Why Do You Need A Marketing Plan For A Law Firm

Having an online law firm marketing plan is crucial for any legal business. The size of your law firm doesn’t matter, nor what kind of legal services you provide. If you want your business to thrive, you need a law firm marketing strategy.

The phrase, “If you’re not online today, you won’t exist tomorrow,” applies to everyone. For lawyers, it’s even more important because the competition is fierce. A clearly defined law firm marketing strategy is as critical as any other business plan.

In this article, we will discuss the key elements of an online law marketing plan. We’ll be answering the three big questions:

• Why do you need a law firm marketing plan?
• What problems will a law firm’s marketing strategy solve?
• Once you have your plan, how will you execute it?

In the modern business world, marketing is an essential requirement for law firms. If you are a law firm just starting, carving out a portion of the market for your practice is essential to avoid being overtaken by your competitors. That doesn’t mean you have to go big with A-list celebrities and a budget the size of a small country to succeed. When it comes to marketing for a lawyer marketing plan, scaled-down professionalism, along with intelligent marketing, is best.

Components Of The Lawyer Marketing Plan

You would not go on a family vacation without a GPS, a smartphone, or a folded map in the glove compartment. Likewise, attorneys require a road map that directs their practice toward growth and profitability. Law firms cannot afford to rely on chances for financial success. A strategic attorney marketing plan can help you achieve your objectives.

Each advertising for attorneys strategy should begin with the following essential components:

Goals

Prioritize your marketing goals based on the overall mission of your firm. Please make sure they are goals that are SUCCESSFUL AND MEANINGFUL. An example of a target you could work towards to meet one of your law firm’s marketing goals is to increase the percentage of your firm’s newsletter readers who open it by 20% by the end of the first half of the year. How important is it to the law firm that you decide on these specific objectives to achieve these goals?

Campaigns

How will you conduct your authoritative marketing activities to reach your goals? You should include your marketing strategies in your list of marketing tactics so that the strategies help achieve one of your marketing goals. An example: To achieve the goal of generating five new clients each month, you might use social media to create a campaign on Facebook by running Facebook ads. Find other platforms too.  Before starting any marketing activities, check what is best lawyer websites are in your geo and practice area. This can give you an idea about how your website and advertising should look like.

Execution

When planning or updating your marketing plan for attorneys, assign roles to individuals. Make sure who does what. Also, make sure to factor in who will be the project manager. If it’s the people who are assigned, or someone else will be in charge. Using a law firm marketing agency or experienced freelancers may be a good idea if you want to outsource.

If you are honest about whether your firm can meet all of your marketing goals on its own, be aware of whether you will have to outsource tasks. Consider outsourcing some (or even most) marketing tasks if handling marketing internally is not feasible. When outsourcing various tasks like SEO and content creation, don’t be afraid to ask for help. 

Evaluation

You are elevating your law firm to a higher profile in the marketplace. Measurement of personal goals, like brand awareness, is much more difficult. When looking at a firm’s organic web traffic, you’re accounting for the number of visitors that came to your website via search results instead of those brought in via paid advertisements.

How to Make a Law Firm Marketing Plan

Creating a law firm marketing plan starts with figuring out your company’s “big why.” You should begin by asking yourself questions like, “Why do I need a law firm marketing plan?” “What is its purpose?” To be successful, your law firm needs a law firm marketing plan, just like the captain of the ship needs a map to navigate his crew.

Set your Goals

Finding your “big why” means clearly defining the purpose of your law firm and each of its initiatives and activities. For instance, if you work for a personal injury law firm, you’ll need a specific personal injury law firm marketing plan. The goals for your practice’s marketing plan could be to:

• Establish your law firm as an authority in the field of personal injury.
• Pay particular attention to specific fields like “construction-related work injuries.”
• Ensure your firm’s online presence and message is consistent with how clients view it in the real world.
• Generate sales leads and new prospective clients.
• Generate marketing leads — website followers and readers of the content you produce — who may become clients later.
• Increase caseloads by a certain percentage annually.

