A law firm's marketing strategy is a set of coherent and integrative choices that sets a law firm up to win in the market they've chosen to compete in. This is not the same thing as planning for law firms—despite how often they're confused.
Strategy is like a beacon for your law firm. If you don't have one to guide you as you try to get from where you are to where you want to be, you'll drift off course, waste time, and sometimes crash.
While we'd love to say that most law firms need only to refresh their current strategy—the more common reality is that very few law firms have anything that would remotely pass as a strategy.
What worked for you 10 years ago won't necessarily work today. While you shouldn't change your strategy very frequently, we recommend revisiting it periodically to see if what was true about the world in the past is still true today.
After reading this article, you'll know what strategy is, why you shouldn't confuse it with planning, and how to develop one for your own firm.
The Art of Winning: Strategy vs. Planning vs. Tactics
Before we dive into what strategy is, let's make sure we understand what it isn't.
- Strategy: A set of choices that sets you up to win, where you want to win, how you want to win.
- Plan: A set of activities (or things) that you're going to do but don't guarantee that you will win (i.e., get the results you want). See Law Firm Marketing Plans.
- Tactics: The ways you can do activities.
To develop a real strategy, there are several choices you have to make:
- What does winning look like?
- Where will we compete so that we win?
- How will we compete so that we win?
- What capabilities must we have to win?
- What enabling management systems do we need to win?
As you answer each of these questions, don't think of them as being a linear top-to-bottom waterfall but instead as a set of questions that reinforce one another in a ripple-like fashion. Meaning the answer to “how will we compete” can cause you to revisit and revise your “definition of winning” or “where to compete.”
Define What Winning Looks Like
Everything follows from strategy. Without one, you're just moving chess pieces around without gaining ground.
When you define what winning looks like, you give everyone else a map they can follow. It creates alignment and organizes everything else below it—at least better than the alternative does, which is just a hodgepodge of uncoordinated initiatives.
When developing what winning means for your firm, focus on what your clients want, not yourself or your firm. If you're not in the business of serving the market, you won't survive for long.
Understanding Your Firm's Brand to Create a Winning Image
In the game of marketing, your brand is your game plan. It represents your firm's unique strategy and dictates how you compete on every front, from outreach and publicity to client interaction and reputation management. Knowing and refining your brand is key to setting up your pieces for a winning strategy.
A successful legal brand is akin to a well-executed game plan; it is designed to outperform competitors and claim victory by achieving client trust and approval. This requires presenting a professional, consistent, and distinctive image that represents the quality of your services and your commitment to clients. Like a grandmaster studying the game board and preparing for any move, your brand must be built to weather any challenges and seize any opportunities in the market.
Ensuring Continuity in All Moves
Imagine your brand as the cohesive strategy that guides each of your firm's moves. Like a coherent game strategy, your branding should maintain a constant presence, unifying all your marketing materials across all platforms. In this way, every client interaction, every social media post, and each piece of promotional material serves a singular purpose: to advance your branding strategy and bring you closer to victory.
Remember, your brand carries your firm’s pledge to your clients. It establishes your unique position in the game and sets the tone for your marketing moves. When all the pieces, moves, and strategies reflect one unified game plan, you’re well on your way to commanding the chessboard that is law firm marketing strategy.
Your Target Market: Deciding Where to Compete
This is where things get a bit more specific. Both where to compete and the next choice, how to win, are the core of strategy.
This is where you begin to define what segment of the market you're going after and why. You'll need to answer questions like:
- What markets are we competing in, and what markets are we not competing in?
- What clients are we serving, and what clients are we not serving?
- What marketing channels will we use to reach potential clients, and what channels will we avoid?
- What legal services will we provide, and what services won't we provide?
In doing so, you're effectively defining your:
- Geography
- Service category
- Client segment
- Distribution channels
This is not an exercise to approach with a cavalier attitude, either. Anyone can pick a place, service, type of client, and marketing channel to compete in—what you want is to decide which one to compete in and win.
Let's look at two examples of what this might look like in practice: the losing (read: lazy) approach and the strategic approach.
Example A: The Losing Way
Background: A personal injury lawyer in Chicago.
- Geography: Chicago and surrounding suburbs
- Service Category: Personal injury
- Client Segment: Anyone injured due to negligence
- Distribution Channels: Some TV advertising, SEO, and posting on social.
Why won't this win?
Because it's the same playbook every other losing firm uses—plus or minus a few distribution channels.
But we can turn this into something better by adding more specifics and addressing the reasons why we're choosing these over others.
Example B: The Winning Way
Background: A personal injury lawyer in Chicago.
- Geography: Chicago and surrounding suburbs because of our partner's deep roots within the community from East Chicago to Highland Park.
- Service Category: Personal injury—specifically focused on workplace injuries and wrongful death before expanding into other subcategories of PI.
- Client Segment: Focused on construction workers before expanding into other industries because all three partners grew up in the Chicago construction industry and worked in it every summer during college.
