Growing a law firm can be tough, especially when you’re not experienced with marketing or advertising. You can do an amazing job for all your clients and earn a great reputation with your peers, but still fail to increase your revenue at the rate you’d like if you struggle with marketing.

In this guide, we’ll address some of the biggest marketing challenges faced by lawyers – and how to overcome them.

Why Marketing Is So Important

If marketing is so challenging, why bother spending time and money on it at all? Why can’t you just focus on being the best lawyer you can be?  You should certainly make your law practice your top priority and do your best to serve your clients. But unfortunately, that isn’t enough to build brand recognition at a reasonable rate.

You’re likely working in an area with a lot of competing firms, all of which are dumping money into their own marketing strategies; if you want a chance of standing out, you’ll need to enter the field yourself.

Additionally, if you learn how to market your business properly, you’ll attain a positive return on investment (ROI) – eventually making far more money than you spend on your campaigns. Value comes in the form of more clients, longer-lasting client relationships, and a stronger reputation.

It is a strategy that unfortunately takes time and money but it is not a strategy you can afford to avoid.

The Biggest Marketing Challenges

These are some of the biggest marketing challenges that lawyers face when building a practice:

1. Building a brand. If you want your messaging to be consistently aligned, and appealing to your target audience, you’ll need to build a brand. But how do you do it? Your brand is a central identity that defines your firm (and possibly, yourself), including your name, your logo, the colors associated with your business, and dozens of other characteristics and features. Doing this legwork is difficult if you don’t have much experience or don’t know how to begin, but once established, it will be valuable in shaping your future messaging.
2. Identifying the right target audience. Who are your target demographics? Your marketing will be much more effective once you’ve learned the defining characteristics, values, and perspectives of your audience. But how do you know you’ve chosen the right audience, or that you’re reaching them effectively? Any market research you do will be valuable here; after that, you’ll depend heavily on testing and analysis to form better conclusions.
3. Differentiating your firm. You’re working in a highly competitive environment, whether you realize it or not. Why would a person choose your firm over another? If you want your marketing and advertising to stand out, and if you want to win more clients in general, you’ll need to find a way to differentiate yourself. What can you offer that other firms can’t? Can you appeal to a different demographic or provide a different array of services?
4. Designing a great website. Websites form first impressions commonly in the modern era; most people looking for a lawyer start with an online search. If your website isn’t professionally designed or impressive, it’s going to work against you. Free website builders are great for newcomers and people with limited budgets, but if you want to make a better impression, you’ll need to invest in an original, professional design.
5. Spreading word of mouth (and getting referrals). One of the fastest and most effective ways to build a legal practice is through word of mouth; a stream of warm referrals will provide you a steady supply of new business (and great momentum for your client relationships). But how can you do it? Providing great service and recommending additional resources (like settlement advances) can help, but it also pays to directly ask for referrals.
6. Hiring the right experts. Lawyers spend years studying the law to build a competent practice; accordingly, they rarely have much direct experience in marketing. They also don’t have time to learn marketing fundamentals from scratch, so they rely on experts to handle their work. Finding the right agency (or team of freelancers) is tough, so you’ll need to do exhaustive research and be willing to change firms if you’re not seeing the results you want.
7. Dominating local search results. Remember, search engines are commonly used by prospective clients looking for a lawyer – which is why local search engine optimization (SEO) is such a powerful marketing strategy. But local SEO can be complicated and intimidating to newcomers; focusing on local citations, strong onsite content, and good client reviews are a good start.
8. Measuring results. How do you know if your marketing tactics are working effectively? How can you tell if one of your strategies is strictly better than another? If you’re not measuring and analyzing your work, you’ll be in the dark. Fortunately, there’s an abundance of marketing analysis tools on the market to help you get the job done.
9. Covering social media. Social media is a great way to get brand visibility, stay connected with your previous clients, and reach out to new people at the same time. But with such a busy schedule, most lawyers can’t find the time to keep up with it. That’s why it’s important to outsource this work and/or focus your attention exclusively on a single platform that brings you the best results.
10. Turning a positive return on investment (ROI). Achieving a positive ROI is tough when you don’t have much historical data or personal experience. You’ll need to remain patient, continue actively measuring your progress, and be flexible enough to experiment to find the tactics that work.

If you want to increase client satisfaction (and genuinely help your clients at the same time), one of the best things you can do is connect them with settlement advance providers. With a settlement advance, your clients can get funding immediately – and only worry about paying it back if and when their settlement arrives. For more information, check out our information page for lawyers, or contact us directly today!