Split your goals into two categories — countable and uncountable. Establishing your law firm as an authority in a specific field can be challenging to measure. However, you can count the number of sales leads, new cases, clients, and so on. It’s up to you how many different metrics you want to measure.

It’s important to define goals relating to lead and client generation, so you have a way of knowing if your marketing strategies are succeeding or if they need more work. You can measure them on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Determine Whom Do You Want To Serve

The phrase “Common buyer persona definition” means what it says. Where do you have a practicing license? Which practice areas are your priorities? It would help when you chose your client, who you’ll be working with. Using corporate law to target high-income companies, you may find a lower number of cases. Or choose many cases of car accidents, dog attacks, and the like. Recommended basing your fashion choices on the latest market trends and intelligent sizing. Choosing real estate as your primary location would be a good decision if your location has ten personal injury lawyers but only one real estate attorney.

How Do You Find The Clients

It would help if you located the ideal clients. The initial process is to define all of your sources, which allows you to make a list of individuals to contact. This is an example of a list of references:

Clients and previous clients

You need to maintain a healthy long-term relationship with your clients by providing good work. By doing this, they’ll come back to you again and again. The rule is never to let them go anywhere. This healthy relationship will bring stability not only to your small law firm marketing plan but also to your previous clients who will advertise for your marketing plan, thus bringing more clients. 

Trusted colleagues and trusted loved ones

Your people and your team resemble who you are. Your clients need assurance. Only you and your team can give it to them. If you can handle your team well, there’s a high chance that it’ll create a good impression among your clients too. Also, there should be some people you can always rely on. They can attract a few more clients. When you are surrounded by loving and supportive people, allow them to help. Offer your services and describe the types of clients you’re looking for. Also, be sure to describe precisely who these ideal clients are. Even if your family and friends cannot personally use your services, they will at least be spreading the word about your Business, thereby maintaining your lead recruitment position. This may bring higher conversions. 

Neighbors and business associates

Let people know what you do for a living, especially your neighbors. Every single Business out there goes on like, “I know a guy, who knows a guy.” Maybe your neighbor will meet someone who will be your potential client. Eventually, your neighbor will suggest to them what services you provide. 

Church members

The church is the best place where people go every day; you can target a church, befriend the church members, tell them what you do; it’s a great way to find many more potential clients. Church members know a lot of people to whom they can suggest your services.

Former colleagues

You have previously worked with people you can trust the most and are the potential client catcher for your attorney marketing plan. By making maintenance of a healthy business relationship with them can fetch you new clients.

Labor unions and business associations

This is my number one piece of advice for clients who are just starting a service-oriented business: Join and participate in labor unions and business associations. Picking up new customers will be more profitable than using other methods aside from referrals, assuming you get established. Think of this as about the activities and contributions to your organization, not the number of organizations you’re involved in. So don’t jump into ten groups; expect calls to start pouring in, instead focus on just a few, and devote yourself to their work entirely. Before you can start receiving work, people need to get to know you.

Paralegals and competitors serving the same customer base

Your coworkers are in the same business as you. You can sell your clients to your paralegals. They’ll share their client’s information, and you’ll share yours. It can benefit both of your businesses. You can also befriend your competitors. Thus you’ll get more new clients each day.

School board partner institutions, alumni associations, nonprofit organizations

Make close contact with some school board partner institutions. They can help you fetch more clients by suggesting your services to other board members, parents, and colleagues, which will help you generate more revenue. 

In which way will customers find you?

If clients only have access to phone or social media as their only contact method, this can negatively affect your business. Risk a small amount of money on it. There is no excuse today for not having a website in every law firm. We mean that we are a digital marketing agency, not that we use these types of phrases. You can search for your competitor’s website to verify this. In addition to word of mouth, online media should not be ignored.

When you have all of this information, consider these other things: the office itself, its location, and your ability to give clear directions to you. Clients located on the second floor may instead select to deal with the law firm on the first floor.

