Establishing your law firm as a competitive force in the crowded corporate sector requires a cohesive marketing plan. This plan must leverage established marketing principles that are geared toward connecting with business-to-business (B2B) clients.
B2B legal marketing requires a starkly different approach than business-to-consumer (B2C) advertising. Corporate law firms that fail to acknowledge these distinctions will struggle to differentiate themselves from other legal entities in their sector.
To avoid these pitfalls and acquire more business, read this definitive guide. It examines topics such as connecting with your target audience, the importance of publishing relevant content to your website, and much more.
Digital marketing strategies for corporate law firms is different than marketing efforts for other kinds of clients. By following the principles outlined below, you can significantly increase the efficacy of your online marketing endeavors and acquire new clients.
What Makes Marketing for Corporate Lawyers Special?
When a B2C law firm develops its online marketing strategy, the goal is to connect with prospective clients. While online marketing for a corporate law firm has the same aim as any other law firm, for example, the outreach efforts of corporate entities are directed at an entirely different category of potential clients: large organizations.
Therefore, a corporate law firm's online marketing strategy must incorporate content that will appeal to an organization's entire group of decision-makers. This is because corporate law firms do not have the luxury of addressing a single customer persona like personal injury law firms might.
With that in mind, your law firm must limit its use of traditional marketing and incorporate other forms of outreach to connect with your audience.
How Corporate Attorneys Can Connect with Their Audience
If you want to create a successful law firm marketing strategy, the first step involves finding ways to connect with your audience. Once you have established these connections, you can then work to nurture prospective clients and transform them into loyal customers.
Your corporate law firm can use many different tactics and mediums to connect with its target audience, including the following:
Social media platforms have become key components of B2C law firm marketing. While these platforms have some value for corporate law firms as well, LinkedIn is more suitable for B2B online marketing.
As you are probably well aware, the who's who of decision-makers are active on LinkedIn. By creating a dynamic LinkedIn attorney profile for your law practice, you can tap into this valuable communication medium. You can link up with legal officers, COOs, mid-level managers, and CEOs involved in the decision-making process of potential clients.
Keep in mind that building a strong online reputation on the LinkedIn platform takes time. Accomplishing this will require you to regularly post content, interact with clients and prospective clients, and engage in other forms of social media marketing for lawyers, all while taking advantage of practices like link-building and pay-per-click lawyer campaigns.
Ultimately, LinkedIn will help your firm establish itself as an authority on important corporate legal topics. You can also use LinkedIn to extend the reach of your marketing content and expose more potential clients to your brand.
Live Meetings
While a segment on "live meetings" may seem out of place in a guide to digital marketing, face-to-face gatherings should be a cornerstone of your marketing efforts. Contrary to popular belief, live meetings and digital marketing are closely interrelated topics.
For instance, you can use social media platforms to discover conferences or meet and greet opportunities in your region. Once you have identified live meeting opportunities that align with your law firm's organizational goals, send a few of your corporate litigators to attend.
You and your staff can connect with decision-makers, build relationships with potential clients, and engage in long-form interactions with individuals who work for companies you are interested in partnering with. Put simply, live meetings can supplement your digital marketing efforts.
Many law firms have recently transitioned to virtual meetings due to health concerns and travel restrictions. Although attending live events is still one of the most effective methods of acquiring clients, virtual conferences can also be beneficial. According to recent data, 68% of B2B marketers acquire most of their leads at virtual events.
Virtual events give you a prime opportunity to expand the reach of your digital marketing campaign while simultaneously allowing you to avoid hefty travel-related expenses. Any time that your law firm has an opportunity to tap into new markets without spending more money, you should capitalize on it.
In addition to the strategies mentioned above, you can also join business groups or professional organizations in your local area. These groups typically hold quarterly or monthly gatherings that members of your law firm will be able to attend.
Get in Touch with In-House Corporate Lawyers
As you know, major corporations virtually always have their own in-house legal teams. These company lawyers oversee routine legal department operations.
