If you want to build a successful legal practice, you need some way to catch people’s attention. You need to be able to naturally attract a recurring flow of new clients, and you need to provide a convenient way for people to validate your credentials and review your offered services.
The trouble is, there are probably lots of lawyers and law firms like yours practicing in your area. And these days, nearly all of them will have some kind of digital marketing strategy in place.
So how exactly do the smartest and best lawyers stand out online?
The Problem of Standing Out
In some ways, marketing your services should be easy. You have the credentials, you have the experience, and you have the resources necessary to serve your clients well. You may even have a great reputation in your field.
But none of that is going to make much of a difference in your ability to attract new clients unless you have some way to stand out from the crowd. A prospective client is unlikely to see little difference between your practice and the dozens of other similar practices in the area – unless you help them see those differences.
There are several ways you can approach this, such as by differentiating your brand, speaking directly to your specific target audience, or simply investing in different types of marketing strategies.
The Power of a Marketing Expert
The easiest solution is to work with a dedicated marketing expert, and preferably one with specific expertise in serving clients like you. Hiring a marketing firm that specializes in serving legal clients, for example, could be exactly what you need to devise a digital marketing strategy that can help you stand out.
Not only will this introduce you to better, more creative ideas, but it can also spare you the burden of trying to plan and execute everything yourself. This way, you can tap into the power of an outside expert and simultaneously free up more time so you can focus on serving your clients. As an added bonus, your marketing expert will likely become the accountable party for your digital marketing strategy; if you don’t see a reasonable ROI, you can fire them and move on.
An Intro to Brand Differentiation
One of the most important foundational strategies to master is brand differentiation. Essentially, this is the practice of making your brand stand out by making it more unique.
There are several ways that you can differentiate your law firm or personal brand, including:
- Specialization. For starters, you can differentiate your brand based on the area of specialty. What type of law do you practice, and what types of clients do you serve?
- Credentials and success stories. You can also show off any unique credentials you have, as well as success stories that help you stand apart.
- Service and customer experience. Another option is to differentiate your law firm by focusing on client service and the overall customer experience. What do people get from working with your law firm instead of those of your competitors?
- Overall image and tone. And, of course, you can differentiate your brand by shifting its image and overall tone. What is your brand personality, and why are you different than similar law practices?
Knowing Your Target Demographics
You can also make your marketing much more effective, and therefore much more outstanding, by focusing hard on your target demographics. You can differentiate your brand by targeting a different audience than your competitors, and you can make your messaging more visible, more relevant, and more appealing by more closely aligning it with the values of your audience.
Accordingly, you should be ready to invest a lot of time and money into market research.
The Importance of ROI
Of course, spending a lot of time and money on marketing isn’t necessarily going to benefit your business. You also have to think about the value you’re generating. Obviously, there’s something exciting about generating a lot of traffic or reaching high rankings in search engines, but your marketing investment is only going to pay off if it meaningfully generates revenue, and does so in excess of what you’re spending.
Because of this, you need to tie every strategic marketing and advertising decision you make to return on investment, or ROI. If a strategy has negative or neutral ROI, consider cutting it or drastically changing it. If it has a positive ROI, see if there’s anything you can do to push it higher. If it has an exceptionally high ROI, learn from it so you can take those principles and apply them to other areas.
Standing out online as a digital marketer in the legal space can be difficult. But with the help of experts and a more refined approach, you can get the results you want.
