Any attorney knows that the key to continued professional success is the ability to locate and service new clients. There are professional regulations that govern attorney advertising, so lawyers need to be familiar with rules of professional conduct prior to attempting to solicit new clients. Nonetheless, the internet offers attorneys with a prime opportunity to market their business as the internet is the primary place that potential clients go to learn about and locate attorneys.
The first and foremost method to marketing legal services online is through the firm’s own website. This will give potential clients an indicator of which services the firm offers, as well as information about the background of the attorneys. Clients are able to get a strong sense of the attorney’s expertise and accomplishments by viewing their web profiles. In addition, the firm’s website also gives attorneys the ability to circulate their thought leadership pieces for potential clients to read. In some instances, a client can tell from the attorney’s published articles that the attorney has a particular unique set of skills, or way of approaching a certain legal issue.
Before potential clients can get to a firm’s website, something must happen to make them seek out that particular lawyer. In other words, the lawyer must have some type of marketing material in the public domain that drives traffic to their website. As mentioned above, clients often look for evidence of thought leadership on the part of attorneys. This can take on several possible forms. First, there are various forums in which potential clients pose legal questions. Often, attorneys are members of these sites, and have the ability to provide brief answers to the clients’ questions. This gets an attorney’s name out to potential clients, who then associate the lawyer with their expertise. Additionally, lawyers can publish articles on certain topics in various publications. The natural result of that leads to potential clients drawing a connection between the lawyer and the topic at hand. Further, there are a variety of different online legal directories that attorneys can join in order to increase their visibility.
There are various attorney marketing services that assist attorneys in sharpening their online marketing presence. Rare is the attorney who is both an expert legal tactician as well as an accomplished marketer, and to obtain additional help, it may make sense to bring in an outside party to help increase name recognition. These services can assist not just with the ideas listed above, but with numerous other marketing ideas, all designed to help a lawyer increase their online presence.
Given the large number of lawyers in this country, all competing for new clients, there are entire firms that make a good living solely from helping attorneys market themselves. These firms assist attorneys with everything from marketing infrastructure to business development metrics. Additionally, there are firms that are devoted to search engine optimization solely for law firms. Through hiring the most effective marketing partners, small firms may grow to become large firms.
