10 Years of Legal Marketing Wisdom: Our Best Advice for Law Firms
Muse Communications just celebrated our 10th anniversary. To commemorate the milestone, we asked our team to share the best advice they’ve gathered throughout their careers for lawyers and law firms looking to grow their business. Here’s what everyone said:
Amy Boardman Hunt
Know where you get your business. If you get most of your business through referrals, your marketing strategy should focus on nurturing your referral network, both personally (e.g., dinners, outings, and gifts) and digitally (e.g., email and targeted social media). If, conversely, you get most of your business through Google searches and advertising, it’s smart to invest your money there.
Never, ever put a “coming soon” page on your website. Nine times out of ten, those pages never get finished, and your website looks outdated and unprofessional. It’s easy to hide an unpublished page, so, keep it hidden until you’re ready to go live. Similarly, if you’re planning a multi-part blog series, never call your post “how to handle xyz legal issue, part one” unless you’ve already got part two written and scheduled for publication.
If your blog or social media pages haven’t been updated in more than six months, update them and plan to keep them updated at least monthly. Otherwise, take them down altogether.
Amy founded Muse Communications in 2016. With 40 years of experience in legal journalism, marketing, and public relations, she has worked with some of the largest law firms in Texas, as well as a variety of boutiques and individual attorneys across a wide array of practice areas.
Bruce Vincent
Effective and successful are not the same thing. Convincing a potential client to consider you for a particular matter is effective. Convincing them to hire you is success.
Hiring decisions ultimately come down to how well you can support your marketing. Potential clients convert to actual clients based on personal interactions, regardless of what brought them to your door.
Be ready for success before your marketing campaign begins so you can deliver your best when the time arrives.
Bruce has more than 35 years of experience as a legal journalist, media consultant, and communications professional. He’s also our in-house expert on Texas’ lawyer advertising rules.
Christina Di Pinto
Tell your marketers when you’re selected for an award or win a case. The announcement is a good way to keep your blog and social media fresh, but you need to tell us first!
Use your LinkedIn network. Your attorneys’ and staff members’ personal profiles probably have a lot more followers than your company page. Encourage attorneys and staff to like, comment on, and share your company posts on their personal profiles to leverage those networks and feed the algorithm.
Your firm’s email newsletter list should focus on quality over quantity. A list with 150 quality contacts is better than one with 5,000 contacts you don’t know and who don’t know you.
Christina has dedicated her career to marketing communications, both in agencies and in-house at a major Texas-based law firm. In addition to overseeing several of our key clients’ work, Christina specializes in designing our clients’ email newsletters.
Robert Tharp
Have a vision. Remember those “Where would you like to be in 10 years?” questions from college graduation and early job interviews? Turns out, they’re really valuable when you’re marketing your firm and your individual brand.
Marketing, PR, and advertising have a magical ability to help firms evolve, reposition, and even reinvent themselves over time. It all starts with having a vision for what you want your firm and your practice to become.
A former journalist, Robert draws on his decades of PR and marketing experience to help clients develop a vision for where they want to be and a roadmap of tactics to get there. His expertise includes developing and executing integrated marketing plans that resonate in a crowded, competitive landscape.
Sarah Brewington
Designers will ask strange questions. "What three words would you want a potential client to feel when they see your website?" sounds soft and fuzzy, but it’s actually precision work. It’s the same energy as a lawyer asking, "Walk me through exactly what happened that day." It sounds simple, but it's strategic.
Good design introduces you before you introduce yourself. Good design works for you 24 hours a day on your website, your business card, your email signature, etc. Good design is not an expense; it’s an investment because it tells prospective clients you’re professional, capable, and effective. Dated, unprofessional, and generic design sends the opposite message, and sends prospects on their way before you get a chance to say a word.
A seasoned art director and graphic designer with over 25 years of experience crafting compelling visual identities, Sarah’s expertise spans print, digital, and physical media, bringing innovative design and intricate typography to every project.