareness to the next step in the marketing process. Nurturing leads may occur through email marketing, 1:1 outreach, social media retargeting, or other activities. It's a huge waste to overlook the importance of lead nurture, since there's no point in putting all this effort into bringing in new leads for this to fall flat.
The goal here is for someone to manage how people come from the top of the law firm marketing funnel and go down towards the lower levels where they're more likely to convert into new clients. This person must be able to connect the dots to turn potential clients into current clients.
Think of your lead nurture specialist as someone between the overall marketing strategy development and your intake team (who takes over at the point a lead may be ready to hire an attorney.)
Most law firms don't need someone in a specific lead nurture role, but since this can be hard to outsource, it often falls on the plate of the marketing director, content marketing manager, or potentially even an admin. It's best if you can assign this to someone who knows marketing and is familiar with ways to build trust and a good foundation with prospective clients.
6. Traditional Marketing
In addition to a broad spectrum digital marketing strategy, you might also have traditional marketing activities that keep your name top of mind in your region. This can include things like:
- Print ads
- Billboards
- Local radio ads
- Sponsorships
- Workshops
All of these require someone who understands the strategy behind developing these plans and the ability to implement them effectively. Your firm will likely continue to invest in online marketing while maintaining some aspects of these traditional marketing activities. If you employ a law firm marketing director, this person likely oversees both the offline and online marketing plans, but may work with vendors or marketing agencies at various stages.
For example, the marketing agency might create the script for the radio ad, but the marketing director is responsible for buying it and getting the audio recorded.
Outsource Your Marketing Now
If you don't have a law firm marketing team or feel overwhelmed by content creation, now is the right time to get help.
Has marketing sat on the backburner for far too long, and you know you need to invest in it to get your efforts off the ground? One of the easiest ways to put your marketing plan into action is by hiring a qualified marketing expert to help you focus on what's most important and ensure these critical tasks get completed.
While it might be possible to do all of this yourself or hire people into your firm, it's so much simpler and more effective to use an agency who knows the legal industry. That gets you the best of both worlds: your time spent serving clients while also knowing you're doing everything you can to get results with law firm marketing.
At Rankings,io, we built our reputation getting results for law firms and we know what it takes to create an effective marketing strategy. Contact us today to learn more about jumpstarting your law firm marketing plans.