However, organizations must bring in additional resources if they face serious litigation. For instance, if a former employee files a suit claiming they were wrongfully terminated, the company will likely hire an outside wrongful termination lawyer or law firm to augment their in-house staff.
Typically, in-house attorneys will have a significant amount of influence on which law firm the company hires to help them tackle a major legal issue. If you want your law firm to be in the running for a high-profile corporate case, you will need to establish rapport with business attorneys who work for your potential client.
Ideally, these relationships should be in place before the prospective client encounters a legal issue. You can develop and nurture these relationships by using some of the aforementioned tactics, such as networking on social media channels like LinkedIn.
Leverage the Power of Referrals
After your law firm has established itself as an expert in corporate practice areas and acquired a few high-profile clients, you can leverage the power of referrals to generate more leads.
Referrals can be more beneficial to law firms than many other types of law marketing tactics. Clients you acquire via a referral will have a lifetime value that is 16% higher than clients you obtain using traditional marketing tactics.
When a prospective client hears about your law firm from a trusted associate, they will approach the partnership with a positive outlook. They will be more trustful of your services and capabilities, especially in the early stages of the partnership.
Nurture Relationships
Converting even a single potential client into a loyal customer requires time, resources, and energy. Therefore, you should continuously nurture your existing client relationships. Doing so will strengthen your law firm's reputation and maximize your clients’ lifetime value.
Nurturing relationships is not all that complex, but you must constantly be paying attention to each client’s behavior and attitude toward your law firm. If you haven't heard from a particular client in a while, consider reaching out to them. Holidays are a good example of a time to send a friendly card or even a gift.
When working with smaller clients, you will become familiar with most of that company's management team. You can use insights gleaned from this familiarity to send personalized gifts to each leader. There is no need to fork over thousands for elaborate gifts; something simple like an edible arrangement will do just fine.
If you want to nurture a relationship with a larger business, consider sending a group gift. You could treat the entire management team to a catered lunch at their facility — a good example of personalized care and attention to the needs of your clients.
There is no need to spend thousands of dollars on clients, especially if your budget does not have the leeway to accommodate an added expense. All you need to do to nurture business relationships is to routinely communicate with clients in a friendly and personable manner.
Communication will keep your law firm top of mind, especially if you are attempting to breathe new life into a partnership with a former client.
Find a Gap in the Market
The marketing strategies above can help your law firm connect with clients and expand your influence in your local area. However, before you can begin utilizing these tactics, it is important to understand how your law firm fits into your market.
To determine this, you need only identify which practice areas you want to focus on. Remember, there are many different niches under the massive umbrella of corporate law.
Does your law firm specialize in a single practice area, such as contesting wrongful termination lawsuits? Or does your law firm specialize in several areas of corporate law, such as Fair Labor Standards Act cases and contracts? While you certainly know the answers to these questions, do your potential clients?
By highlighting your practice areas with digital marketing, you can find and fill gaps in the corporate law market. Providing in-demand services will allow you to acquire more leads and generate more money.
Keep in Touch with the Legal Directories
If your law firm is struggling to establish a foothold due to stiff competition from larger law firms, consider utilizing legal directories. Creating a profile on even one legal directory will make your website easier to find on search engine results pages (SERPs).
If you really want to supplement your search engine optimization efforts, consider signing up for multiple law firm directories. While this move alone will not be enough to achieve page-one status on top search engines, it will help you climb the rankings.
The higher your website appears in search results, the more likely clients are to visit your page. Keep in mind that the vast majority of traffic goes to websites on page one of a Google search. Therefore, your game plan should be to make it to the first SERP on Google and other search engines.
Legal directories will also provide you with another channel for generating traffic other than digital marketing and organic search results. Oftentimes, clients will use these directories to connect with law firms that operate within their area of need.
Invest in a Professional Corporate Law Firm Website
A great law firm digital marketing plan will consistently yield a high volume of quality web traffic. But what sort of content will clients be greeted by when your legal marketing campaign successfully funnels them to your website? Hopefully, the answer is a dynamic, captivating, and informative website that is user-friendly and mobile-device compatible.
