Top 10 Ways Lawyers Will Fail at Marketing in 2018

Trial attorneys know just how important it is to weave a tale as they build a case for a judge or jury in the courtroom, but so many lawyers fail to weave a good story about their own firm for their prospective clients. It’s not a mystery why they don’t spend more time on marketing; they’ll lose precious billable hours if they do. Regardless of how you allocate your time, having a strategy and someone executing it will be paramount to your success.

As we’ve partnered with law firms to help them tell their stories, we’ve seen the good, the bad and the nonexistent. To help you avoid digital pitfalls and drive growth through your marketing efforts in 2018, we’ve assembled this list of top lawyer marketing faux pas and how you can get a leg up before the new year starts.

1. They won’t place enough importance on their brand or its integrity.

Attorneys who craft and curate a distinct and ever-present brand identity will win more business and they will increase the value of their book of business. In this American Bar Association article, the author details how this can impact your family, even in the event of your death. Whether as an insurance strategy or a retirement strategy, growing the value of your brand will have near-term impacts and amplify results into the future.

For starters, ensure your firm has a brand name that is reflective of your firm and its culture. Match that with a professional logo and brand identity guidelines. Always follow the guidelines for how your brand should appear and put it on everything. Stationary, business cards, your website, your videos and anything promotional.

2. They’ll fail to properly communicate their value proposition to their referral partners.

Lawyers don’t just have to communicate their brand to their prospective and current clients, they must also ensure their referral partners know their strengths and the types of clients they are looking for. For younger attorneys who rely primarily on referrals from their colleagues, a deliberate approach to communicating with referrers is crucial for success.

Start by making a spreadsheet with all of the names of attorneys who refer business to you in the first row. In rows 2 through 11, define individual specific activities that you can perform over the course of the next few months, for example: send a letter, include a Starbucks gift card, ask them to coffee, send a handwritten thank you note, connect with them on LinkedIn, endorse them on LinkedIn, call to ask for business advice, or email and ask if they’ll be coming to the upcoming fundraiser for your bar association foundation. Set a time interval for activities and keep working the spreadsheet until you’ve completed all of the tasks. Do that with a list of colleagues over a few months and you will grow your caseload.

3. They still won’t upgrade their website to work well and provide an exceptional experience across all devices.

Thirty-eight percent of consumers indicated they would go to the internet first when looking for an attorney, according to an ABA Journal Article from 2014. Add this to the cresting of mobile usage in 2017 with more than 50% of all visits to websites coming from mobile devices and the picture becomes clearer that having a broadly functional website that visitors can use to get information, feel good about your firm and understand exactly what to expect is essential. What many simply won’t see is just how frustrated people become when the digital experience is poor.

If you aren’t sure, take honest stock. See what it’s like to use your website on a smartphone, a computer and a tablet. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential client looking for information. Survey a few others and solicit their honest feedback. If the experience feels clunky or something isn’t intuitive, it may be time to build a new website. If you decide to pursue that path, make sure your marketing partner knows your industry and make sure they understand how important it is to align content and design with the intentions of your site visitors.

4. They’ll pretend that people don’t read reviews on Google, Avvo, Yelp and Facebook.

Echo chambers are dangerous in the marketing world. Mind only the opinions and habits of the clients you do work with and you’ll fail to learn why those who don’t chose someone else. So don’t fall victim to the thinking that people don’t read online reviews. It turns out that 74% of people surveyed by BrightLocal indicated that positive reviews made them trust a business more. The same survey found that 7 out of 10 people are willing to leave an online review.

Looking to get a boost? For starters, take a look around and see what reviews you already have. Making sure you have updated your firm info on those sites is a great first start. You can update a number of online directories with a service from Neustar called Localeze. It’s $97 per year and worth every penny. Step two involves asking satisfied clients to leave a review for your firm on their favorite reviews site. Keep at it, though, as 73% BrightLocal respondents indicated a review older than 3 months is no longer relevant.

5. They’ll pretend video isn’t as important as it really is.

The average business will publish 18 videos this month and will have 293 videos in their library. These businesses aren’t spending time and resources to create that sort of content if it’s not paying off. Research from Wyzowl indicates that 79% of consumers would rather watch a video than read text on a page. Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed indicated that a video has convinced them the buy a product.

