A law firm marketing agency vs a generalist marketing agency

In recent years, to ward off increased competition and pressure on the pricing of their fees, large law firms have started using agencies and then training to better ‘promote’ their marketing for law firms. A movement born in the United States and which has spread to Europe, undoubtedly encouraged by the gradual repeal of laws aimed at prohibiting lawyers from advertising.

Thus appeared ‘legal marketing’ and the rise of a new profession, that of a legal marketer.

For their part, marketing techniques have adapted to the requirements of consumers who now want a relationship with brands as well as a personalized experience with companies, regardless of the communication channel used.

A law firm's marketing is now seen as a way for the legal sector to rethink its ‘client relationship’, to place the legal consumer at the center of its activities. Since it conforms to ethical rules, legal marketing is perfectly suited to legal professions.

The most successful companies in the legal industry today are those that recognize marketing as a major strategic asset.

What are the objectives of legal marketing?

• - Differentiate yourself from the competition

  With the overabundance of legal services and the pressure on prices, legal marketing is an investment that allows you to better understand the needs of your clients, to communicate and interact with them, to differentiate yourself and better ‘sell’ your legal services.

• - Gain new customers where they are

  Legal marketing allows you to look at relationships with your customer and put the customer at the center of your organization and your actions.

• - Make your customers your brand ambassadors

  By understanding your customers, their expectations, habits and behavior, you bring your customers into a personalized and lasting relationship.

Legal Marketing: How Does It Work?

The function of marketing is to attract new customers and retain more existing customers, with a view to growth and improve profitability.

The primary focus of a marketing agency is to set up an interaction between the company and its potential clients. To do it, on-target marketing efforts must be chosen to answer the wants and needs of the customers. Only then the methods recommended by the marketing agency will bear fruit.

The main distinctive feature of a competent marketing agency is creativity. Since every company is unique and special, being creative is the only way to come up with a marketing plan that hits all the right targets. It’s all about the choice of words (motto, keywords, arguments) and visuals (logo, style, usability). And don’t forget about the workflow.

In a nutshell, legal marketing is like a ‘flow’, or a continuum, leading to sales and ultimately the profitability of the business. Marketing uses upstream techniques to bring qualified leads into the flow. Then, all efforts are aimed at advancing the potential customer towards a purchasing decision, and finally guiding them to the provider of the service or the final legal product - you.

Who is legal marketing for?

Because it conforms to ethical rules, legal marketing is perfectly suited to the legal and insurance professions.

Legal marketing will concern all businesses that offer legal services or products, whether in the private or public sector and regardless of the B2B or B2C business model of the company or the organization.

How to choose a marketing agency for lawyers?

The world of legal professions, in particular that of the lawyer, is very competitive. In order to stand out from the competition, it has become necessary to develop a marketing strategy.

This is where the marketing agency comes in. Such an agency is a privileged partner of the company working to improve its image, increase its visibility, or get more cases.

However, choosing a marketing agency, which suits your needs, your objectives and the problems related to the profession of a lawyer, is not necessarily easy. This is because marketing for lawyers is highly regulated and few agencies can respond to it.

Though marketing for legal firms has its specifics, companies that work in this field build their operational process around projects and project managers who are the point of contact between the agency and the client. Their work is equivalent to that of an orchestra conductor: they assign various tasks to operational staff, follow their team in the creation and implementation of marketing means and ensure their proper functioning. They take care of that while staying on budget and on time.

Generalist marketing agency vs specialized marketing agency

There is another complexity in choosing an agency: should you choose a generalist or specialized agency?

Generalist marketing agency

A generalist marketing agency has global knowledge of subjects related to marketing and communication. It can intervene in all sectors of activity and themes (technologies, textiles, crafts, etc.). However, when it does not have the knowledge or skills in-house on certain subjects, it can call on external companies.

For a law firm, it means more contracts, more meetings, more time required for project management. Usually, lawyers lack time being busy with their legal things and obviously are not eager to increase the pressure by getting another bunch of meetings and calls. Moreover, more people involved means more responsibility shared. If something goes wrong, it would take another eternity to find the weak point and fix it.

Specialized marketing agency

A specialized marketing agency only works with companies in a single sector of activity.

This type of agency has a perfect knowledge of the challenges of the sector and the companies belonging to it.

It is common knowledge that if a company specializes in something for a long enough time, it gets really good at it. Specialized agencies know all in’s and out’s thanks to their vast experience in the domain. This fact can be hardly overestimated in the legal industry.

Moreover, by working with a law firm marketing agency you can be sure you will have only one contact person (project manager) who will be responsible for putting your marketing needs into place.

5 things to consider when choosing a specialized marketing agency

After having had so much information on how to choose a marketing agency, you may wonder how to decide between these companies?

Let’s get through the main selection criteria on which you can rely to make your choice.

What you can expect from a legal marketing company

Usually, a law firm marketing agency covers the primary areas of marketing strategy so your company could focus on what you can do best without having to come up with ways to attract customers. Here are some of these areas:

Brand strategy

Creating value for customers allows you to forge lasting relationships with them. This essential marketing rule requires the choice of a brand that will be at the same time a guarantee, a signature, and a spokesperson. Marketing specialists co-design your brand identity and verify that your firm's name is meaningful and available. For the Internet, they design your logo, associate it with a graphic charter and a values ​​charter. Thus, your visual identity is created. From these fundamentals, they imagine your overall communication strategy, both externally and internally.

Website for a law firm

Marketing experts audit your website in order to optimize its content and operation. If you do not yet have a website, they may co-create it by integrating your distinctive signs. They take care of the conception, design and development to get an ergonomic, responsive, practical and dynamic site in order to capture the attention of visitors. Also, they build a digital prospecting strategy to convert visitors into prospects.

Editorial strategy for law firms

A marketing agency defines the editorial line and the types of content that interest your potential market and can bring traffic to your website. According to your expectations, they offer the creation of blog articles, forums, videos, white papers, ebooks, newsletters, email campaigns. The regular publication of content establishes a link with your visitors and allows when coupled with referencing campaigns (search engine optimization (SEO), keyword research, Google adwords, landing pages), to improve your visibility on social networks and media (conversion rate, ppc, content marketing). The content will be what makes you stand out and your added value compared to your competitors.

Law firm's communication on social networks

As a true community manager placed under your control, the guarantor of your online brand image, a marketing agency animates your virtual communities to create relationships with your stakeholders based on trust and interest. They improve your image and your e-reputation on networks and social media and promote interaction with your audience.

Traditional and digital public relations

Print press, radio, the Web or TV, a good marketing agency defines marketing and public relations strategy for all media, both digital and traditional. They build your image and distribute it to your target audience through the media. They organize meetings with relevant journalists and offer you topics to speak about. This helps to increase the traffic on your website and to build your notoriety and your e-reputation.

Customer relationship management

To differentiate themselves, law firms have at their disposal tools and working methods to improve and enhance the relationship with their clients. These CRM tools will also allow you to gather a lot of information on your prospects and your clients, on their needs and expectations. Thus, you and your marketing agency can jointly imagine new service offers or improvements to existing offers capable of helping you gain market share and retain your customers over time.

Automated Marketing

The ‘marketing automation’ approach allows you to retain your visitors as soon as they log on to your website by offering a user experience specific to each of them. For some visitors, this will be for example the possibility of downloading a white paper on a subject that interests them. For others, it will be the proposal to subscribe to the firm's newsletter, which maximizes the result of the visit by leading the visitor to complete a contact form. This information will allow the firm to build a base of qualified prospects.

To get more details, please contact us to discuss how we can attract more customers to your business and get your marketing experience to a whole new level.