It’s time to create a budget once you’ve identified where and how clients will find you. These reports should be divided into two sections:

• results-driven, immediate (paid right away)
• advertising that focuses on the future (for example, SEO)

Additionally, you should remove some of your offline advertising expenses. Your business will cease to exist if you don’t hand out business cards. 

Build Strategies

Creating your legal marketing plan strategies may include:

Selecting vendors

If you don’t know how to approach the vendor selection process from the start, the process can be very complicated and emotionally draining. Selecting the right vendor can be done with six steps. Learn about the requirements of your business, search for vendors, and help to negotiate the contract in this guide. as well as avoiding negotiation blunders

In gathering data or interviewing potential candidates, assemble a team involved in the vendor selection process for these reasons. Before you can begin selecting a vendor, your project team must first agree on what you are looking for in terms of product, material, or service. Describe the business and technical requirements next. Finally, identify the requirements for the vendor. Finally, your document should be publicly available in the locations relevant to this vendor selection process and solicited for feedback.

Additionally, the team should analyze and summarise the commenters’ views and opinions in a document for later use. With the agreement in place, the team must now search for possible vendors who can deliver the products, materials, or services. As the scope of the vendor selection process increases, the greater the number of vendors you should present to potential customers. Vendors that do not meet your minimum requirements will be eliminated, and the team will have to choose from the remaining vendors. Next, you’ll send out an RFI to your selected vendors and then complete the remainder of this step. Finally, evaluate their responses and select a few vendors that will comprise the “Short List.” From there, select one or two additional vendors for the “Long List” and proceed to the next round. 

Signing the Contract

While researching legal niche marketing, you may discover a lot of intriguing options. In the agency world, it amazes me how rarely contracts are addressed. Some of the world’s most famous retailers even rely on unintentionally misinterpretable two-pagers to stay in business.

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been wrong before; it’s only a matter of when something wrong will happen to you. Perhaps you see it coming, or it could be a complete surprise. When it comes to some of the most tenuous disagreements I’ve seen, clients forget their terms. And if you aren’t clear on these details, you’re taking a high risk in trusting the claims of others. To properly draught a contract, keep in mind such aspects as the definitions of the legal names and addresses of both parties, the length of the contract, the details of the project, an additional work, request clause, budget, and payment schedule.

Prioritize Top 3 Strategies 

An effective law firm marketing strategy should follow the same structure as your law firm business plan. Everyone in your company will be on the same page as a result of doing things this way. Having a formal individual attorney marketing plan allows you to monitor your progress and measure it.

A successful marketing strategy for a law firm involves the following three steps:

1. Set specific marketing objectives.
2. Make a plan for achieving your objectives and jot it down.
3. Execute your perfect plan.

You should define, where and how to start. For example, PPC advertising for lawyers can be a great business decision when you have no clients from any other sources.

Execution Methods

In your marketing plan, include a checkbox beside each task, to be ticked off as you put the different parts of the plan into action. If your law firm’s marketing strategy calls for a weekly blog, make sure it happens. Create a recurring reminder in Outlook or Asana. Do this for each component of your marketing plan.

Your PPC campaign needs ongoing attention, or its results will wane over time. How often will you review PPC performance, optimize ads, and swap out landing pages? Who will do this? The same goes for SEO, which requires even higher levels of consistency. You need to be diligent about creating SEO-optimized content on a regular basis. If you plan to source blogs from multiple people in your firm, who will manage the content schedule and make sure you’re publishing content on time? For example, should you outsource social media management or law firm newsletters to agencies or let your in-house marketer do that.

Monitoring the Outcomes

Tracking the results of your law firm marketing plan is essential. The only thing you can know with absolute certainty is that your marketing plan will change. The only way to know what’s working and what isn’t is to track your results. As leads and clients start rolling in from your new law firm marketing plan, you need to know where they came from.

