As the oldest-operating law firm advertising agency in the country, Network Affiliates has seen a thing or two in the industry. Namely: You can’t market like lawyers used to and still expect the phone to ring. These days, advertising for law firms has an entirely new set of operating instructions, and the best way to stay ahead of your competition and maximize ROI is to stay on top of attorney marketing trends. Here are three questions we answer all the time for legal clients:

I’m busy. Why do I have to advertise at all?

It sounds counterintuitive, but the time to advertise is when you are busiest and your firm is most lucrative. What often happens is lawyers get swamped with a couple of big cases and cut back on or cease all marketing and advertising as they ride the enticing wave of a large commission. However, that’s also the time they fall behind, as competitors continue to reach new prospects via TV advertising, communicate with existing clients through ongoing email marketing and hone their intake processes to harvest the better cases going forward. The point is if you let advertising slip, how do you guarantee new cases will come in the door after you’ve closed the ones you’re working on? Long-term survival requires thinking ahead, and attorney marketing is all about momentum—you have to keep it going to ensure a profitable flow of business in the future.

Can I afford to advertise?

Yes. In fact, we know that lawyers today are grossly underestimating what they can—and should—spend on marketing and advertising. American Lawyer 200 firms, for example, only devote about 2% of gross revenues to marketing efforts, which is on the bottom end of the spend long recommended by law firm management consultancies. To see real ROI, that number should be closer to 5%, and even more in the aggressive arena of personal injury law. The point is you can’t afford not to advertise. Start to build in marketing as a real line item—not an afterthought—in your law firm’s annual budget.

What’s the best way for me to advertise today?

The short answer: Develop a broader marketing mix. TV advertising continues to work exceptionally well for firms that can afford it, however what attorneys often overlook is power of digital advertising. Any full-service advertising company will tell you that having a digital strategy is critical to both supporting a TV campaign and building returns all on its own. In fact, social agency New Media Strategies found recently that trial law firms who have grasped the trend are now spending millions of dollars to create and maintain of websites, Facebook pages, Twitter handles, blogs and YouTube channels, and upwards of $50 million on Google-keyword advertising alone.

Wondering if you’re heading down the right path with your TV advertising and digital marketing? Give us a call for a complimentary consultation 1-888-461-1016.

This brief presentation will take you through step-by-step on how to run a successful social campaign for your law firm. While this presentation focuses on legal advertising, it is useful in understanding the steps needed to ensure a successful social campaign in any vertical. You can check out the slides that go along with this presentation from SlideShare here!

Most people in a professional service business for any amount of time have learned that the quantity over quality equation will never add up to real revenue. That doesn’t mean it’s not tempting to throw lots of marketing messages out there to see if anyone bites. Or to follow the surprisingly popular speed-and-greed approach to buy as many leads as possible and churn out settlements.

The problem is the endorphin boost from a random advertising blitz and caseload infusion always wears off. And usually law firms that practice this low-value, high-turn approach realize it’s not an effective long-term marketing and advertising strategy.

Over time, attorneys that use advertising to ask for mass calls learn that a majority of those leads don’t pan out, either because they’re not legally defensible, they’re not a good fit for the firm’s proficiency or they’re not a strong client to begin with.

The energy spent trying to decipher real cases is a drain on resources that just doesn’t make solid business sense. Not only that, but asking for loads of “cheap” cases for short-term gain makes you look cheap. Your law practice may become a commodity and that will devalue your attorneys’ reputation over time.

5 Reasons Quality Matters

We know that high-quality cases produce higher return on investment, and here are just a few reasons why:

1. Quality cases that match your firm’s skill set are often easier to prove, and therefore settle or try.
2. Quality cases often make for happier clients, which may lead to more profitable referrals.
3. Quality cases mean you’re asking for specific cases for which you can help solve a specific problem—and that’s just good community service.
4. Quality cases lead to deeper, longer-lasting client relationships that can pay off in repeat business.
5. Quality cases underscore your attorneys’ integrity and the transparency of your legal brand.

That’s not to say quality cases, and a high number of them, have to be mutually exclusive. However, focusing on quality first may lead to higher-yield cases or a higher number of mid-level cases as your firm becomes a trusted leader in a particular legal vertical or niche.

One of the best ways to underscore the value of asking for quality over quantity in advertising is to ask yourself the same questions a potential client might. If you were injured in a car accident, would you trust a business professional with a speed-and-greed approach? Would you rely on an attorney who promised a quick result for anyone who calls now? Would you truly believe that these busy lawyers would listen to the individual circumstances of your case? Probably not.

