Five Top Law Firm Marketing Bloopers to Avoid

The interesting thing about bloopers when marketing a law firm is that lawyers do not need to be afraid of making mistakes or taking a risk, because innovation comes from taking that leap. It also strengthens the firm’s connection to its online audience. There is always recovery from a blooper and in soldiering on the firm gains loyal followers.

Put another way, learning from our mistakes is golden. Learning from them and innovating a solution is even better. Learning to be wise as you try out various marketing promotions or strategies is the litmus test of a good campaign and sometimes, the end result far exceeds initial expectations.

Here are the top five marketing mistakes you want to avoid. If you make these mistakes, however, know that you can and will always recover from them.

Mistake One: You cannot be everything to everybody.

What this means is if you blog about or market every single thing your firm handles from criminal defense to family law and bankruptcies to employment law, then you are flooding your audience with too much information to process. Too much diversity keeps the audience from interacting with you because they do not know or understand what you do.

Solution: Focus. What is the most requested service your law firm offers? The second most? Now, focus your blog posts  on the one or two service areas. Zeroing in on the two most searched for or requested services provided by your law firm will allow the largest segment of your audience to reach out to you.

Over time, you can slowly change topics to focus on other high demand services, but give each topic the long-running focus and individuality it deserves. Your will audience appreciate a structured and focused blog.

Mistake Two: Not writing content that helps solve problems.

If you are not paying attention and not taking suggestions into consideration about what your clients want to read or hear about, not taking into consideration what your analytics are saying regarding search engine results, when writing blog entries, then you are not writing for your audience. In other words, you would be writing something that appeals to you, but may find that it has no appeal to your audience.

Solution: Solve a problem. The kind of content readers want is a blog that helps people solve a problem. An example would be co-creating a flexible and fair timetable for sharing custody of the kids and working together to help the children stay out of any possible disagreements you may have. Or, since marijuana is so much more prevalent in today’s society, have content that educates on the law relating to recreational marijuana use versus medical marijuana use.

Mistake Three: Posting without thinking about strategy.

If you are constantly posting items every day on multiple platforms, you lose sight of how effective they may be. You may be dismayed to find that your posts are not performing to your expectations. You have been pushing out content and cannot understand why it is not well received.

Solution: Quality not quantity. The amount you push out is nowhere near as important as the quality of what you write and post. Thought out and relevant pieces help law firms connect with their audience on a deeper level and also increase your audience engagement. Publish less but make sure the items are quality pieces that capture your follower’s attention. For instance, instead of a six piece, short blog item, with once a week exposure, about white-collar crime and its ramifications, do two longer pieces that cover the topic in-depth.

Mistake Four: Aiming to write a viral post.

The truth of the matter is either your post is going to go viral or it is not. You cannot make it go viral and having that as a goal is bound to result in disappointment. Rather, focus on creating content that is helpful, informative, well written and useful to your target audience.

Solution: Write an entertaining piece on the pitfalls of legally registering a company and the options available and what each choice means. Or, write about some of the weirdest cases you have ever handled and the life lessons learned from them. Make it helpful. Make it funny. Make it easy to read and not filled with legal jargon. Remember that attempting to make a post go viral is just not going to happen because you want it to.

Mistake Five: Thinking your audience is going to find your content without doing any marketing.

They will not. If you do not market your content, share it on social media platforms, tag people and do everything possible to get it out there, it is not going to get to your audience. No matter how well your item is written, the virtue of your work is not going to attract an audience.

Solution: Social media marketing is not easy and you do have to work hard to write quality content, post it and put the word out – or – no one is going to know about your work and what you do as a lawyer or what your firm does. If you post it and do not promote it, it is like hollering in the Grand Canyon: only a faint echo comes back.

Today’s digital marketplace is fast and ever-expanding. So, if you want to be heard, you must make the effort to stand out, be relevant and be on top of what your clients want and need. It is what is going to make your law firm a success.