Marketing – it’s one of the many things lawyers aren’t taught as part of their legal education. Marketing may not seem like an essential skill when students are in law school and are busy pontificating about substantive issues. But once lawyers enter the crowded legal market, its utility is quickly understood – especially for solo and small firm lawyers whose livelihood depends on their ability to bring clients in the door.
Legal marketing used to be as simple as advertising in the phone book, attending networking events hosted by the local bar association, and writing the occasional article for the local legal newspaper. Fast forward to 2017 and how things have changed! There are a vast assortment of marketing options both on and offline for solo and small firm lawyers, some of which are incredibly affordable and can have high impact. The trick is knowing which ones make the most sense for your law practice.
For lawyers looking for more information on effective legal marketing, CLEs are a great way to learn. Case in point: a recent seminar at this year’s ABA Techshow, “Start From Scratch: 5 Essential Tools For Growing Your Practice.” During this session, Tim Baran and Paramjit Mahli offered lots of useful marketing tips for solo and small firm lawyers.
Start a blog
The results are in: one of the most affordable ways to reach potential clients and showcase your expertise as a lawyer is to start a blog. According to the speakers, blogging is one of the best ways to market your law firm online. This is because blogs drive website traffic. And, search engines really like sites where content is updated frequently and that use keywords that are relevant to your target audience.
Questions you should should ask yourself before you start blogging are: 1) Who do I want to help? 2) What do I want to say? and 3) How often do I want to say it? Once you’ve answered those questions, you’ll be well on your way to creating a blog that will serve your purposes. And, the blogging platform recommended by the speakers? WordPress.
To learn more about blogging for lawyers, make sure to read my recent post, “Blogging 101.”
Read the other 4 essential tools from Nikki Black over at MyCase.com.