Converting potential customers into returning clients is a long-term goal of any business. It's how businesses grow, expand their market share, and ultimately increase their profit. Thankfully, there's an ever-increasing demand for legal expertise such that legal practitioners can afford to be selective about the caliber of people that make up their clientele.

In this post, we will take you through our extensive guide on how your law firm can attract and retain its desired audience under four main sections, viz: Marketing your Law Firm, Fostering Positive Relationships with Clients, Hiring a virtual Paralegal, and documenting Automation.

Marketing Your Law Firm

Effective marketing in any industry hinges on two things: “identifying your target audience” and “designing strategies to pull that audience in the direction of your services.” The following paragraphs discuss these points in detail.

Identify your Target Audience

Target audience refers to a specific demographic most likely to purchase a company's products and/or services. They are a carefully selected segment of an organization's target market that share similar characteristics making them more likely to be interested in its products and services. Recognizing your key audience and analyzing their needs is the first step in successful marketing. It provides valuable insights for designing effective market campaigns and strategies that convert prospective customers to long-term clients. 

The 24 percent increase in casework seen in March 2022 indicates a widespread rise in the demand for legal expertise. For many law firms, this may mean going back to the drawing board to analyze parameters such as earnings, job titles, and industries of their desired clientele; some law firms may even use this opportunity to upscale the value of their key client portfolio by redefining who their target demographic is.

Determine Effective Marketing Strategies to Attract Target Audience

After ascertaining the type of clientele you wish to attract, outlining marketing efforts to get their attention should be fairly easy. A good starting point is to split your target audience into smaller segments to enable you analyze all the relevant parameters closely. Research on potential clients' demography, behavior, online presence, pain points, and interests will help create reliable buyer personas. Through these efforts, organizations can derive marketing strategies and brand messaging targeted to their desired clientele. Some marketing strategies to consider for your law firm include:

1. Value Proposition 

Law firms can communicate their brand message by crafting a compelling value proposition consistent with their overall brand messaging. The value proposition should articulate why your firm should be your clients’ first choice and how your firm achieves product differentiation.

2. Promotional Campaigns

Promotions are another great way to get the attention of potential clients. Law firms can offer free legal consultation to promote awareness of their services and convince people to give them a shot. This way, such organizations can organically increase traffic while allowing the quality of their service to speak for them.

3. Social Media

The media has always been an integral marketing tool. Still, in recent times, social media has been an organic means of growing and retaining a loyal customer base. Statistics show a 71 percent recommendation rate from happy customers who are pleased with brands' services. Furthermore, these social media-influenced recommendations convince about 49 percent of consumers to buy certain products or services.

LinkedIn is a good head start for law firms since it provides a platform for them to showcase their legal prowess and repertoire in a clear and concise manner. However, for firms whose key demographic comprises young people, such as college students, it will be helpful to keep up on other social apps, such as Instagram and Twitter.

4. SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of crafting content to enable potential customers find your website easily on search engines such as Google. Channeling marketing efforts through SEO content is worthwhile because potential clients use the internet to search firms; hence, once your website content is saturated with the right SEO keywords, your site traffic will increase.

To create effective SEO content, keyword research and placement must be excellent. In addition, the type of content used must be catered to your firm's key demographic. For instance, bloggy posts and short videos are great for teenagers and young adults, while lengthy, technical essays will do well for millennials and senior citizens.

5. Advertising 

Designing advertising campaigns targeted to your desired clientele will increase your customer reach, communicate competitive advantage, and increase demand for your firm's services. Effective advertising strategies for law firms with an online presence include Pay-per-click and Google Advertising; both marketing tactics are excellent for driving website traffic and increasing brand reach.

Fostering Positive Relationships with Clients

Maintaining amicable relationships with clients is imperative for any business to thrive; for one, retaining old clients is usually easier than acquiring new ones. In addition, having happy customers means that your business gets organic referrals and free marketing by word of mouth, leading to the acquisition of even more clients; the opposite is true for dissatisfied clients.

In the following paragraphs, we will explore several strategies law firms can apply to enhance their relationships with existing clients, increase client retention rate, and ultimately, expand market share:

1. Invest in Reputation Management

Reputation management strategies are solutions aimed at promoting positive public perceptions of your brand both in real life and on the internet. Law firms can assign the reputation management role to specialized marketing staff skilled at brand management, crisis management, and reputation repair. 

Some effective software applications to give your firm a good headstart in reputation management, include “ReputationDefender,” “Birdeye,” and “BrandMentions.”

2. Ask Clients for Reviews

Several reports speak to the positive effects of client reviews, whether these reviews in question are good or bad. To begin with, 85 percent of online customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 94 percent of customers state that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business. Hence, asking customers for reviews is okay, as they're a compelling means of gaining free yet credible publicity for your brand.

Nonetheless, there’s always the fear of bad reviews and how consequential they can be for any business’ image. Simply put, all your law firm needs to tackle sour client feedback is a sense of urgency and an efficient crisis management plan; at the end of the day, those corrective measures from poor reviews enhance organizations’ quality of service and overall productivity.

Helpful software applications for collecting customer reviews include ReviewTracker, GradeUs, and Podium.

NextChapter Offers Client Communication Solutions

NextChapter presents "Client Texting for Attorneys," an all-encompassing software law firms can deploy to facilitate client communications and overall client relationships. The software enables attorneys to communicate directly with clients through SMS with a unique local phone number so lawyers do not have to give out their personal contacts.

With the “Client Texting for Attorneys” software package, lawyers can improve their relationship with clients and achieve a more seamless work process. The texting tool will pose several competitive advantages for law firms, including instant responses to clients’ messages, automated reminders for important meetings and events, and saved communication history for future referencing.

Hiring a Virtual Paralegal

The concept of "Paralegal as a Service" is revolutionizing every aspect of legal practice. Essentially, these legal professionals operate as in-house paralegals but from remote locations, allowing for a significant decrease in expenses associated with subsidiary legal services while enabling lawyers to focus on fostering positive client relationships by delivering excellent services.

Once again, NextChapter has shown innovation by partnering with “Para as a Service” to provide outstanding paralegal support. NextChapter Paralegals provide services such as facilitating client communications and drafting of legal documents.

Introduce Document Automation

Through efficient document automation software, legal practitioners can generate legal documents in a timely manner. Investing in document automation software will enable law firms to spend less time on paperwork and channel that extra time toward attracting key clients.

NextChapter offers an excellent document automation tool for lawyers to create and streamline technical legal documents with less room for error. The tool also comprises an intuitive editor to enable users to write signatures, use margins, bullets, and tables.

Conclusion

To ensure successful implementation, a lot of the aforementioned marketing strategies demand that legal organizations embrace the synergy between outstanding legal expertise and the legal software available on the market today. If you wish to bring this synergy to life in your own legal firm or private practice, NextChapter is the perfect starting point.