Did they come from an organic Google search (SEO) or a paid advertisement (PPC)? Have they been receiving your newsletter for months before finally calling? Which article was the one that compelled them to pick up the phone? Is that Facebook ad you’re paying for getting any leads? You need to be able to see every lead that has come in and where they came from. Your prospective clients will come in primarily by calling you or via a contact form on your website. Make sure you set up web and call tracking so that you can view and measure both metrics in one place.

Establish Metrics for Evaluating Results

Metrics are an excellent way to gauge the effectiveness of a website’s implementation. It could be the quality of the content, the number of unique visitors, or even the position in the search engine results in pages that determines success. Law firms should use analytics and metrics to aid in their marketing efforts to better link marketing efforts with business development results. However, obtaining the data needed to assess marketing performance accurately is a difficult task. Key performance indicators (the numbers that matter) and the appropriate tools to measure them are required. Key performance indicators are numbers.      

Constantly Revise the Strategy Due to Results

For instance, if your PPC campaign has a 110 percent return on investment (ROI) and your SEO campaign is beginning to bring in more and more revenue. Then you should stop using PPC and create a money funnel into SEO. This is something we handle for our clients at Lasting Trend. A profitable channel gets more of our attention when one marketing channel brings in more than the others. Your strategy needs to be revised not only once but again and again. Make a few changes, things that didn’t work, cut them out. Bring in new changes.  

Plan Your Law Firm’s Marketing Strategy Right Now!

Pain – Marketing is primarily concerned with the needs and wants of your customers and the products and services you offer to assist them in achieving their goals. As a result, if you’re serious about being successful with your marketing strategy, you must look inward to figure out who will carry out your goals and how those goals will be achieved. After that, you’ll need to keep communicating and following up on your expectations. Sadly, most plans for law firm marketing fall short in these areas.

Agitate – There are no billable tasks associated with marketing for legal company, so firms that payor advance attorneys based on their hourly billings will find that incentivizing lawyers to focus on marketing will prove difficult.

Solution – We’ve compiled data on the most popular marketing strategies used by lawyers below. It’ll speed up the process of coming up with your strategy. Lasting Trend can help you develop and execute your marketing strategy if you don’t have the time.

To simplify this section, we’ve split it into two parts — online marketing and its more manual, traditional forms. The primary components of successfully creating a marketing plan for a law firm online include:

• Website design
• Content
• Search engine optimization
• Pay-per-click advertising
• Email marketing
• Video marketing
• Podcasts
• Attorney directories and business listings
• Social media

Meanwhile, the critical elements of offline marketing are:

• Networking
• Events and seminars
• Public relations
• TV and radio advertising
• Print advertising
• Business cards
• Brochures
• Gorilla marketing

Let’s start with the online aspects of a law firm marketing strategy.

Website Design

Your law firm’s online presence begins with your website. So many other components of your marketing efforts like search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and email marketing tie into your site.

Even if your law firm marketing plan is modest and most or all your new business comes from referrals, you still need a polished, modern website that:

• Is easy to navigate
• Is mobile-friendly and looks great on any device
• Loads quickly
• Helps visitors get in touch with you
• Includes testimonials or case studies from your existing client base
• Contains pictures of your team and office
• Has separate pages for each lawyer and practice area
• Is search-engine-optimized

How much does it cost?

When it comes to designing a website for your law firm, you have three options:

Option 1: Do Everything Yourself — You can create your own website using open-source content management systems like WordPress and Joomla. If you are willing to put in the time to learn the system, you can make your own website and simply pay for the hosting and domain. For example, Bluehost costs $4.95 a month including a domain.

So, over the course of a year, your website will cost you $60 to run. If you opt for a longer contract, you can reduce hosting costs even further to about $36 a year. Learn how to set up your account with Bluehost.

Option 2: Hire a Freelancer — There are plenty of sites where you can find a talented freelance web designer to create your site for you including Upwork, Freelancer.com, and PeoplePerHour. Average costs range between $500 and $3,000 per website.

