6 marketing tips to help law firms boost their business

The recession has put law firms under pressure and the competition for clients gets fiercer every day. While looking for new leads is clearly important, it’s even more important to get more business from existing clients. After all, it’s easier because they already know you and trust you. Here’s a few ideas to generate more business.
1 Conduct a survey of your existing clients. A few simple questions like “Have you made a will etc” will provide valuable information for targeting your services. Obviously, if someone replies that they haven’t made a will then you can follow up with advice why making a will is essential for the sake of your children. Surveys also give useful information for articles such as “60% of people could be creating problems for their children by failing to make a will”.

2. Stage free seminars about legal developments, preferably at your offices to keep down costs. Free advice will always be appreciated by both your existing and potential clients. Remember, even if people don’t come to the seminar, just the fact that they were invited will make them feel appreciated and remind that you still value them. That could pay dividends in the long term.

3. Cross sell your services… if you draft someone’s will, make sure they know about all the other things you do. This is one the easiest and most effective ways of winning new business

4. Offer existing clients an incentive to introduce you to a new client. Word of mouth is powerful marketing tool so give it every encouragement. A small discount or relatively cheap yet lavish sounding gift such as bottle of champagne can encourage to your clients to spread the word for you.

5. Offer free initial consultations for say, 30 minutes, so that people can get a little free advice to see whether they need any further help. Even if they don’t hire you immediately, you will get to know them and start to build up a relationship. You will also invoke the feeling reciprocity, which simply means that if you do something to help someone, they instinctively want to do something in return for you.

6. Create an email newsletter. This is so easy these days as many firms offer readymade templates and will allow you to send out thousands of embedded email newsletters at minimal cost. These newsletters should feature genuine legal news as well as information about your firm. They will help generate new business and also build client loyalty, an important defence mechanism as other firms may try to poach your clients.

While striving to attract new clients it’s easy to forget the ones we already have. Yet your law firm marketing should first and foremost concentrate on getting as much business as possible from existing clients because they are the ones who are easiest to reach and easiest to persuade.