Building brand awareness is a key strategy in attorney marketing. Whether you are a solo attorney or part of a large law firm, there are huge benefits. Below we will define brand awareness and talk through the steps to success.
What is brand awareness?
Let’s start from the beginning. Brand awareness is the familiarity of your target audience with your brand. How recognizable is your firm? It isn’t possible to create brand awareness instantly or from a single marketing campaign. Many simultaneous activities are required and it simply isn’t enough to rely on your track record.
Why is it important?
Brand awareness is so important because it fosters consumer trust and creates association in the minds of your audience. Brand association is the connection which people make between a brand and a concept. For example, when we think about Nike, most people will make an automatic association to athletic performance.
Brand awareness is also the first step to developing your firm’s brand equity or value. A strong brand name brings perceived added value to a product or service. Put simply, consumers will often pay more for products from a well-recognised brand, than from one they were previously unaware of. Brand association and brand equity are both vital for the success of your firm and its marketing goals.
If you are wondering how to build brand awareness for your law firm, read on to discover 7 top tips. This process will help to improve your marketing efforts and increase consumer perception.
1. Define your brand
To really stand out from the crowd, your law firm must determine who it is and where it’s going! Building brand recognition isn’t just about hiring an agency that specializes in website design for attorneys. Focusing on your particular legal expertise and how you interact with clients, is a good place to start.
Increasing your firm’s brand awareness should extend far beyond trying to get new, paying clients. Firstly, develop a personality by establishing yourself as more than a legal services provider and get social with your clients.
Instead of relying solely on asynchronous communication, like emails or SMS, try more real-time interaction. Technology is your best friend here. For example, VoIP systems can help you to connect with clients no matter where you, or they, are.
Displaying and promoting your firm’s personality traits will make an impact on your audience. This will push your services to the forefront of their mind – exactly where you want them to be. Brand personality should also define the identity of your law firm. Ways to display this include:
- Your logo – the face of your brand
- Your color scheme choices
- Choice of shapes in branded images
- Typography – font, size and style
- Tone of voice – in blogs, web content, social media, ads and press releases
2. Become a thought leader
Now you’ve defined your brand and clarified your area of expertise, it’s time to take the next step and show potential clients your strengths. One way of showcasing your legal expertise is by blogging. This is a great way to create shareable insights rather than dispensing legal advice.
The aim is to gain a reputation as a reliable source of insight and information, who inspires innovation and influences others. It is important to keep learning about your industry so that you can talk about the latest market dynamics.
You don’t have to just confine your efforts to blogging though. Social media, online collaboration platforms and webinars can also help you to promote thought leadership. The simplest way to define webinar is as a seminar which takes place over the web. You can host thought leadership events for hundreds of people over the internet, using webinar software.
3. Communication is key when marketing for attorneys
Establishing a communication process is vital. Shockingly, a study by ABA found that attorneys took three or more days to reply to communications from prospective clients, nearly half of the time.
Clients now have a multitude of ways to contact firms and expectations around response times are high. If you’re struggling, why not consider an online scheduling system to make life easier?
Many attorneys are now using online video conference software to transform their communication strategies. This enables the exchange of information from wherever in the world people are located. It’s a cost-effective and high-quality solution to communication problems.
Social media customer service should also be a top priority. Put simply, this is where you answer clients’ questions over social networking sites. Bear in mind that when people turn to social media to have their questions answered, they are generally looking for a quick response.
4. Be consistent
Even though advertising and website design for attorneys may change over time, your core marketing message should remain consistent. Your firm’s branding should be memorable and not stray from your firm’s roots.
Consistent brand presentation across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23%. This is a figure which reinforces the benefits of speaking to clients in a recognizable way.
It can help to create brand guidelines. Your guidelines should always align with your firm’s vision and mission. Remember also to use your logo and design elements across all platforms, from print advertising to social media and webinar. It’s a good idea to make sure that you are also consistently choosing the right content topics for your field of expertise. To help with keeping things consistent across the board, you can also make use of various tools for managing projects.
5. Take advantage of online networking
Online networking means developing and increasing your network of business and social relationships through online communication channels. Social media channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, are all examples of online networking platforms. There are many ways to do this including:
- Joining an online community
- Taking the time to comment on other people’s content
- Linking up with other law firms and businesses
- Using the right social media platform for a particular target audience
- Asking real-world contacts to also connect with you virtually
Using online communication for networking is a sure-fire way to increase brand awareness. If you are wondering how to land more clients as a solo attorney, this cost-effective strategy could be perfect for you. Organic social media is a very cost-effective tool, if your marketing budget is fairly small.
Content marketing is great for connecting with the world and can benefit your business in so many ways. Positive reactions to the content you create provide a great opportunity to personally engage with customers. If you are unlucky enough to receive negative comments, social media provides the opportunity to redeem yourself and turn things around.
6. Work within your community
So, you’ve chosen the best VoIP provider to improve your communication strategy. You’ve spent hours drafting perfect thought leadership pieces. Sign-up to all the relevant social media platforms is complete – what’s next? Following all the top tips for communication and marketing for attorneys will help but don’t forget to interact within the community in which you work.
Simply focusing on sales messages rather than conversations is never a good idea. People will be far more likely to listen to you if they see you as part of their community. This principle applies to your relationships with current and potential customers, as well as with other attorneys.
There are many benefits to establishing a customer community. A community provides more opportunities to engage, allows you to obtain feedback easily and enables increased customer support. When you join a business community, you can also benefit from sharing knowledge and experience, learning from each other’s mistakes and making new connections.
Getting involved in your local community is a great way to build trust and goodwill for your law firm. For example, you could support sporting or charity events. Think big too and join in with a global professional community. Connecting universally over shared interests and business ideas can expand your mind and provide support. We really are stronger together.
7. Monitor and analyze your attorney marketing
Measuring brand awareness allows you to find out if your efforts are working. It is a concept that can’t be measured in the traditional sense but you can still review activities and metrics. This will help you to understand your firm’s popularity and consumer awareness.
Quantitative measures such as direct traffic, site traffic numbers and social engagement can all help you paint a picture. The best virtual meeting platforms provides a good overview of data too. Registration and attendee figures, chat transcripts, Q&A or poll results and viewership over time are all indications of engagement and potential conversion rates.
Qualitative measures, however, are harder to define but can still help you to figure out how many people are aware of your brand. Surveys will allow you to obtain direct feedback from your clients and audience. They can be shared on social media or directly with your clients and help you understand what people think of your firm.
Social listening tactics can be used for tracking organic mentions and engagement. The more discussion there is about your firm on social media, the bigger your brand awareness.
Time to get started
Now that we’ve laid the foundations for you in this article, it’s time to build up your firm’s brand awareness! Following our top tips will allow you to establish a loyal audience that recognizes your firm over competitors and will personally recommend you. If you require further inspiration on this topic, why not check out some of the top legal marketing blogs?