You aren’t selling the latest high-tech gadget, rather you’re selling your people. You need people to comprehend the value your firm brings to the table that your people are the reason clients can expect results. You need people to trust you. Video offers a unique way of creating a connection with people that no other medium can. Start by making one video. Professional video is surprisingly affordable, can be leveraged in a number of ways and will be an excellent investment. Your first video may not be perfect, but it’s a start and your videos will improve with practice.

6. Traditionalists may continue to avoid putting case results and client testimonials on their websites.

Some will cite ethics, other may have internal reservations. The reality is, many states allow firms to cite case results and client testimonials on their website. Some bars require a disclaimer that any testimony is not a promise of future results, but that’s a good thing to include anyway. It’s always a good idea to set realistic expectations, but you also want to communicate that you are a winner.

If people are willing to write a review online about your firm, the least you could do is share it on your firm’s website so that visitors get the benefit of third-party validation.

7. Some will continue to spend more money on TV instead of shifting dollars to more efficient online video.

Did you know that with TrueView ads on YouTube, you can reach a larger audience and pay only for views where viewers watch a full 30 seconds of your ad? Of course you don’t want someone to watch only part of your ad, but if you can get eyeballs and not pay for them, how could you argue? And why wouldn’t you pay a competitive rate for one person to watch for 30 seconds or more?

As a rule of thumb, you want to keep your video ads short (30-45 seconds), but there are strategies that allow for longer storytelling formats. You can run your TV spots on YouTube without making any changes, but note there are many ways to get creative and execute multi-channel promotions with YouTube.

8. They will act like adding live chat to their website is somehow going to cause problems for their firm.

If you’ve ever paid a receptionist to answer the phone, you can staff a live chat service on your website to generate leads and remain in compliance. Live chat operators are not trained to offer legal advice, rather their sole purpose is to provide a sense of relief that help is on the way. By giving impatient visitors an outlet to connect instantly to a human at your firm and training that operator to gather pertinent lead information, you’re able to turn more of your website visitors into clients and prevent them from going somewhere else in their time of need.

Live chat solutions can be staffed in-house by your team using rather inexpensive technology or by 24/7 third-party operators, which can cost from $25 - $50 per qualified lead with little to no other fixed expenses. Most solutions have short-notice cancellation clauses, so you can try out the service without committing to a year of service with an unknown ROI.

9. Holdouts will avoid being active on LinkedIn.

You can dodge LinkedIn all you want, but professionals go to LinkedIn to connect. There may not be a more referral-friendly industry than the legal profession, so why would you not have an up-to-date, active LinkedIn profile?

For starters, upload your photo. If you aren’t willing to do this, you’ve failed already. Next, just take the time to engage with others. Connect with people you know. Like articles that you see that you find interesting. Share content you think your followers might find relevant. Endorse others for their skills. Be bold and write an article or record a video telling others what you think about something. But for starters, please just upload your photo.

10. They won't insist on properly measured ROI of marketing efforts.

2018 is upon us. If anyone tries to tell you that you cannot effectively measure your investment in marketing they are lying. There is always a way to measure ROI and you should be collecting metrics across all aspects of your marketing efforts. How many impressions do your ads get, how many calls, how many emails, how much is it costing, and how much revenue are the leads generating are just a handful of the important metrics.

Start by making it a requirement that any marketing investment must have a clearly defined method for measuring. Follow through by placing a measuring system in place when you deploy the effort. Finish by analyzing results, extracting insights and using the data to inform your next move. To learn more about measuring your marketing efforts, read my article on how to better track your marketing here.

How many expert witnesses does it take to convince a jury?

Oftentimes a courtroom story won’t resonate without expert testimony, and sometimes all it takes is one good expert. In the case of legal marketing, having expert advice is a cornerstone of success in the legal profession. If you are a partner in a firm that is looking to grow in size or simply get better cases, you’ll likely need to find a marketing partner you can trust to provide guidance, help craft a strategy and turn ideas into reality. Doing your homework on this front early and extensively will be the catalyst for helping you realize your own dreams.

Will Melton has advised companies of all sizes on their digital strategy from communications infrastructure and individual marketing initiatives to digital customer interfaces and mobile apps. He is the co-founder and lead product engineer at Client Magnet. Utilizing new tools and proven digital strategies, Client Magnet is dedicated to helping attorneys, law firms and professional service providers acquire more of the right types of clients faster and at a lower cost. This post was originally published at ClientMagnetPro.com.