Option #3: Work with an Agency — Working with a web design agency is a whole other story. You will interact with multiple stakeholders who are responsible for different areas of your site like design, branding, development, and SEO. This makes the process much longer and pricier, costing around $3,000 all the way up to $50,000 for each site.

If you don’t know where to start, here’s our in-depth guide on legal website design.

Content

The cornerstone of any web-based law firm marketing campaign should be content. Your law firm marketing plan should include the generation of an ongoing stream of content that your target audience will find interesting and useful.

Content for lawyers is beneficial for a variety of marketing goals including:

• Generating more website traffic via SEO
• Building and engaging a social media audience
• Generating referrals through email newsletters and content sharing

Your team should be creating content that talks about the practice areas you excel in via a variety of online mediums. This accomplishes two very different goals that most law firms should be included in their lawyer marketing strategies.

1: It Establishes That Your Team of Lawyers Are Experts in Their Field

Often, potential clients will read your blogs and whitepapers before they make the all-important call. Relevant, helpful content can maximize your firm’s credibility. If you’re already providing captivating material, your ideal clients will be well on the way to hiring you before they’ve even picked up the phone.

2: Content Marketing Is an Effective Way to Generate New Business

If you write a great article about hostile work environments, it might show up in a relevant Google search to be found by thousands of potential clients. A blog on your website will serve as the bedrock of your content marketing strategy, but before you start, here are some blogging tips for lawyers.

• Write about the things people are searching for, and not just what you want to write.
• Write for your audience, and not for search engine optimization.
• Use simple language that a high schooler can read and enjoy. Lawyers tend to use a sophisticated legal vocabulary that an average person finds intimidating.
• Make sure your content intrigues the reader. An easy way to achieve this is by using the “inverted pyramid” writing style.
• Ensure your content is easily scannable and has engaging headings, bullets, graphics, images, and infographics to break up blocks of text.

Don’t forget the technical elements like:

• H1
• Slug
• Title tag
• Meta description
• Keyword in the first few sentences
• LSI keywords
• Alt tags
• Image size

How much does it cost?

The cost of content creation should be split into two parts:

1. The cost of copywriting. For a 3,000-word article, you can expect to pay about $200. You can find cheaper options but keep in mind that the quality may be lower too. Upwork has plenty of good copywriters.
2. Designing content for the purpose of SEO. Costs for search-engine-optimized content can vary between $150 and $500 per article.

Pro Tip: If you don’t understand some of these terms, don’t worry. Our guide on how to create good content for law firms covers everything you need to know.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the process of making your content easily found via Google. For a law practice, the goal of SEO is for your web pages and blog posts to show at or near the top of any relevant search. Say you practice personal injury law in New York — you’ll want your firm’s name at the top of the page when someone searches for “personal injury lawyer NYC.” SEO is an ongoing process of:

• Publishing new and best content and updating existing content
• Website optimization — making sure every page and post on your website is optimized to be found and ranked by Google
• Generating quality links to your site from others

Successful SEO is a long process. From the moment you begin executing your SEO campaign, it may be many months before you start seeing significant results. You’ll see monthly growth in organic traffic and new leads.

Results tend to last and pay ongoing dividends, provided you keep up your SEO efforts. Even better, you don’t have to pay each time someone clicks through to your website from an organic search, unlike pay-per-click. SEO is an art and a science, much more than simply writing and publishing blogs every week.

Many law firms hire a legal marketing agency to plan and execute ongoing content and SEO for them. Lasting Trend is here to help you overcome this challenge. You need to utilize SEO for your law firm website.

How much does it cost?

The average price you can expect to pay for SEO services will be somewhere between $1,500 and $10,000+ per month. It will all depend on your SEO team’s level of experience.

Check out our SEO for law firm guide to get a better understanding of this topic.

Pay-per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is advertising within a search engine. Advertisers pay for their campaigns to appear within search results and pay a substantial fee each time someone clicks on their ad.

Your law firm can create a Google AdWords campaign and have their ads appear when users search for specific keywords like “labor and employment,” “real estate,” “immigration law,” and so on. The cost of each click is dictated by the number of other advertisers also “bidding” on that keyword.