- Distribution Channels: We'll use only two platforms. We'll use informative and entertaining TikTok videos to generate demand and awareness because three of our senior partners have families in the construction industry and can create interesting and funny clips that people will watch and enjoy. We'll use SEO to capture that demand whenever people do get hurt and start searching for specific information online—both for what to do and who can help.
Notice how each of these choices supports and reinforces one another? That's a common theme you should aim for throughout every facet of strategy development.
Law Firm Marketing Strategy: Deciding How to Compete
When you decide where to compete, you select the battlefield you'll fight on. How to compete to win is determining the circumstances on that battlefield.
When deciding how to compete, your goal is to stack the deck in your favor. To set yourself up where you make the rules of the game such that you have an unfair advantage over your competition.
To do this, you have to ask yourself: what will enable me to create unique value that I can consistently deliver to clients in a way that's so distinctive that they have no reasonable alternative?
There are two paths you can when doing this:
- You can win based on cost, or
- You can win based on differentiation
Law Firm Marketing Strategies Based on Cost
Law firms that want to win on cost have to focus on being more affordable and having better margins than competing firms, enabling them to outlast them until they have to shut down. This path isn't one we'd recommend.
Brands that do this usually win because they have a software component that enables them to reach a larger geographic market with low enough overhead costs that they can still come out ahead. Examples include companies like DoNotPay, LegalZoom, and Rocket Lawyer.
Law Firm Marketing Strategies Based on Differentiation
Unless you plan to develop software and go to market with a product-led approach, you should consider taking the path toward differentiation.
To be different, you have to articulate what winning looks like for you and where you will compete to the point where you can truly be unique and where the incentive to ever compete against you is low or the barrier too high.
So, how can you differentiate yourself? You won't find the answer by reading a blog post.
Looking at what your competitors are doing will also not work (by definition, it's the worst thing you can do).
Talk to your clients. Seek to deeply understand them. Watch for what they aren't saying—the things they want but don't know they want. Ask them what their search for an attorney looked like, why they chose you over someone else, and what they liked and didn't like while you've represented them.
Oh, and don't lead questions while doing so. You know how that turns out.
Your customers determine the market—not your competitors. They're the best source of information that far too many firms leave untapped.
Tactics: Putting Your Digital Marketing Efforts Into Action
Digital marketing, with its enormous potential and varied channels, provides a playground of immense opportunity. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of tools at your disposal.
From optimizing your law firm website to leveraging the power of social media, launching effective PPC campaigns, and crafting enticing emails, each tactic is a pivotal move that builds toward your overall strategy.
Hold your tactical map close. It's time we explore the synergy of these digital marketing maneuverings in your law firm's marketing campaign.
Advanced Fortifications: Making Your Website Your Stronghold
The digital landscape, much like a real-world battlefield, needs a fortified command center. For your law firm marketing strategy, your website is this command outpost. It's your primary digital storefront and represents your law firm online, offering legal services and setting the stage for your marketing efforts.
A law firm's website is often the first contact point for prospective clients. Therefore, much like how an efficient lawyer articulates a point, your site needs to communicate clearly and decisively.
Investing in a well-designed, easy-to-navigate website can aid your firm marketing significantly by providing a seamless experience for potential clients.
SEO and Content Strategy: The Art of Ranking
Superlative design is only one piece of law firm marketing in the digital world. To lead prospective clients to your gates, you need to rank on search engine results pages.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. A well-planned SEO strategy helps potential clients easily find you, bringing them one step closer to choosing your legal services.
Just as a well-executed military strategy takes account of its resources, your SEO efforts are your digital stockpile. You should consistently focus on quality content and optimized keywords.
Like positioning artillery for a broader strategic advantage, optimizing your website content helps your law firm secure a favorable place in the eyes of search engines — and thereby, potential clients. A robust SEO mechanism not only increases your website's visibility but also boosts the credibility of your law practice.
On-Page and Off-Page SEO
The fight for rankings involves multiple fronts. On-page SEO refers to the maneuvers undertaken on your website, such as incorporating relevant keywords, optimizing meta-descriptions, ensuring website usability, and creating high-quality content.
Conversely, off-page search engine optimization comprises marketing efforts outside of your law firm's website, like earning backlinks from reputable sites and managing your Google Business Profile. Juggling these two fronts efficiently is crucial to maximize your law firm's online visibility.
For a more in-depth guide to on-page, off-page, and technical SEO aspects, see our SEO for lawyers guide.
Capturing Key Territories with Local SEO
One of the most effective tactics in the law firm marketing playbook is local SEO. By honing your SEO efforts to target your immediate geographical area, you can appear as a reputable, accessible solution to locals seeking legal services.
Much like a tactician secures crucial chokepoints on a battlefield, Local SEO lets you capture key territories in the search engine results page landscape.
Outflanking Your Competition with Top-Ranking Content
In the tactics of law firm marketing, content is your vanguard. It establishes your firm as a thought leader in your field, enhances your law firm's brand, and attracts potential clients to your services.
