Is YOUR law firm future proof when it comes to marketing?
CEO of JustBeagle Kate Briscoe gives her commentary on the First for Lawyers Industry White Paper "Marketing in Law Firms"
As a former litigator now turned businesswoman, I have often heard the phrase….’Lawyers make poor businesspeople’. In one regard I may agree, around being prepared to take risk, ‘move fast and break things’ to borrow Mr Zuckerbergs’ favoured phrase. But on the other hand, our core management team all have some kind of legal background and these skills have hugely assisted us as we’ve sought investment, drafted agreements and contracts, hired staff and commissioned development projects. I have observed many entrepreneurs struggle in their businesses over fundamental failings to secure the business with decent contracts, agreements and structure, so lawyers have an awful lot to offer. Perhaps in the future, in-house legal presence will become more usual and customary, with the lawyers learning business skill sets along the way.
However, one area of business where lawyers have frankly very little to offer is in the field of marketing! Let’s be honest….it really is a bit of a stretch too far for most of us. Though I’ve not (yet) had to dress in a giant Beagle suit or similar, I have struggled at times to engage in the essential marketing process my business needs; while at the same time paying great heed to the fact that we in turn are offering marketing services to law firms!
Law firms really struggle to ‘get’ marketing because it lays well outside our professional demeanor and training experience; where we are taught to be quite formal, professional and in control. You only have to watch any law firm promotional video to see a group of people in suits, looking uncomfortable and forced, trying to sound jolly, welcoming and yet capable of tackling any legal obstacle, all in one presentation, generally with the predictable outcome of looking cheesy, staged and unrealistic.
The Report, https://www.comparemymarketing.com/whitepaper, released a few week supports this position strongly. Law firm websites are often indistinguishable from each other, marketing tactics such as local print media and word of mouth are old fashioned and the statistics say, unreliable. There is clear resistance to the most successful consumer engagement tool, digital social media which yields far better results for law firms when operated correctly. It also represents the toughest hurdle to overcome as it is unlikely the law firm currently employ the staff with the requisite skills to provide meaningful digital engagement.
I saw a great quote from Guy Setford at Setfords Solicitors in response to the release of the report: " Legal Futures has written about how SME firms are not ready for marketing in 2017. Law firms cannot continue to market using the same tired methods. There is a better way of working – insight-led digital marketing that delivers for clients looking for the right advice, and for lawyers seeking professional support to grow their reach.
Firms that use creative content such as blogs and video, and deliver that content to a carefully targeted audience through a smart digital strategy, stand the best chance of attracting the right clients, and top talent.
Our advice is to populate your company with the brightest marketeers you can find, and then listen to them.
As Steve Jobs once said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” That’s good advice.” Guy Setford, Setfords CEO
Digital engagement is easy and not easy…at the same time. The easy bit is to make a start, set out your chosen direction and join up with the various social media and digital platforms to get your message across. Most are low cost and easy to get on board. The hard bit is to write and drive content which will show off your firm’s prowess, without being dull and forgettable. Social media may be easy to access, but it’s also very easy for consumers to ‘scroll by’ and move on to cat videos instead. So, the content not only has to be captivating and informative but should also perhaps show some human qualities along the way, to ensure it connects firmly with the consumers reading about your firm.
Doing all of this in a meaningful way will need professional help to implement and also to make sure that the content is being shared, contains all the right keywords and the right SEO tricks, to ensure your hard work does not sit unread and unloved.
This is why we developed JustBeagle to provide a one stop shop for all your social media and marketing material. The platform gives law firms a simple and cost-effective route to market, offering advertising and lead generation through a trusted sister brand – LegalBeagles, which already has established consumer reach. Law firms paying subscriptions can use our platform to more effectively drive a multi-channel digital strategy that reaches interested consumers and achieves top-of-mind awareness, across both sites. Our law firm community can post enhanced personal profiles, curated content, blogs on JustBeagle as well as access branded assistance, direct advertising and links on LegalBeagles. Our SEO power is extraordinary and by signing up to the JustBeagle platform, you can manage advertising, marketing, content, lead generation and direct engagement all in one single web location.
We’re hoping this will make the transition over to a fully digitally engaged legal industry a little less of a mountain, of differing choices and unfamiliar technologies. There is no doubt the future client acquisition strategy must be digital, so make sure you put your practice right in front of those consumers and SME’s actively seeking lawyers, in a trusted and future facing platform, where you can share all your content and newly acquired digital engagement strategies without being cheesy or uncomfortable for a moment.
Additionally, now we know clients WANT digital, we must engage with allowing them to compare our services against our competitors. This means displaying fixed fee pricing for a range of services, but more importantly engaging in seeking and responding to online reviews. As our own research indicates, clients preferred to filter their results by star rating over price. Our user testing suggested clients were suspicious of ‘too cheap’ and more often selected mid-range price products. But we cannot hide any longer from the fact that the British public see our industry as unaffordable, when in fact the average spend per client was £350, which seems very affordable for an essential legal product. The CMA report and others has taught us that two thirds of our potential clients never seek or get the legal help they need, depriving the industry of valuable business. I believe we could get that ratio far higher, by driving awareness of the affordability and accessibility of many legal products.
Former consumer litigator Kate Briscoe is CEO and co-founder of LegalBeagles.info and also the fastest growing legal comparison site JustBeagle.com.
Register now to find out how JustBeagle can support your law firm's digital marketing needs: https://JustBeagle.com