Using our previous example, you could create a paid search result to show up when someone searches for “personal injury lawyer NYC.” Each click might cost you between $50 to $300, depending on the practice area and location.

An effective PPC campaign for lawyers involves far more than just ads. You must define search terms, create ads, and build the landing pages that the people who click on your ads will see. Then you must continuously test and improve upon each ad and landing page — a process called “A/B testing.”

This all helps to ensure you achieve the lowest possible cost per acquisition — the amount you pay for each new client — and an optimal amount of leads for your money.

The downside of PPC advertising is that it costs money. Every click will take a chunk out of your advertising budget. The upside is instant traffic — your phone will begin to ring almost immediately. Create a Google Ads account and start showing up in Google searches today, and you’ll be taking on new clients tomorrow.

Unlike SEO, PPC has an immediate impact. It can start yielding a return on your marketing dollars very quickly. For many law firms, an ongoing PPC campaign is also an effective long-term strategy for lead generation.

Managing a PPC campaign is time-intensive, especially when it comes to the nuts and bolts — evaluating impressions, cost per click, cost per acquisition, and click-through rate. Many firms also hire a legal marketing agency to build, monitor, and manage their PPC campaigns.

How much does it cost?

The threshold we recommend as a starting point for PPC advertising is $2,000 per month. Don’t forget to include fees for management, which usually equates to 10% of your budget.

Pro Tip: It’s easy to spend thousands of dollars on PPC without any return. Take a look at our PPC for Lawyers article for more practical advice.

Email Marketing

To start working with an email marketing tool, you’ll need to build a database of email addresses. Often, people who find you are interested in learning about a particular area of law but aren’t ready to hire yet.

By capturing prospective clients in your email database, you can nurture them. Push other components of your law firm marketing plan such as your blogs and videos through your email marketing engine, keeping clients and prospects close. Get in the habit of publishing a newsletter on a regular basis to keep your followers informed. Your newsletter might include:

• A summary of blog posts and content published since the last issue
• Announcements — significant cases you’ve won or new team members who’ve joined
• Commentary on any recent news in your practice area
• A call to action — compel your audience to call if they need assistance

How much does it cost?

You can start sending emails for free. Mailchimp offers a basic free package that allows you to send up to 12,000 emails to up to 2,000 subscribers each month.

You can also choose a paid-for plan that lets you send more emails to a broader range of people. Keep in mind that any email marketing campaign needs good content. Factor expenses for copywriting and content design into your email marketing plan.

Pro Tip: Do you want more practical advice on email marketing for lawyers? Check out our blog post on this very subject.

Video Marketing

Video is not only a highly effective means of marketing, but it’s also more visible than ever. According to Recode, by 2021, 67% of general internet traffic will be from video.

Video marketing can range from expensive, high-production testimonials from your clients to simple, low-cost talks shot on your phone. The latter can be beneficial for building credibility and connecting with your audience on a deeper level.

Think of the kinds of questions your clients ask and the aspects of law you find yourself explaining repeatedly. A video that is helpful to your audience can help generate new leads. The substance is more important than polish or production values.

We tend to use blog posts with video recorded on a basic camera where the lawyer covers the same information contained in the post. If a prospective customer doesn’t have the time to read a blog, they have an alternative way to absorb the information. For those too busy to watch a video, we have podcasts.

How much does it cost?

At its cheapest, video marketing will cost you only your time. You can record and edit a decent video using your phone. If you want to create higher-quality content, costs may range from $300 to $3,000 per video for things like studio rental, camera equipment, shooting, and editing.

Podcast

Podcasts should be considered another string on your law firm marketing strategy bow. A podcast is a series of audio or video files, released episodically, and downloaded via the likes of iTunes. It’s like a radio show you record and edit in advance. Having a podcast is a great way to differentiate yourself from other law firms, display your expertise, and connect with your audience.

