As with any business, attracting and converting new clients is crucial to the growth and success of your law firm. But in today’s competitive market, it can be challenging to stand out and capture the attention of potential clients.
With the right marketing strategies in place, your law firm can attract, convince, and convert prospective customers into loyal clients.
In this article, we’ll explore seven effective ways to win business – some of which you can action TODAY:
- Maximise your existing lead sources
- Be more targeted
- Ask for referrals
- Retain your existing clients
- Review your pricing structure
- Optimise your sales process
- Prioritise law firm reviews
Whether you’re a solo practitioner or part of a large firm, these tips will help you reach more clients and grow your business. So, let’s dive in and discover how you can take your law firm’s marketing efforts to the next level.
1. Maximise your existing lead sources
The first is the most obvious: maximise your existing channels. Find out where most of your existing leads are coming from and double-down on those channels.
It may be that search engines are the primary source driving traffic to your law firm website, or it could be pay-per-click ads (PPC) or email for example. Whichever it is, invest generating more traffic and maximising your website’s conversion rates.
Even a slight increase in the percentage of web users contacting you can be significant.
Ultimately, you want to regularly review which channels work well (and find those which don’t!) and invest in those channels.
2. Be more targeted
One of the biggest mistakes any business can make is trying to be all things to all people. Targeting a specific audience lets you refine your branding, messaging, and product to deliver exactly what your audience needs.
How to build your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
To build your ICP, look at a specific sector or demographic that your firm has had success in the past.
If your law firm is in its early stages, or you’re currently not attracting the type of business you would like, you can create buyer personas of your ideal customer from scratch.
Figuring out who your ICP is allows you to target these people based on demographic factors (such as age, gender, and income) as well as behavioural factors (including their interests and challenges they face).
With detailed personas, your law firm can resonate with your ideal customer by identifying their pain points and showing how your firm can be part of the solution.
Be specific with your law firm location
It’s worth noting that targeting is more than just figuring out your ideal customer. With localised searches now one of the main drivers of online traffic, law firms should also focus on promoting their office location, and the areas they work.
Type almost any type of business into Google and it will auto-suggest the suffix “near me” or even suggest your town if it knows where you are located.
By ensuring your law firm appears for your target locations, you will attract and convert more of the business your firm is looking for (for more details, check out our Ultimate Guide to Local SEO for Law Firms in 2023).
3. Ask for referrals
One of the most effective ways to attract new clients is by asking for referrals from your existing clients, people who already know, and trust you.
If you have done an excellent job for your client, then they might recommend you of their own volition. If you ask them to, there’s much more chance of them doing so!
We encourage our clients to get into this habit (and the habit of asking for Google reviews which we will discuss later).
It’s best done in person or over the phone, but here’s a short sample script you can add into an email to the client:
“Thank you for your business. We are delighted you are happy with our service.
I hope you don’t mind, but our business thrives on referrals. If you have any contacts who could benefit from our assistance in the same way as you, we would very much appreciate a referral or introduction. Thank you.”
To encourage referrals, you may also consider offering incentives like free consultations.
4. Retain your existing clients
We all fall into the trap of chasing fresh new business but, in our experience, most law firms don’t have in place a plan for marketing to their existing clients. Most leave it to chance, while a small proportion will sporadically send a basic (often untracked) email newsletter.
The reality is that it’s easier to sell to existing clients – they know you, they trust you, and have already done business with you.
How to re-engage with past customers
There are any number of tools which let you send tracked, drip-feed emails that will score your customers interest in instructing you again.
Certain types of legal services can be repeat purchases, for example, Wills & Conveyancing. Using email marketing to remain uppermost in clients’ minds means that when it’s time to move again or update their Will, you will be in pole position to win the work.
Bundle services, cross-sell,and upsell
If you offer complementary services, you can ‘bundle’ or cross-sell these to make them more appealing to customers and more profitable for you.
Customers tend to be driven by value more than price. As such, upselling is way of offering a superior or better value product at a higher rate.
While it pays to be opportunistic in this area, a better long-term strategy is to build upselling and cross-selling into your business development processes.
5. Review your pricing structure
Changing your pricing can be a quick way to impact your bottom line, but it needs careful handling. Dropping or increasing prices can have powerful but often counterintuitive effects:
- Dropping prices might seem like a quick way to attract and win business, but it can have a harmful effect on your bottom line and lead to a less sustainable business model. It can also attract the wrong type of work.
- You can probably increase your prices without harming demand too much – have a read at our CEO Stephen Moore’s recent article on increasing your law firm’s fee value.
6. Optimise your sales process
Does your firm have a sales process? The answer is probably not – at least not a documented and scalable one that is followed rigorously and consistently.
Most firms, for example, can’t answer the following questions:
- How many enquiries do you get each month?
- What are your most productive enquiries sources?
- How many enquiries can be considered qualified leads?
- How many leads become clients?
- Do you have a lead management process, e.g., how many times do you follow up an enquiry?
How to optimise your law firm’s sales process
Ideally, you should have a repeatable plan in place for handling and following up with new enquiries – in a friendly and prompt fashion!
The aim should be to create a great first impression, qualify the lead, obtain all necessary information, and convert them to a paying client as quickly as possible.
Delivering value at this stage doesn’t need to mean free legal advice – it can be in the form of sharing further relevant content or information on your website with them.
Exhibiting a keenness to work with them can make all the difference.
7. Prioritise law firm reviews
Reviews are one of the key factors in attracting and converting clients. Positive reviews can help build trust and credibility, while negative reviews can damage your reputation and turn potential clients away.
With 97% of people reading online reviews before making a purchase decision, it’s crucial that your law firm has a healthy number of positive and recent reviews, ideally placed on your Google Business Profile.
To prioritise reviews for your law firm, start by encouraging your existing clients to leave reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp.
The more 5-star Google Reviews your firm can get, the better for your online reputation, your search rankings, and increasing your conversion rates.
Does your law firm need help with attracting and converting clients? Get in touch.
As Business Development Director at MLT, I have helped many law firms grow and develop their business – helping them to increase their turnover, enhance their brand, improve their efficiency, and future proof their firm.
If you’d like to have a chat about how we can help your law firm, please give me a call on 0333 344 2722, follow me on LinkedIn, or you can email me directly at chris@mltdigital.co.uk.
