Is your schedule packed with new client meetings and consultations? Or perhaps your firm is facing a crisis and needs to free up some cash? In either scenario, there is one single mistake every law firm must avoid—terminating your marketing program.
An effective digital marketing program is an ongoing process that adjusts to the ebb and flow of your business and the marketplace. It provides the ability to seamlessly pull back to reduce inbound activity when a small firm is overwhelmed with business and it is designed to quickly scale up and increase inbound activity when business is slow. A healthy marketing program also allows you to target niche practice areas, geographic areas, as well as specific types of clientele.
It’s easy to overlook your online marketing efforts when business is good. You have all the clients you can handle, so why continue marketing? The simple answer is because there’s no guarantee your schedule will be booked next month or the month after that. Effective marketing is unlike a light switch that you flip on and off. If you “turn-off” your online marketing entirely, it can take months to regain your marketing momentum and there is no guarantee you’ll be able to recapture the online real estate you’ve lost to competitors when you’re ready to “turn on”.
When business is slow, the natural instinct to cut costs and reduce expense cause many attorneys to discontinue marketing. While you don’t want to dig a deeper hole for your business, this reaction will cause you to do just that. This is the time to be selective with your marketing and invest more in the marketing activities that have proven to yield the greatest return. But how do you know which marketing tactics to invest in during these challenging times?
Build Your Marketing When You Don’t Need Marketing
When your marketing is rolling ahead, and business looks good for the foreseeable future, you should be inclined to refine your marketing tactics, explore new opportunities, analyze the data, and stay ahead of the competition without any added pressure. It’s during this time when we better understand which marketing activities are most effective and produce results. The worst time to implement new marketing tactics and explore unproven opportunities is when you desperately need the business.
Most attorneys don’t know what to do when it comes to creating and implementing an effective digital marketing strategy, so they do nothing. Don’t be that attorney. The sooner you begin, the sooner you’ll have better control adjusting to the ebb and flow of your business. Perhaps you are an attorney who is very busy but with the wrong type of cases and clientele; marketing will help. Maybe you’d like to be known as the ‘go to’ attorney for a specific legal matter; marketing will help.
Chances are your professors didn’t cover digital marketing in law school. Understand that the internet is a complex and dynamic marketplace. The expectation that an attorney alone can successfully implement, manage, and maintain an effective digital marketing program and competently practice law and serve their clients well is highly improbable. Take control of your business and get the help you need to grow your legal practice the way you want. Call Bardorf Legal Marketing to learn how we will develop an effective marketing program to achieve your business objectives during good times and bad.