Ideally, you should release a new episode on the same day every week. Your listeners will expect and look forward to it. They will also appreciate your show having some structure. Think of your podcast as a hobby, something you do for fun.

How much does it cost?

Recording a podcast can cost you nothing. You can record yourself using a phone app. Upload your recording to Soundcloud, embed the link on your website, and add it to a blog post or landing page.

Pro Tip: Video marketing and podcasts are relatively new strategies. If you’d like additional support to get set up, contact us and schedule a one-to-one session.

Attorney Directories and Business Listings

Testimonials are essential. It is certain that, before putting any money down, whether it be on an item or service, most consumers look at reviews and testimonials. Take a look at these statistics:

• 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business
• 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
• 72% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a local business more
• 10% of website traffic is attributed to online reviews
• 90% of consumers say online reviews influence their purchases
• Product page visitors who read reviews convert at a 58% higher rate

Clients are looking for your firm’s services. Attorney directories like Avvo, FindLaw, and Justia have powerful built-in search engines that categorize and rank lawyer profiles. These websites show up high in search engine results, enabling you to get even more eyes on your firm.

However, no listing is more valuable than your Google My Business listing. It’ll be one of the first things to appear in a search for a related service in or near your area.

How much does it cost?

Having a presence on attorney directories is free. You just need to register. Many local business listings used to be free to sign up to but aren’t anymore. Check out this list of local directories where you can register your law firm. Most of these websites charge a listing fee of $35+ per month.

Social Media

Social marketing may also have a place in your law firm’s marketing strategy. Your firm should have a company page on major social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Your plan may include a concentrated effort to build followers and nurture your audience in the same way as email marketing.

Many law firms use social media for distribution. Each time they write a new blog or record a new video, they push it out via their social pages to increase exposure. Social media can enhance the other components of your law firm’s marketing plan.

Pro Tip: Do you want to go big on social media? Read our article on “Social media marketing for attorneys” and become a social media guru.

How much does it cost?

Creating a profile for your law firm on social media platform is free, but social media advertising campaigns do cost money. For example, the current average cost-per-click (CPC) for the law industry on Facebook is $1.32. LinkedIn is significantly more expensive, at $6.50.

The Key Elements of an Offline Law Firm Marketing Plan

Networking

For most law firms, referrals are a primary marketing activity and a significant source of new business. People who know, like, and trust your firm are more likely to refer friends and colleagues. However, consistently generating new referral sources takes time and effort. It involves:

• Playing an active role within professional associations
• Entertaining clients and colleagues
• Attending networking events
• Presenting at CLE events

Two ways that your law firm can enhance its networking strategy are to:

• Expand your professional network to increase your reach.
• Keep in touch with people in your network to stay at the forefront of their minds.

While you should expand your network to increase your pool of potential referrals, you must also maintain your relevance with the people already in your network. Colleagues are bound to have cases they can refer your way, so touch base occasionally. Reach out and socialize with the people in your network.

For instance, if you are a contract lawyer, you may find it useful to attend networking events alongside small and medium-sized business owners who might need your services. Personal contact is still one of the most effective ways of finding new clientele. Log on to Meetup and book your next networking event.

How much does it cost?

Networking costs vary. Many of the events on Meetup are free but you do have to pay to attend some larger events. Prices vary from $30 to $200 per person.

Events and Seminars

Putting on live events can be a highly effective promotional strategy. In your law firm marketing plan expenses, factor in the funds to organize a few seminars. Launch a seminar on updates to local or federal laws that may impact your client base, announcing it online via social media and email.

After the new tax bill came out, one of our clients received so many questions about it; they decided to host a seminar for real estate brokers and agents. Word-of-mouth spreads quickly. If you see the right opportunity, act fast.

How much does it cost?

Organizing an event or seminar can be an expensive, tedious, and confusing process. You must ensure that all the moving parts work together seamlessly for your event to be successful. The average cost of putting on an event is $1,000+.

PR

Reach out to industry magazines, blogs, or journals to get a story published about your firm. This can help to build your reputation and establish yourself as an industry leader. For instance, if you work predominantly with the Russian population of New York, contact the community’s most popular local newspaper.

