Who are you – and what do you stand for?

There’s marketing. And there’s marketing. I don’t mean making sure content strategy aligns with SEO or that social posts have a call to action. Although that’s clearly important too. I mean what should be the route to market, how can we strategically build our customer base and our reputation?

For law firms, the answer is rarely simple. The nature of our work means we have sometimes completely disparate audiences and therefore messaging.

What we need to say to our B2B clients will be different from how we appeal to first-time buyers. How we approach a grieving family who have come to us after the most terrible tragedy will be completely different from the challenge presented by a planning issue.

However, what we have found is the building of our brand, intrinsically linked to the building of our team and our culture, is what wins out day after day.

This should be the starting point. What do we want to be known for, how do we live and breathe these values, how does this translate into someone walking through our door or picking up the phone? We don’t separate business development from marketing – they are two sides of the same coin.

Teamwork

Internally, we will sit down with each team to discuss their yearly goals and how they can be achieved through marketing and business development activities.

We look at our PR opportunities and cases studies that can be developed, and make sure we’re sharing testimonials on our channels.

We offer existing clients the opportunity for an annual legal review (ALR), which not only identifies potential additional revenue streams but also serves to strengthen relationships.

Maximising the technology we offer clients also supports our marketing efforts. Technology is focused on the customer journey and apps to make life (and contact with us) easier.

Of course, it’s important to know what’s working and what isn’t – which is why we build metrics and measurement into the marketing strategy.

Building the brand

When we rebuilt and relaunched our website, we made sure we could trace the success of our campaigns. We made sure it’s responsive and effectively tracks the user journey but with a focus on sales to ensure we build enquiry levels. We have a trackable search tool and quarterly reports for lead generation which include how many enquiries we’ve received for business, private client and our own vacancies.

We have specific telephone numbers for different departments. And we monitor newsletter opens and click-through rates. We also make sure we highlight how we rate on independent review sites – when people check the reviews for a pair of slippers or a take-away, you know they’ll do the same before engaging a solicitor. We actively encourage clients to complete feedback surveys and are frequently found at the top of Review Solicitors in the disciplines we practice.

One aspect of our marketing we can’t always measure, but can see having an impact, is our public relations programme. This introduces and establishes our people as the experts and highlights the benefits of using our services.