It’s Time to Review Your Marketing Plan

Clients come to law firms in many ways. Some through personal contacts, others find you on the internet, and some come to you through paid TV advertising or seeing your name on a billboard. Let’s assume your original goals for the year were to:

• Continue to establish your firm as an authority in your area of practice.
• Generate a larger following for your website, newsletter, and blog.
• Generate new clients and increase caseload in 2018.

A review before the last quarter of the year will tell you where you are, increasing your chances of meeting those goals.

Before you can decide what needs to be changed on your internet marketing plan, use Google Analytics first. Check the Acquisitions Section to determine where your consumers come from. It is found on the left side of the page and gives you detailed information on how people arrive at your site. Next, go to Behavior and click on Content Drilldown for an overview of your site. You can quickly see if it’s your blog or your service pages that get the most attention and which is regularly adding more readers.

The Audience section of Google Analytics is a wealth of information about your website's visitors. It is divided into subsections that give you information on gender, age, and the locations of people visiting your site. You can also find info on their interests and which browsers and mobile devices they use to find you.

Armed with that information, you can make adjustments to improve your results.

Referrals are harder to track. The simple answer is to ask the client how they found you, although sometimes they can’t remember or they remember it wrong. One client may say she found you “on the internet;” but later, you discover she received an article you had written from her cousin who had gotten the article from a friend. You’ll get a general idea of what works and what doesn’t, so increase methods that work and forget the ones that failed.

Relationship building marketing is focused on customer building, enhancing existing relationships, and improving client loyalty. Your quarterly newsletter, speaking engagements, visits to business clients, lunches, parties at the firm, letters, podcasts, community volunteer contributions, and holiday cards are part of that relationship building. Review the responses to your efforts. Use that information to keep what worked and discard what underperformed.

Some lawyers like to write, some love public speaking, while others enjoy social media. Your review will reveal which marketing tactics work best for you. Increase those efforts to reach your goals for the year.

After years practicing law, Roberta Gubbins served as editor of the Ingham County Legal News. Since leaving the paper, she provides writing services to lawyers ghostwriting content for websites, blogs, and articles. She is editor of The Mentor, the SBM Master Lawyers Section newsletter.

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