The Importance of Marketing in the Legal Sector

The legal sector is becoming ever more competitive. That said, how many firms focus their time and resources on their marketing effort?

In a digital world it is important for law firms to use developing digital marketing technologies to their advantage, to set the firm apart from this increasing competition. If done correctly, digital marketing offers a way to extend your firm’s reach to customers, improving your firm’s brand awareness and credibility. It also provides an excellent platform to express your firm’s qualities, values and work culture. By giving potential customers and staff such insights, it helps you show the more personal side of your firm, helping to build trust.

Build brand identity and position  

An important starting point is to focus on your brand and your core values. Consider the services you offer and your firm’s goals for both the short and long-term. It is essential to understand the position you aim to take in the market and what services and practice areas you can provide to reach this position. Through this process, you will understand what makes you stand out and identify any unique selling points for your brand. This may be expressed through a core value, a key service offer or a specific market sector/position.

Once you have achieved a clear understanding of your firm’s aims and offers, you will then be able to identify what you hope to achieve from your marketing. It could be that you want to build awareness of your brand, or perhaps you are looking to generate more leads and sales, or it could be a mixture of the two. Knowing your goals allows you to begin building your marketing objectives and the supporting strategy to achieve them.

Understand your target market

When defining your target audience, it is important to be as specific as possible. You want to be able to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and understand their mindset. By accurately defining the target audience for your marketing allows you to understand where and how you can reach them. What are the most suitable digital channels you should use to reach them? What messaging will encourage their response and add value for them specifically?

In the legal industry in particular, it is important to consider the tone of your published content. You want your audience to understand it and feel effectively engaged with it, not ‘talked down to’ in any way. This can be achieved by using plain English and by minimising the use of technical terminology, where possible.

Your content, whether that’s written, pictorial or using video, should aim to demonstrate an understanding of the problem for your target audience. It should also provide clear and simple solutions, or the steps for the customer to take to access the appropriate legal advice.  

Some larger firms, clearly, are likely to have multiple target audiences. In this case the firm should look to develop specific marketing strategies for each of the different target audiences.

Clear strategy and planning

Before rushing into a campaign, it is important that you have a clear framework in place. Have you considered the message you are looking to convey and how you will do this?

Firstly, consider the key themes throughout your content, which may link to the service you provide.

You should also consider the format and channels where the content will be posted. Sometimes it pays to use multiple themes varying in formality to help avoid generating any off-putting content.

Do some market research to understand where the most appropriate channels to find your target audience might be. The channel selected, combined with your knowledge of who you are targeting, will help inform your choice of marketing format. For example, for some channels, videos work better over images or text.

Should you rebrand?

A good time to rebrand your law firm would be after a significant period of growth. Perhaps you offer more services or you’ve expanded across new locations. A rebrand is a costly undertaking, both from a time and financial perspective, hence should be considered carefully. It’s also important not to rebrand too often, as doing so could risk weakening your brand recognition or create confusion around your brand identity. That said, there are there are many benefits that a well-considered rebrand can provide to businesses, including law firms, such as:

• The opportunity to promote new aspects of your brand or business and, therefore, more effectively reach and connect with an audience you may never have accessed before.
• The opportunity for companies who have not updated their branding for a long time, or who currently have ineffective branding, to revitalise and remain current and appealing to customers.
• The opportunity to use aspects of your brand personality to stand out from the competition in what is a highly competitive market.
• The opportunity to express new goals, values or offers should your brand identity have developed or altered since your previous branding was created.

Interlink Talent Solutions Rebrand

In the past weeks, we have undergone a complete rebrand here at Interlink. This has resulted in a new logo, marketing strategy and website, allowing us the opportunity to modernise and remain current. We are very proud of our new brand identity. We hope it reflects and communicates our professionalism and up-to-date knowledge of the legal market to our client firms and Lawyers looking to choose a recruitment partner for their needs. We also hope we have been able to convey our approachable and social work atmosphere.

To keep up to date with our progress and work culture, please follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.