How to procure quality cases

The good news is whether you’ve tried and failed with the speed-and-greed approach or just haven’t found the right way to ask for the kind of cases you really want, it’s never too late to turn the corner on quality. Positioning your firm as a high-value rather than a high-volume practice just takes some smart marketing.

Just as the key to a healthy relationship requires communicating directly with your spouse, the key to a healthy caseload is asking for what you want. If you want higher-value cases, your advertising needs to underscore that message, whether directly or more subtly through the quality of your subject matter, talent and commercial production. We all know those TV ads, for example, that try to cut through the cluttered legal marketing space by simply “screaming” louder and hoping more people will call an 800 number.

But after 30 years in the legal advertising industry, we can tell you that that approach might make you stand out from the crowd once, like a great one-hit wonder, but won’t be sustainable. Over time, high volume will wind down, your firm may be undermined by the greed-first message, and clients will also become one-hit wonders, eliminating a critical source of referral business.

For truly sustainable, high-value cases your legal message has to communicate with the right potential clients—the ones who are a good fit for your firm, the ones who bring valuable cases, and the ones who will refer you down the line or come back with future legal matters.

Once you nail down what asking for value means for your firm, don’t leave it to fend for itself in one bold TV commercial. Make that message resonate in all of your marketing efforts, from your law firm’s website to social channels to digital marketing. If a consumer sees a high-value ad but that message is not backed up in your firm’s supporting collateral, approach and marketing methods, potential clients will see right through the ruse.

A commitment to creating a high-value message is multi-pronged and means your firm has to start walking the talk everywhere you go. When you ask for what you want—in every effort you put forth—you might just get it.

Internet marketing is getting more multi-dimensional by the day. But before you get too distracted by the latest trends and fascinating fads, it’s important to take a survey of what’s working on the Web and what’s not. Get a gauge of where you’re ahead of the curve and where you’ve fallen behind.

Website wisdom: You’ve finally implemented a dynamic, modern website designed for intake, but is it properly optimized? Here are a few questions to ask:

• Are your social media links, blog and videos engaging clients, growing your legal network and driving new business?
• Are you leveraging Google Analytics to track real-time statistics on site visitors and page traffic and market around that data?
• How many leads is your web presence actually generating and how are you following up and closing on those?

Mobile magic: Even if your website is working well, ensure that it’s optimized for the small screen. After all, clients are spending more and more of their time on smartphones. Here are a few places to start:

• Mobile marketing may feel like a separate strategy, but it should be increasingly integrated with your overall marketing mix. Engage with an agency that understands how to make your attorneys look good, even in a “mini” format.
• Are your marketing messages and campaigns working seamlessly across every type of screen (laptop, TV, smartphone, tablet, etc.)? Your goal should be to maintain a consistent brand identity while delivering an engaging experience that’s appropriate for each channel.
• With the integration of social media via mobile, social communication is instantaneous and your law firm is essentially open 24/7. Make sure that how you talk to clients fits the medium of delivery.

By being proactive about a broader Internet marketing strategy, your firm will quickly show clients you understand their increasingly mobile lifestyles, identify new Internet intake opportunities and position your practice as a leader in your space. The legal industry is simply too competitive to sit back and watch. Stay ahead and stay profitable.

We recently touched on an important part of solid marketing strategy; knowing what you’re asking for. Take an honest look at whether the ever-popular but ever-ineffectual “speed and greed” approach is really working. It might be time to step back and look at the big picture.

While running bold, call-to-action TV commercials with the goal of obtaining as many quick-settlement cases as possible may sound like a sensible business strategy, what you might find is that most of those leads either don’t pan out or are so low-value that they actually undercut revenue in the long run. Plus as clients get smarter, using the Internet to do their homework and weigh their vast legal options, short-term-gain ads and tactics are not keeping law firms in practice long.

After more than 32 years of helping lawyers market their practices, we’ve found that a smarter long-term plan is to build a multi-pronged marketing strategy around obtaining quality, high-value, big-referral cases that deliver reliable results for both the client and the practice.

To gauge where you are on the value scale, start by asking these questions:

1. What is our current reputation in the marketplace?
2. Is our firm known for high-quality or high-turnover settlements?
3. Are we leaving too much on the table with a churn-and-burn approach?
4. Are we really prepared to take cases to trial like we say we are?
5. Are we offering cookie-cutter law or something more specialized?

Getting real and asking tough questions is the first step in developing smarter strategic marketing. The bottom line is law will always be about the money—how much can you get for a client and how much will you charge to get it. But by positioning your legal services as a cheap commodity, you are devaluing the importance of the services you provide to the community.