Promoting Your Content
Even the most well-crafted content, like the most brilliant tactical move, is useless without proper execution. To ensure your content reaches its intended audience, you need a strategic promotional plan. Channels like social media, email marketing, and even your law firm's website are excellent platforms to promote your content effectively.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram means you can engage directly with your target audience and increase the visibility of your legal services.
Winning law firms know how to select the most suitable social media platforms. Each platform has a unique audience demographic and is suitable for different forms of content. For instance, LinkedIn is excellent for publishing professional articles and company news, while Instagram is more visual-based and perfect for brand storytelling.
By providing engaging content, joining relevant discussions, responding to comments, and being proactive, you're building a bridge of trust with your audience. Remember, every like, comment, or share increases your visibility, helping to attract new clients.
Email Marketing for Long-Range Communications
The first step in launching an effective email marketing campaign is to develop a robust email database. It includes the essential details of anyone who has shown interest in your services, whether they're prospective clients, existing clients, or those who have availed your legal services in the past. Think of this database as your central point from which all email marketing expeditions are launched.
Emails should not be tedious reports but engaging, concise, and value-packed dispatches that the reader looks forward to receiving. From insights into recent reductions in law to simple tips, a well-crafted email can drastically improve click-through rates and foster stronger relationships with your community.
Utilizing Analytics to Measure Your Wins
No law firm marketing strategy is effective without performance tracking and analytics — both on your law firm website and any associated social media accounts, including your personal brand's.
This process involves assessing likes, shares, comments, click-through rates, follower growth, and other key metrics to tweak your strategy for maximum impact.
Crafting Effective PPC Campaigns for Legal Marketing
An effective PPC campaign isn't about blindly firing off ads—it's about deliberate, targeted advertising. By identifying high-impact keywords and structuring your ads around them, you essentially aim your artillery at the heart of prospective clients' search queries. This precision brings your firm's marketing efforts onto the frontline and right into potential clients' sight lines.
Given that PPC operates on a budget, it's crucial to gauge the impact of these campaigns as well as define your law firm marketing budget and clear-cut goals from the start.
Tools like Google Analytics allow your law firm to measure ad performance, such as click-through rates, conversions, and overall ROI. With these insights, your law firm can optimize the PPC strategy, ensuring your marketing budget is spent wisely for maximum impact.
While PPC requires an investment, when designed strategically and managed effectively, PPC campaigns can expedite your firm's visibility and client acquisition. As such, PPC is a robust and immediate-impact tool to consider in your legal marketing strategy. When done considerately, it can even work for a small law firm, such as a family law practice.
The Power of Client Reviews and Testimonials
The quality and integrity of your law firm can be strongly endorsed by your clients' testimonies. Past clients' reviews and testimonials are indispensable, as they can significantly enhance your firm's online reputation, acting as a recommendation letter to those still on their journey to find legal services.
Identify What Capabilities You Must Have to Win
The capabilities you must have to win should follow from your previous decisions. They should align with your firm's core capabilities or be something you can obtain.
Focus on the capabilities you have that reinforce one another and not just the things you're good at. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean your clients will care. And if they don't care, you won't have a competitive advantage.
A lot of firms we talk to about this say things like, “excellent service, always available, fight to get them the best outcome possible.”
These are sine qua non.
Of course, you need to have those. What you need to ask yourself is, “What are the capabilities I must have to win, how I want to win, where I want to win, in the way I want to win?”
For a law firm, this may have less to do with your ability to practice law and more with your ability to let the world know your firm exists.
Determine What Management Systems You Need to Win
This is the bureaucratic layer underpinning everything else. Think of these as the systems you need to measure, assess, and make decisions about your progress toward winning.
For example, let's say your firm defines winning as being the first firm that comes to mind anytime a Chicago construction worker gets hurt on the job.
A few things you might do to make that a reality include creating content construction workers will watch, like, and share when scrolling on social media, sponsoring programs that help people get into the trades, and routinely speaking at events where they attend.
How to Measure Success for Your Law Firm
There are many ways to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Here are a few ideas:
- Ask people who submit forms on your website how they heard about you using a free-form text field.
- Hire market researchers to poll the audience to assess how top-of-mind your firm is relative to other firms for the specific contexts you want to be remembered for.
- Read the comments people leave on social. Are they from people working in industries you want to represent, or are they all friends and family?
Avoid myopic thinking that everything can be measured, either. Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured matters.
Management is about more than measurement. It's about the systems and processes that need to be in place to move from where you are to where you want to be.
Anything else is a distraction.
Good Strategy Doesn't Guarantee Success, But Neither Does Luck
Going through the motions, planning things to do and tactics to try in the hopes something will stick is just busy work.
If you don't feel like you're winning or growing the way you want to, revisit the nuts and bolts of law firm marketing plan.
A good strategy doesn't guarantee victory, but a lack of a good one (i.e., a coherent one) is a recipe for failure.
Want some guidance or direction? Consider working with a dedicated law firm marketing agency. At Rankings.io, we specialize in helping your law firm develop an effective strategy and actually deliver real results. You know where to find us to schedule a call.
