For any business, marketing can be tricky, however, there are some industries and sectors for which marketing is a much more complicated affair than for others.

This is definitely true for law firms. It is all too easy for law firms to forget that they are a business, that they need to make sure that they secure clients and that they keep their business ticking over. In order to do this, they are going to need to market themselves and not just rely on word of mouth or referrals.

Marketing for law firms can be a tricky thing to get right, however, it is possible. To help you to understand more about marketing for a law firm, I have put together my guide to the 5 issues and mistakes that can crop up and how best to get through them.

Only thinking that exposure within your industry is enough

It is great for you if you are doing interviews, writing blog posts or speaking at events and conferences, as this will put you in good standing with your industry, however, this isn’t going to help you to gain customers and build awareness of your brand. In order to do this, you need to communicate with your audience and impress them. Do you know where they are hiding? Sure, use your industry experience as a way to show them that you know what you are talking about, but don’t rely on it making its own way into the world.

Not measuring your marketing results

One of the key things to keep in mind about marketing is that you should always keep a track on how well it is working. Without monitoring your performance, you are never going to know what is working and most importantly, what isn’t working and needs to change. You should think about open rates on emails that you have sent out, the click-through rates on your website and of course, engagement with your social media posts too. You need to test and measure and not give up on the first sign of it not working, these things take time.

Failing to have a high-quality website

Your website is a virtual representation of your business, which means that you need to make sure that it is to the best standard possible. If it isn’t, then you are not going to make the best impression. Take the time to design and create a top of the line website, not only in how it looks and the content that it contains but also in how it works and performs too. Don’t be afraid to use an agency or a developer that doesn’t necessarily have law firm experience, they can often bring together the best bits of every industry they have worked in to produce something outstanding.

Law firms trying to do too much

It is all too easy to get completely overwhelmed with all the aspects of marketing and spread yourself a little too thinly throughout all of the approaches that you can try out. Rather than having too many eggs in your basket, you should instead focus on one (or maybe two) of the most relevant approaches to your law firm and then make sure that they are working for you, before adding to or replacing with other approaches. Besides you have clients to work on – there is only so much you can do. Do a small amount really well.

Ignoring mobiles

One thing that you should never, ever do, regardless of your business, is underestimate just how much of a mobile world that we live in right now. More and more people use their mobile as their go-to device, even over laptops and computers, which means that your website has to have a mobile presence. It isn’t enough to have a website that is simply okay on a mobile device, your website needs to be responsive, which means that it looks good and it works well, no matter how small the device is that you are viewing it on. So many firms ignore this but often fail to realise that if their website isn’t mobile compatible then Google will penalise them for it.

These are just 5 of the things that law firms need to keep in mind when it comes to their marketing efforts. Take a look at the blog next month to see another 5 that you should keep in mind.

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