Instead, start to focus on marketing tactics that help your firm:

• Position how unique you are in your legal niche or specific market
• Demonstrate how you can solve a specific problem for a client in need
• Build on valuable referrals from past clients and your professional network
• Prove your lawyers’ integrity, confidence, approach-ability and transparency
• Build deeper, lasting relationships with clients

Start to think of your firm like the best brands. You don’t have to be the Neiman Marcus of your market, but maybe you can start to provide Nordstrom-quality service. The kind that puts the clients’ needs first. The kind that stands out among the competition. The kind that pays off in the end.  The kind that you would want.  The kind that truly gets you referral business.

The fact of the matter is – your clients truly do not know if they received a great settlement or not.  They do know how they were treated.  That is a fact!

Marketing a law firm is no different than positioning any other professional services business. You need a strategy. It’s not uncommon to try to “wing it” by designing low-budget brochures after-hours, or assigning a receptionist the daunting task of keeping up with the firm’s website.

But while you might have skated through with that approach in the past, increasing your caseload ever so slightly but not knowing how, the reality is that kind of scattered marketing approach is no longer viable in today’s sophisticated, crowded market.

With the introduction of social and mobile platforms, plus increasingly tech-savvy clients, law firms have to market from every angle from TV advertising, to direct mail and internet-tracked eCRM campaigns — to reach customers consistently. Here’s your wake-up call: You can’t handle this alone, even with paralegals pitching in. Plus, shouldn’t your employees focus on what they do best, converting the leads that do come in?

Marketing a law firm carries a new level of complexity best handled by an agency, preferably with legal expertise, that knows how to leverage every new and changing facet of marketing and advertising.

Now that you know it’s imperative to have a marketing expert as a partner, you can start the rewarding part; creating a strategy to maximize your advertising budget. While we know TV advertising is still the biggest bang for your buck, you can stretch your marketing money in some very creative ways these days thanks to the relative affordability of Web-based marketing tools.

Here’s how to begin thinking strategically when it comes to marketing your legal brand:

1. Learn your market. Task your marketing experts with finding out out everything about the competition and how your firm fits in — and therefore, can stand out — in your specific legal or regional niche.
2. Identify your audiences. Do you really know to whom you’re marketing? Is your current message truly tailored to those people? Are there some “fringe” client bases you’ve left out and could target better?
3. Know what you are asking for. It sounds simple, but if you are trying to compete by selling “speed and greed” law, you are going to get exactly that: an of quick, low-value cases. Consider how that approach may undercut your revenue in the long run.

Formulate a plan based on real data about your market and competition, learn as much as you can about your target audiences, and tailor a message to get exactly what you’re asking for — quality, high-value cases based on relationships that lead to referrals.

Once you’ve worked with a marketing strategist on these core elements, your firm can quickly get on a predetermined path to success. It doesn’t mean things can’t change. Be flexible about tweaking tactics as you go, but hone in from an initial strategy. You can’t go wrong if you start from the right place.

Don’t stress. Get back to brand basics.

One of the most common mistakes among legal firms is trying to be all things to all people. Building a brand can help you stop this mistake in its tracks.

By now you know that you are in one of the most competitive business’s in the world. And depending on your legal niche, that competition could be amplified 10 fold. So in the middle of the masses of firms marketing to the masses, how do you stand out?

The answer is branding.

If you want to increase your credibility and caseload, we highly recommend going back to basics. Building your brand doesn’t have to be intimidating. By engaging in a brand exercise, you’re simply revisiting your firm’s history, values, reputation and intentions. Ultimately, you’re giving your marketing efforts a focus by answering questions such as:

What do you stand for?

What do you want to be known for?

What are your five core company attributes?

What is your niche within your niche?

What do people think of when they see your firm’s name?

If you’ve never had a conversation about brand, it’s not too late to start. Or if your firm is changing from what you thought you were a decade ago, now’s the time to think about re-branding. Whether you are in a micro-niche or the massive personal injury market, for example, it’s your job to dig down to the essence of what makes your law firm stand out from the competition.

It could be a novel approach to client services, a consistent method for solving a core problem, identification with a particular type of client sector, a corporate culture that shines from the inside out, a proven ability to obtain settlements in even the most challenging cases, etc.

If you can’t define a differentiators, re-define it.

That means create a way to say what you do and who you are—which may be nearly identical to a competitor—in a different, more engaging, more compelling way. In essence, position your expertise, service style, results, staff, resources or results in such a way that creates a new point of differentiation.

The more clear your brand, the more consistent and aligned your marketing will be. And, like anything, being focused and efficient pays off by stretching your spend. In the end, if you don’t know what you stand for, how can you expect clients to stand by you?