If your website does not impress, captivate, and inform, then all of your other marketing investments may very well go to waste. That is why it is essential for all corporate law firms to invest in professional website services for attorneys.
When you partner with an experienced law firm website design agency, the agency will ensure that your site serves as the crown jewel of your law marketing campaign. A website services firm can revitalize your existing site or build a new one from the ground up, depending on your law firm's needs.
Such a partner will help you equip your website with a multitude of essential features and pages, including the following:
Practice Area Power Pages
While all law firms need practice area pages, these pages are particularly important to corporate attorneys. This is due to the various niche categories that exist within the corporate legal sector.
When composing law marketing strategies, make sure to identify which services you plan to offer and advertise. Each service category should have at least one dedicated practice area power page on your website.
You should also create compelling content, such as legal blogs, about each service area. Providing clients with access to informative, less-pushy materials is the key facet of a tactic known as "lawyer content marketing."
Your practice area content pages are called "power pages" because they should be powerful, dynamic, and intriguing.
Although you may not be quite sure what a power page looks like, you have probably come across the power page's polar opposite on more than one occasion. These are stereotypically bland and brief legal service pages that are more likely to bore clients to sleep than prompt them to take action.
Imagine trying to cover a complex topic like the Family Medical Leave Act in a 300-word blog. Could you do it? Certainly. Would it be entertaining or interesting in any way? Most likely not.
Your law firm is home to multiple professionals who have a deep understanding of complex corporate legal topics. Why not share this knowledge with everyday readers in an enjoyable format while also highlighting what services your law firm provides?
Reviews
In the fight to make your website easier to find on Google or another search engine, remember that reviews are some of your most valuable allies. Although referrals are one of the best mechanisms for introducing your law firm to a potential client, reviews are a close second.
The most basic form of review is the 5-star rating system used by Google and several third-party platforms. These platforms also allow reviewers to leave feedback about their service experience.
Like most law firms, your company's biggest challenge when it comes to reviews is convincing clients to actually leave one. In order to remedy this issue, you will need to take a proactive approach. You can do this by sending clients a polite reminder email after you have provided services to them.
Reviews are a pivotal component in law firm marketing. By proactively seeking reviews as part of your legal marketing campaign, you will increase your visibility on local searches. This is particularly true if you are taking advantage of Google services like Local Services Ads.
After you have accumulated a respectable amount of reviews for your law firm, display some of the best ones on your company's website. You can even include quotes from the comments that reviewers have posted.
If you want to elevate your legal marketing even higher, create video review content. To do this, you will need to reach out to current or past clients and ask them to provide video testimonials. Many people are fond of video-based content these days, so video testimonials are an excellent tool for showcasing positive feedback from past clients.
You can place reviews on your service pages or dedicate an entire web page to testimonials and client feedback. The latter option tends to be more popular among corporate law firms, but both options are viable solutions for displaying client reviews.
Firm/Attorney Biographies
When creating your legal marketing strategy and enhancing your website, ensure that it includes attorney biographies. By publishing a biography for every attorney who works for your law firm, you can provide clients with the opportunity to get to know your team better.
In turn, this will create feelings of trust and loyalty towards your law firm, especially if you follow through by offering exemplary service.
Many law firms include biographies on their websites, but far too many fail to make them interesting. If your firm already has bios published on the website, consider gathering some feedback from a third-party entity. Hopefully, your attorney bios read like a script to an award-winning biopic — minus the Hollywood hyperbole, of course.
If they don't, rework them. You should also consider hiring a digital marketing firm to craft them, as these agencies have teams of highly talented writers who can turn just about any subject matter into an enjoyable read.
Engaging Content
Speaking of materials that are enjoyable to read, your law firm marketing strategy will involve adding engaging content to your lawyer website. You will need to add fresh content regularly. Doing so will assist with search engine optimization and give repeat visitors a reason to keep coming back to your website.