How much does it cost?

PR costs anywhere from $100 to $20,000 and beyond, depending on whether the publication is local or national, the size of your ad, whether you use color, and if you’ve negotiated a multiple-ad rate. The inside front cover of some national magazines will cost you somewhere in the realm of half a million dollars.

TV and Radio

These channels are not cheap, but for certain practice areas working higher-value cases, TV and radio can be incredibly effective forms of advertising. They provide the means for a big-money practice to reach the broadest possible audience.

How much does it cost?

TV and radio commercials are expensive and can include several hidden costs. The price will depend on the length of the ad, the station or channel, timeslots, and frequency. On average, TV commercials cost a minimum of $2,500.

Print Advertising

Classic advertising strategies like billboards and newspapers can still work within specific areas of law. The downside is their results can be much more difficult to measure than online methods.

How much does it cost?

The cost of billboards in New York ranges from $3,000 to $20,000 per month.

Business Cards

A tried and tested method; business cards are a simple yet impactful way to “leave your business” with a client. Keep a stack in your wallet, briefcase, car, desk, and anywhere else you find yourself regularly. You could use a simple business card or invest in a personalized design, using a service like Vistaprint or employing a freelance designer via an online job site such as Upwork.

How much does it cost?

Through Vistaprint, for example, business cards start at $9.99 for 500.

Brochures

Design a brochure that puts your firm’s best foot forward, distributing it anywhere you can. Do you know anyone with a lobby at their office? Does the local jail or detention center allow brochures? Do you have relationships with any clinics or counseling centers near you? You will need a designer — head to Upwork and find a talented freelancer to create an attractive brochure for your firm.

How much does it cost?

The cost of brochures depends on paper quality and size, as well as the quantity. For example, 500 copies printed on 5.5” x 8.5” gloss paper will cost you about $65.

Guerilla Marketing

The price of PR, TV, and radio, and print advertising is high, but you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars. If you run a small or medium-sized law firm, you may not have that kind of budget, but it doesn’t mean that type of marketing can’t work for you. All you need to do is be creative.

You could hire a sign flipper to attract attention to your law practice. Record a fun, short video of them making noise about your firm and post it online. It’s an excellent opportunity for you to get a lot of likes and shares.

How much does it cost?

Specific rates vary by market but, for example, at $30 an hour for a professional sign-spinner, it would cost you $750 to advertise five hours a day for five days.

Pro Tip: Do you want a comprehensive guide regarding the costs associated with each kind of marketing activity? Check out our Guide to Better Advertising: Online Marketing vs. Tradition Offline Marketing.

Wrap It All Up Together

These are the critical components of a successful marketing plan. You can design a small law firm marketing plan or a big one, whatever’s best for your practice.

Hopefully, you can see how each aspect relates to the next. PPC and SEO generate leads and followers. Followers can be nurtured by email marketing. This ties back into your website, where visitors can contact you. Best practice for creating your plan depends on a few factors like your marketing budget, practice area, location, and your competitiveness within it.

A competent legal marketing agency like Lasting Trend can advise you on what components are likely to yield results — and which are a waste of time and money.

Law Marketing Plan FAQ

Writing and Executing Your Marketing Plan

Whether you’ve written an individual attorney marketing plan or a solo law firm marketing plan, your killer law firm marketing strategy is ready, and it’s time to execute it. Remember, you can revise and add to it later.

Bring in an Expert

It takes a lot of time and effort to create the perfect marketing plan for your law firm. And then comes the most crucial part, the execution. Naturally, these things will take a lot of time. Many websites claim to provide you with the solutions, but the reality is something different. After spending a lot of time online, you’ll find these websites useless. Lasting Trend can provide the transparency that will help lawyers concentrate on their work and be assured that the marketing plan is going well.

Schedule a free consultation with us, and you’ll soon see that we can professionally deliver measurable results for your legal practice.

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