For law firms ยท Marketing planning
A marketing plan for a firm that bills hours.
Firms that market every practice area equally end up marketing none of them well. The plan picks the matters you want more of and builds around them.
Or text (508) 546-9942
Slide it
You vs. The Law Office of Joe & Mama.
Left is your website today. Right is the one The Law Office of Joe & Mama has. Drag the line, then hit the button.
Crickets on the left. That is the problem.
Welcome To Our Web Site
Visitors: 000417
Copyright 2014 · call 508-555-0123 · best viewed in a browser
Illustration. Joe is made up. Your competitor is not.
The law firm version
Why it matters.
A general practice firm takes wills, closings, a few divorces and the occasional criminal matter. The partners would rather do more estate planning. The phones keep ringing for landlord-tenant disputes. Without a plan, marketing follows whatever came in last month. A written position decides which practice area leads, which gets maintained, and which you stop advertising so those calls slow down.
Strategy for a firm also has to respect capacity. If one attorney handles all the family law, more family law inquiries just create a waitlist and frustrated prospects. I plan around who can actually take the work, and set the threshold that tells you when to hire, refer matters out, or pull back.
What I would build
For a law firm.
What you handle, for whom, and why a prospect should pick you over the firm down the street. Specific enough that intake staff can say it on the phone without reading it.
Free consult, flat-fee consult or paid strategy session, and exactly what each includes. Tight enough to put a price on, so the website, the ads and the intake script all say the same thing.
Google profile, practice-area pages, referral relationships with other attorneys, local bar events. I choose the two that fit your matters and tell you plainly what to stop paying for.
Consults booked, consults that signed, and which source produced them. A review date on the calendar to look at those results honestly and adjust the plan.
The mistake I see
Buying leads before deciding what a good matter is
Firms sign up for lead services and pay-per-call programs before deciding which cases they actually want. The leads arrive, plenty are outside your practice areas or your geography, and intake spends the week saying no. Decide first what a good matter looks like, and what it is worth to you. Then pick the channel.
What you get
Marketing planning.
Before anybody designs anything, I figure out what you are selling, to whom, and what has to happen every week.
- A written position: what you sell, to whom, and why you over the alternative
- The offer, defined tightly enough to put a price on
- Which channels get effort and which get ignored
- A weekly rhythm somebody can actually keep
- What gets measured, and the threshold that triggers a decision
How it goes
For a law firm, step by step.
→ Keep scrolling. It moves sideways.
One long conversation
Your numbers, your best customers, the jobs you wish you had more of.
Narrow it
Most plans fail from doing six things badly. I pick two.
Write it down
One page. If it needs ten, it will not survive a busy month.
Set the review
A date to look at it honestly and change it.
Step five is you.
The free Receipt shows what your law firm should fix first. About half a minute, no card.
Print my Receipt →
Questions
What law firms ask.
Should a small firm market several practice areas or just one?
Lead with one, maintain the rest. A focused firm is easier to recommend and easier to rank. You can still take other matters, but your website, your profile and your spend should push the practice area with the best fees and the most capacity. Picking which one is usually the most useful hour of the whole engagement.
Do free consultations hurt us?
They can. A free consult fills the calendar with people who are shopping around or who need a different kind of lawyer. A short paid consult, or a free call with a screening step, filters that out. The right answer depends on the practice area, and an injury practice runs differently from estate planning. The plan writes down which approach fits yours.
How often do we revisit the plan?
I set a review date when I write it, usually about a season out, because practice areas shift through the year. If something big happens sooner, a partner leaving or a new practice area opening, I revisit then. The plan is one page precisely so it can change without a rewrite.
What comes after
Pairs well with.
Same service
Marketing planning for other businesses.
Where I work
Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Start here
See what your customers see.
The Receipt looks your law firm up the way a customer would and itemizes what is costing you calls. It is free. Or skip it and book fifteen minutes with me.
Or text (508) 546-9942