In order for an attorney’s skill set to be useful, they must find work. Marketing yourself as an attorney can be difficult, especially with the public’s tendency to lump most attorneys into the same generic category. Knowledge of marketing yourself on the internet and in-person can, therefore, be invaluable, and here are a few ways to do so.
The first thing you should do is to make sure you have a formidable presence online. When making a website, you should be clear and concise when describing yourself. Even among the specific kinds of laws that you deal with, you should try to find a specialization to market within that area so people call you when they have a specific problem. Don’t forget to make sure it is broad enough that a client base can still be formed. If you tend to work with businesses within the entertainment industry you could market yourself as specializing in copyright law, for example. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t provide lots of general information on your website that you feel would be helpful, however. Including things like a section on frequently asked questions (commonly referred to as an FAQ) and other free resources will help you seem more friendly and helpful. After you have made a satisfactory personal website, social media should be your next priority. By the nature of social media, it is very easy to form communities around specific ideas or interests and this makes it very easy for people who might share similar legal problems to find you.
Another thing to consider that may not be straightforward in the realm of attorney internet marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In marketing, Search Engine Optimization refers to the process of improving your online presence so search engines like Google or Bing are more likely to place you higher on related searches. There are a couple of ways to do this, one of which is using “On-Page SEO.” On-Page SEO involves making specific changes to your personal website that is both valuable to an audience and able to be shared online. Off-Page SEO is another way to improve your search rankings, and it improves more and more as other websites link to your website. Understanding how a search engine works is important if you want to show up when you are searched, of course, so researching how SEO works should be a priority by itself.
Finding a client base without the use of the internet is also a viable marketing tactic. Once you manage to find a few clients, the most powerful marketing tool you can utilize at that point is the referral. If you practice a kind of law that is useful to a particular person, it is far more likely for that person to tell a friend about you if that person’s friend runs into a similar legal problem. This plays into a similar dynamic as one that a social media account or website might allow, but it also has an additional customer service requirement that a simple listing of information on the internet cannot satisfy. Working with people in a commercial environment is a job disliked by many, but learning how to do so well (or, alternatively, paying someone else to work a customer service job) is worthwhile since a polite demeanor is often a deciding factor that can determine if a client will search for another lawyer.
At the end of the day, you need to meet the needs of your clients and doing so is much easier if your clients know what they are looking for when they contact you. Knowing how to market yourself is far more complex a task than simply communicating what you are capable of, it refers to everything that goes into making yourself known.
