Law Firm Marketing In 2023

The experts predict a turbulent 2023 for people with the economy being so fragile and interest rates on the rise. This means that law firms either struggle or thrive depending on the area of law you practice. 

There is so much uncertainty right now, and the impacts are unknown. 

So how do you protect your law firm and create as much stability as possible for you and your team?

How do you overcome the uncertainty in your law firm?

The answer is that you must be ahead of the game, market your law firm with new energy, and be ready to pivot and make changes to your service and employee offerings. You need to create the wave rather than ride it!

Marketing Strategy For Law Firms In 2023 

It is November 2022, as I write this, and most law firms still need to think about their marketing plan or strategy for the new year. This is a big mistake. 

It is not an effective marketing plan for your law firm to rely on a handful of referrers. That might be enough if you are a solo law firm owner and you only need enough work for yourself, but not if you want the freedom that having a team can bring you. Referrals usually only trickle in, and it is unpredictable. 

These days marketing is about giving potential clients and referrers value by sharing information on how they can solve their problems. It is more subtle than it used to be, but you must be vigorously consistent. 

This strategy helps clients to know like and trust you. When you are sharing and giving value, you will gain respect in the marketplace and become the go-to law firm in your practice space. 

Marketing Your Law Firm, The Three-Pronged Approach

1. Knowing who your ideal legal client is;

2. Create messaging on their ears so they know you can solve their legal problems. 

3. To reach your target, plan where to market in the three primary marketing funnels of organic, referral, and paid marketing. 

The strategy is very simple but very effective. Your potential clients have legal problems that need to be solved. They need to hear from you and learn that you can help them. 

How To Create Your Law Firm Marketing Plan 

How do you plan for an entire year of law firm marketing? 

The first thing you need to establish is to work out your goals for the year in your law firm. If you have a good handle on your metrics in your law firm, creating a marketing plan is a lot easier, and the results are far more predictable. 

For example, in my law firm marketing funnel, because we measure our metrics, we know that we need 28 phone enquiries to convert into 15 appointments and five clients per week. 

There’s no magic to this formula, it is simply how many people we need to pick up the phone to finally funnel into being a paying client. 

Therefore, what activities do we need to do to make the phone ring 28 times a week when people are enquiring about our legal service? It is purely a numbers game. 

Some marketing activities work instantly, such as click-per-pay Google ads, and others work accumulatively over time, such as building relationships or creating content that will keep working for you by adding value and leaving a solid digital footprint.  

If you are a law firm owner and you don’t know your data and metrics, this is something that you should invest time in putting in place. It will help you to make solid decisions about your marketing rather than throwing marketing dollars at the wall to see what sticks.

I further explain the metrics you need to measure for effective law firm marketing here. 

If you are unsure where to start with your law firm marketing, start here.

This is a good place to start if you don’t have a law firm marketing plan. 

You are not alone in not having a marketing plan for your law firm. However, many law firm owners need help with this important aspect of their business. 

This is why I created the Scalable Business Lounge, to help lawyers with their marketing by showing them the steps they should take without waiting time and money for marketing that doesn’t work!

You can watch my free workshop here.

Don’t Do This As A Marketing Plan

Refrain from being reactive rather than proactive regarding your marketing plan. 

There are times in our law firm when we need new clients and revenue NOW.  It can be pretty stressful worrying about where your next client or dollar is coming from. 

For many law firm owners, including me, in my first few years in business, there was tension in my body and worry that the new clients might dry up. Or that when a big bill comes in, there may need to be more funds in the account to pay for it. 

During these times, making bad decisions on spending your marketing dollars can be easy because you feel desperate. 

If you have a marketing plan in place and take action on the plan, you will always have a steady and positive flow of legal work and, therefore, cash flow. 

The marketing plan that you should plug into your firm works. You’ll have a good year ahead, and you won’t get into the zone of panic. 

This Law Firm Marketing Plan Works…. If you implement it. 

Creating a law firm marketing plan for it to sit in the draw and not be implemented is no good. In fact, it is a waste of your time, so if you are not going to take action…. Don’t even read any further. 

The plan will only work if you stick to it, stay consistent, and implement the strategies. 

Their pain point equals your message. This is vital. 

When creating your marketing message, it is crucial that you think about your client's pain points and what they are going through. 

Don’t write your message about yourself, your law firm or how great you are. No one cares!

Clients care about one thing…. Their pain, and if you can solve their problem, so they are no longer in that pain. Can you remove the pain or distress that they are in? 

Further to this, clients also don’t care about how you are going to solve their problems. They just want to know that you can and have a solution. 

Think about how yourself for a second. For example, when you have a toothache and you are in so much pain, what do you think about it?

Exactly…. Which dentist can fit you in, and how quickly and will they be able to fix it? Then you may think, as our legal clients do, how much will it cost?

So to make sure that your marketing message resonates with your potential clients, you need to speak to their pain points in a way that they feel understood and that you 100% understand the problem. 

Then you need to deliver a strong message on how your firm can solve the legal problem and help the client with the transformation they are looking for. 

Working on optimising your marketing message means you will spend less time and less money spreading your message because the words themselves powerfully speak to your ideal client and get them nodding their head with certainty that your firm can assist them.

In other words, this is what you need to do to create a powerful marketing message for your law firm:

• Firstly, describe your client's pain points and problems and what it feels like to be in their shoes;
• Secondly,  explain that your law firm is the right place, with the right people and solutions to help. 

Click here for part 2 - How to Action Your Law Firm Marketing Plan.