Most of your content will likely consist of blogs. You can create many different types of law firm marketing blogs, including listicles, how-to guides, general informational pieces on legal topics, and many others.
Blogs are definitely the most commonly used type of content. However, you have a few other options at your disposal as well, including video content. You can create several different types of videos, including educational videos on law and purely promotional content.
Regardless of which type of content you are creating, strive to establish your law firm as an authoritative source of information that speaks directly to potential clients.
Mobile-Friendly Format + Positive UX
If your website is not mobile-friendly, then you are inadvertently limiting the reach of your law firm marketing plan.
An increasingly large percentage of people use mobile devices as their primary means of accessing the internet. If your website has not been optimized for mobile, users attempting to view your content with a smartphone will have an unenjoyable browsing experience.
Speaking of experience, offering site visitors a positive user experience (UX) is critical if you want your law firm marketing strategy to produce long-term results. Many factors contribute to the quality of the user experience. A few examples include page load speed, website architecture, the layout of the content, and the quality of the content.
If you are unsure whether your website is in a mobile-friendly format, visit your page with a smartphone and see if you can easily navigate between the lawyer landing page, service pages, and other content.
FAQs
The FAQs page may seem unimportant when it comes to law firm marketing. While it is true that a FAQs page is unlikely to generate many leads for your law firm, this page is a sought-after resource that site visitors will appreciate.
A FAQs page should contain a relatively long list of commonly asked questions. The answers that you provide to these questions should be short, concise, and to the point. You should publish long-form responses on your service pages and blog content.
Leverage the Power of SEO and PPC for Corporate Law Firms
Now that you understand the essential components of a great corporate law firm website, you can turn your attention to the other two marketing mechanisms at your disposal: SEO and PPC.
SEO for Lawyers
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website and content more visible on search engines like Google. These search engines use a complex ranking algorithm that chooses where to display websites every time a user conducts a query.
The purpose of the algorithm is to present users with relevant results based on the terms that they enter into the search box. When deciding which content to display in the highly ranked positions, Google's algorithm examines a multitude of different factors.
A few of the more common SEO criteria that Google analyzes include whether the content is relevant, whether it contains keywords related to the user's query, and whether it has high-quality backlinks. A backlink is a link on another website that routes users to your page. Again, these are just a handful of factors that impact your site's search ranking.
If you create and implement a cohesive SEO strategy, you can climb the search rankings. However, much like actual mountain climbing, this ascent toward page one of SERPs is a slow one. It can take weeks or even months to make your way onto the first page of Google search results.
Even if you obtain page-one status, you will need to continually fight for that position. Other law firms are constantly doing things to improve their positioning as well by posting new content, acquiring more backlinks, updating their landing page, and so on.
Despite the fact that SEO is a never-ending process, it is still an incredibly important part of your marketing strategy. This is because SEO allows you to generate organic traffic.
Organic traffic is web traffic that is not derived from paid ads. SEO cannot serve as your sole means of acquiring clients, but should instead be treated as a component of your overall marketing strategy.
As you can see, SEO for lawyers is incredibly complex. Fortunately, SEO services for lawyers can help you navigate the complexities of search engine optimization and ensure that your firm gets noticed in the crowded digital marketplace.
PPC for Lawyers
It would not be unreasonable to refer to pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, as the polar opposite of SEO. Search engine optimization generates organic traffic by appealing to Google's ranking algorithm and providing users with relevant content. Conversely, PPC allows you to have your ads displayed above organic results by bidding on advertising opportunities.
That is not where the differences end, however. Another notable distinction between the two is that SEO takes time to produce results. On the other hand, your law firm can begin generating traffic within minutes of launching a PPC campaign.
So how does PPC work? The process and payment model are actually relatively simple.
When you create a PPC campaign on Google Ads, you will be asked to set a monthly budget and a bid amount. The bid amount is the total you are willing to pay for a single click. You will also need to choose what keyword or keyphrase you want to compete for.
