A profitable legal brand can do wonders for your law firm. It can help you build a web presence that people recognize.
Your legal brand can help you get ahead of the competition. It can also help you build credibility and authority in your niche so clients know they can trust you. Here is how to build a stellar legal brand!
3 Steps to Build a Profitable Legal Brand
Whether you already have a successful legal firm or are just starting out, building a legal brand has a number of benefits.
If you’re looking for a stronger digital presence, want to create an online following the smart way, or want to build up your client list and close more deals, then you need a legal brand.
These three steps can help you build the right legal band for your business.
Step 1: Define Your Legal Brand
Your legal brand needs to have a clear focus. Sharing your services and offerings is excellent, and important. However, doing that alone does not give your business a brand image that people can relate to.
The way your legal brand is represented in the digital space is what separates you from your competition. If you’re in a saturated market, you may be viewed as a commodity. In this case, having unique branding can help you stand out in a busy market of people providing similar services.
Create an Elevator Pitch
Your elevator pitch is a quick rundown of what your legal brand specifically specializes in. Your elevator pitch will be referenced everywhere online including, but not limited to:
- Social media
- Your website
- Review sites
- Your blog
Your elevator pitch needs a few key elements to function properly. The elevator pitch that you create should have:
- Your name
- Your company
- Target customers
- Your legal brand’s area of expertise
- A call to action
Your elevator pitch is what you use to introduce yourself to the world. Your target audience should know if you specialize in divorce, business, bankruptcy, criminal, family, health, environmental law, or something else. This will help your target market find you.
You need to know exactly who you are and what your brand is about and can narrow it down into a few concise sentences. With that, you’ll set yourself apart from your competition.
Create a Slogan
Your legal slogan should be featured prominently throughout your digital branding. It lets readers instantly understand who you are, what you offer, and that they’ve come to the right place.
These are just a few words, but they’re important words. You don’t want to be known by a slogan that seems weak or lazy like ‘committed to clients’. It’s a given that whatever attorney someone chooses to work with will be committed to their clients.
Slogan Examples
Think about FedEx’s tagline ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight’. This says so much more about them than if they had just said something like ‘we deliver packages’.
Their slogan instills confidence, is clear, and sets them apart from their competition. It also is not so overly obvious that it’s boring, but neither is it so obscure that no one can understand it. It hits the nail right on the head.
Laner Muchin, Chicago has a reputation for being the world’s most responsive law firm. Their slogan is ‘Two Hours. Period.” Novak and Macey, Chicago is a small law firm that has an amazing track record of success at trial. Their slogan is ‘Small but Mighty.’ These are just a few examples of how you can make a quick slogan that says a lot about your legal brand.
Step 2: Build your Legal Brand
Chances are, your target audience is going to interact with your digital brand before your physical brand. This is because the first thing someone often does when looking for legal advice is to go online.
Build a Home Base
To ensure that your audience gets the right information the first time, you must focus on building your home base. Your home base is usually your website or blog.
If the purpose of your home base is just to showcase your brand or to allow people to get to know who you are, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, or about.me are viable options.
If you are serious about your legal branding, then you should use a self-hosted WordPress website.
WordPress makes it easy to create a webpage that has some pretty sophisticated functionality. You can utilize things like blogs and message boards easily. The best part is that you don’t have to know how to program a single piece of code when you use platforms like WordPress.
SEE ALSO: Navigating the Web Design Process
Build an Email List
Your email list is one of the most valuable assets of your legal brand. This is because it allows you to initiate contact with your followers.
Your email list will need to focus on your specialty. This is because you don’t want to waste your time sending emails and following up with people who will never have need of your specific services.
A great place to start with your email list is with your previous clients. This is a way to say thank you and to send out new information that is relevant to their case. Or, if you specialize in financial law, you can send out a reminder with new information for your past clients during tax season.
The critical thing to remember here is to customize your list and your content. If you aren’t sure where to start when building your list, focus on these people:
- Current clients
- Previous clients
- People who’ve asked you questions
- People who’ve had consultations
- LinkedIn contacts
- Social media contacts
Build Your Social Media Accounts
If you are not a social media junkie in your free time, the thought of starting and operating numerous social media accounts in a professional capacity can be overwhelming. In this case, it is important to pick just one social media site to start with.
Many legal brands start with Twitter, but you might want to focus on Facebook or LinkedIn. Find out where your clients are spending time online and focus your efforts there. Remember, it is better to have a strong and engaging presence on one social media site than a weak one on five or six sites.
Feel free to add videos to your accounts. This is a great way to share your expertise while giving potential clients the opportunity to feel connected to you and to see you in action. If your videos do really well, then you might want to consider YouTube for your social media channel.
Just remember that a good social presence will involve updating frequently. You will also want to interact with your followers and other brands.
SEE ALSO: How Social Media Helps Brands Earn More Link Opportunities
Step 3: Manage Your Legal Brand
This is a part of your digital brand that will remain a part of your daily work. Sometimes it can be in your best interest to find digital branding services that can help to manage this work for you.
Many business owners don’t have the time to manage a social media presence on top of all of the real world work they have to do. If this is you, a digital branding team will be able to make sure that your brand thrives while you take care of your physical firm.
Leverage Other People’s Property
Many legal blogs are floating around on the internet that you can get involved in. These blogs have the great benefit of already having a built-in audience.
Finding blogs in similar spheres as yours is a great start. Just start by participating in the comments section. Once you are better known, see if you can be a guest blogger for them later on.
Be A Guest Blogger
Nothing can grow your legal brand quite like guest posting. Guest posting is also great for bumping up your ranking in search engines. This is because you get back-links from those posts on somebody else’s site, back to your site. Guest posting will also introduce you to new communities and will allow your ideas to spread more freely.
Repurpose Your Content
You don’t have just to keep endlessly pumping out brand new pieces of content for your clients. There is an easier way to go about things.
If there are several ways to say one thing, why do we continue to struggle when creating content?
-Juntae Delane
You may feel pressure to constantly create brand new content to stay relevant. This can be stressful and overwhelming. However, there is a smart way around this problem.
Instead of creating more and more new pieces constantly, you can take apart pieces of old content that were popular and turn them into new pieces.
Batch Your Content
Just like it makes more sense to make a large batch of cookies instead of only one, it makes more sense to write a few articles instead of just one at a time.
You’ll save a lot of time by writing several articles at once, which in turn will save you money. Write a batch of content and then schedule it to be posted in order to make your content even more efficient.
Final Thoughts
If you follow these three steps you’ll be well on your way to developing a profitable legal brand. First, define your brand. Then, narrow your focus and decide who you are so that your clients can understand you clearly.
Second, build your legal brand. Create your own website, social media presence, and email list. Find new ways to reach out to people who could be interested in your expertise and add them to your lists.
Lastly, manage your legal brand. This is an ongoing task that will be important in making sure your brand stays relevant. These three steps will guarantee you a successful legal brand!
What are your favorite legal brands to follow on social media?
