Law Firm Marketing: How to Avoid Inefficiency in Fall Season

After working 17 years in legal service industry marketing, I’ve seen a lot, both as an in-house employee and a consultant. I’ve spotted a regular trend. It's a well-known fact that lawyers in the legal services sector actively engage in marketing. Every autumn, when they are back from vacation, they usually come back full of new ideas, ready to start new marketing projects. This excitement often brings about new ideas for fresh service concepts, communication topics, marketing formats, and more.

Often, the plans made at the beginning of the year or ongoing projects in business development and marketing hit a snag when autumn arrives. This is because sticking to the plan needs more effort compared to starting new, exciting things. Plus, trying out new things is often more exciting than sticking to old ones, whether they’re someone else’s ideas or our own.

At this stage, marketing managers often hear lots of reasons and excuses to try something different. Phrases like "it didn't work as we hoped," "it didn't bring in new clients," or "no one was interested" are so common and push the whole team to try a new approach.

Still, this kind of all-over-the-place approach to marketing doesn’t work well and isn’t good for the lawyers either. In the end, managing marketing this way within an organization takes up much energy and drains the legal team as well.

Three reasons why following sparkling spontaneous ideas is not wise

The B2B sales process, including the legal service industry, typically spans 4-12 months in approximately 60% of cases, unless emergency services are required. Consequently, a successful marketing approach in this context requires a long-term and consistent commitment, much like running a marathon rather than a sprint. Therefore, conclusions or decisions to modify strategies should not be drawn prematurely; ample time must be given to assess the appropriateness of the chosen path, solutions, and tactics.

Another reason for maintaining continuity is also closely tied to the extended process of acquiring new clients, which starts with raising awareness about the problem, law firm, legal expertise and culminates in fostering customer loyalty and advocacy.

Along this lengthy journey, potential customers may reassess the importance of the service, realizing it may not be as critical (due to relatively low risk or the possibility of cheaper alternatives, such as paying fines). As they contemplate their needs, competitors may enter the picture, reshaping their perception of the problem, earning trust more rapidly, or presenting superior offers. Furthermore, a potential client's initial good impression of your firm and your competence can evolve based on information they find about you online, including testimonials or an outdated website, causing them to question if you're the best choice for their needs.

For these reasons, it's crucial to exercise patience throughout the sales process by consistently utilizing various marketing tools and tactics to maintain the potential customer's interest through his whole customer journey until they are ready to make a purchasing decision (and afterwards).

Another reason to advocate consistency, particularly when targeting new audiences, is the power of repetition.

Numerous studies reveal that individuals typically remember a message and connect it with a person or brand after encountering it at least 9-16 times.

The exact number may vary depending on industry competitiveness, the volume of communication noise, the uniqueness and relevance of our message, among other factors.

Moreover, for effective communication, it requires adopting an integrated approach, using a range of marketing channels to spread the message. This underscores the significance of maintaining patience in legal service marketing.

How to determine if it’s the right time to try something new?

Determining whether you've run your communication campaign for a sufficient duration to conclude that your chosen course isn't effective, and your autumn inspiration is the best moment for adjustments rather than waiting until the new year, is a challenging task. There is no straightforward answer to this, but there is an excellent guide – marketing benchmarks for different marketing activities.

I recommend turning back to these marketing benchmarks at this critical point when considering whether it's time to stop and explore something new or if you should persist.?

Marketing benchmarking is the measurement of how a company, brand or product is performing, either compared to competitors or against best practices in the market. You can easily locate this information on the internet through a thorough search. Additionally, for more specific sector-related statistics, you can often turn to sectoral associations.

They are useful not only to measure conversions or success rate in any other way, but also to calculate the minimum number of times a certain action needs to be repeated and the minimum audience that needs to be reached in order to conclude whether a particular marketing activity is working.

As an illustration, when utilizing digital marketing tools in the legal services sector, it's essential to grasp that their conversion rate typically falls within the range of 0.5-4.5%. This indicates that only this portion of your audience will progress to the next stage of your marketing funnel, which might involve initiating a conversation, downloading material, or making an inquiry, depending on the specific tool and the stage of the customer journey they are.

This implies that, for instance, if you're considering a LinkedIn InMail campaign targeting new potential clients, you should anticipate sending a minimum of 30 InMail messages to receive one response, which might even be negative. Meanwhile, with the Google Display Network advertising campaign, you'll need to display your banner approximately 200 times before receiving the first click, and so on. Simultaneously, you might have to publish over 10 articles on a specific topic in the media before someone reaches out to you for professional guidance; or aim to speak at a conference with at least 100 of your target audience, in the hope that eventually, even in a worst-case scenario, at least 2-4 of them will be willing to continue a conversation with you on a topic. ?

While these benchmarks are conditional, they serve as a stabilizing influence on our mindset during the autumn season, when the urge to "begin anew" is strong, and they assist lawyers in focusing their energy in the right direction avoiding burnout in marketing initiatives and focusing on marketing efficiency.

BOUND / Law Firm Marketing

#LawFirmMarketing #LawFirm

You can find the video format of this content at the Crespect online event by following this link: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/crespect_live-autumn-uplift-empowering-legal-professionals-activity-7102651289628487680-Mx0M?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop