Marketing Tips for Your Solo Law Firm

By Guest Blogger Melanie Fischer

You have a law degree.
You have office space.
You have furniture.
You have a computer, software and subscriptions.
You have a legal assistant or paralegal.
You are a member of your local bar association.

What else could you possibly need?

You need a marketing plan.

As a solo attorney, you might think you have everything you need to run a successful solo legal practice. But how will you keep a constant flow of clients coming through your door if they don’t know how to find you? It’s incredibly important for every solo attorney to 1) have a marketing plan in place, and 2) know how to implement the plan. Or, if you don’t want to manage your own marketing plan, it’s important that you hire an outside marketing company to assist you.

Running Your Own Marketing Campaign as a Solo Attorney
If you want to run your own marketing campaign, it’s important that you start on the right foot. Because your focus has been on setting up your solo law firm, you might not be in the “marketing mindset” when you embark on your solo law firm career. Therefore, a marketing refresher is probably in order. Remember, the bottom line is this: It’s important that the public knows about you and the legal services you provide. If they don’t, how will they know they should hire you?

Marketing Strategies for a Solo Attorney
The chances that a generic marketing plan will be highly successful for a solo attorney are slim. An effective marketing campaign for a solo attorney must be focused on the attorney him/herself, the attorney’s practice area, the type of environment in which the law firm exists (e.g. large city, rural area, etc…), and the attorney’s typical client base. Additionally, it’s important that a solo attorney develop an alliance and/or network with other local solo attorneys who can ultimately bounce ideas off each other and provide each other with referrals.

Following are several marketing tips for your solo law firm:

Decide how your solo law firm is (or will be) different from the others. Depending on where your solo law practice is located, there may be dozens (or hundreds) of others that offer the same services as you – all within a few-mile radius. It’s important to determine exactly how your solo firm is different from all the others. Do you offer lower fees? Do you make house calls? Is your office in an extremely convenient location? Believe it or not, some law firms have been known to offer things as unique as a drive-through service!

Create a professional website, and make sure it’s developed with a responsive design. Websites are more important today than they have ever been in the past. There are no excuses. You must have a professional-looking website. If your website is optimized for search engines, it will help you obtain new clients. You might want to hire a digital marketing agency to help you with this. Also, a responsive website design is incredibly important. A responsive design allows people to easily find and correctly view your website – no matter what type of mobile device they are using.

Take advantage of social media. One of the tricks to developing a successful social media campaign is generating a large group of followers, and providing them with useful and helpful information on a regular basis. This can be in the form of links to interesting articles, legal tips, and blogs that you post on your own website. With social media, your goal is to get your law firm’s name in front of current and potential clients and other local solo attorneys as often as possible.

Attend networking events. Some solo attorneys thoroughly enjoy attending networking events. But, others do not. Networking events can be intimidating and uncomfortable. But whether or not you enjoy attending networking events, they are necessary. Attending networking events allows solo attorneys to mingle with each other and get to know each other. Over time, you will begin to see the same faces over and over again, and eventually your professional relationships will lead to referrals.

There are many other practical marketing tips for solo law firm attorneys. You may want to go with a more traditional marketing plan that includes print advertising. But no matter what you try, it’s important to remember that your marketing campaign can and will evolve over the course of time. Figure out what works for your firm, and stick with it. Or, change it if you think another strategy will work better. If one thing is for sure, it’s that all solo law firms need to spend time on marketing efforts. It’s a necessity.