If your bid is one of the three highest, your ad will be displayed in one of the three PPC ad slots on the SERP. It will be placed above all organic traffic. Even if your ad is displayed, you will not be charged unless a user clicks on your content, hence the name "pay-per-click."
Both PPC campaigns and SEO marketing can help you acquire new clients. These strategies have opposing strengths and weaknesses, which is why they should be used in conjunction with one another.
Typically, law firms will use PPC to generate short-term results while they optimize their website in accordance with Google's guidelines. This allows the marketers to acquire clients in the present while simultaneously planning for the future. PPC campaigns can also be used periodically throughout the year to boost web traffic and generate more leads.
Your corporate law firm should consider using them in a similar fashion. If you are not sure where to begin, partnering with an experienced corporate lawyer PPC agency is a great place to start.
Feature Top Case Studies and Testimonials
As mentioned earlier, featuring reviews from past clients on your website is a great way to bolster your company image. To recap, you can take it a step further by creating video testimonials that display feedback from past clients.
While both of these tactics are effective, there is another way to showcase your expertise and the results you produce for your clients: case studies. Many major corporate law firms do not create case studies because they don't have the time to conduct the requisite follow-ups with past clients.
You can capitalize on this trend to differentiate your corporate law firm from some of the larger firms. Case studies are especially popular in the B2B world because top decision-makers want to know how your firm plans to deliver value to their organization. Case studies provide them with structured data that demonstrates your firm's skills and abilities.
If you want to stand out from a sea of options in the corporate legal sector, publish case studies on your website.
Think of Email Marketing Campaigns for Your Corporate Law Firm
Delivering direct mail to the email addresses of decision-makers who work for your sought-after accounts is one of the most effective ways to acquire new clients. Despite its effectiveness, direct mail campaigns are grossly underutilized. This is likely due to the misbelief that email-based communication is an antiquated medium that is on its way out.
However, email is extremely prominent in virtually every profession. The vast majority of professionals with business email addresses check their inboxes every single workday. You can use this trend to your advantage, as it significantly increases the likelihood that the recipients of your messages will view your offer the day it is sent.
There are many different ways that you can use email marketing at your corporate law firm. With that being said, drip campaigns remain one of the most popular tactics.
A drip campaign involves sending several emails to a target audience over a period of a few days to a couple of weeks. Each subsequent email will build on the information provided in the previous message and will encourage the recipient to take some sort of action.
Email drip campaigns are popular because they provide a great return on investment. They are also easy to set up and can provide rapid results.
Measuring Your Results
If you want to know whether your law marketing strategy is actually producing results and delivering real value to your business, you must consistently measure its efficacy.
The first step in measuring your results involves selecting which key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to track. You will have a seemingly endless supply of KPIs to choose from. However, it is important to carefully select which metrics to track so that you do not waste time analyzing irrelevant data.
Once you have determined which metrics you want to monitor, perform routine audits to measure your results. When you initially implement your law marketing campaign, weekly audits may be necessary. After you have refined your marketing strategy, you may be able to switch to monthly audits.
Monitoring KPIs will help you understand which tactics are working and which are falling flat. You can then use these insights to modify and enhance your marketing campaign in order to increase its efficacy.
Leverage Corporate Marketing Services for Law Firms
Creating an effective legal marketing strategy for corporate law firms involves overcoming challenges that are not faced by other types of firms. While it is possible to navigate some of these challenges on your own, doing so will require a significant devotion of time, energy, and resources. It will also involve a great deal of trial and error.
The more pragmatic solution involves partnering with an experienced law firm marketing agency, like Grow Law Firm. Our dynamic staff can create compelling content that will generate more leads and help you connect with potential clients. We will assist your firm in creating a winning game plan that produces measurable results.
If you would like to learn more about this exciting opportunity, connect with our team to set up your free consultation. We provide a comprehensive suite of marketing services, including new website creation, setting up PPC campaigns, and search engine optimization.
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