Boutique Firms and Sole Practitioners
There are few marketing plans that exist today without a digital strategy. Digital marketing necessities such as achieving search engine optimization (SEO) allow marketers to ensure their content is effectively reaching the targeted market – whether in the legal field or other. As such, competition is fairly stiff between legal content providers for medium and large law firms; for instance, companies including Thomson Reuters offer premium content solutions for lawyers and law firms wishing to expand their online presence.
It is also important for boutiques and sole practitioners to establish a strong online presence. However, these smaller firms may rely more on referrals to develop clients than their larger counterparts, and it may be difficult to justify paying premium prices for legal content marketing. In this article, we will look at the unique digital marketing needs of boutique firms and sole practitioners, what services are currently available for this market segment, and trends of digital marketing moving forward.
Unique Digital Marketing Needs of Boutiques and Sole Practitioners
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” It is prudent to note that “valuable” content could look drastically different for sole practitioners in comparison to large full-service firms. For instance, prevalent factors such as target audience need to be taken into consideration to cater to the unique marketing needs of this particular group.
One digital marketing need of boutiques and sole practitioners is that they need to have their marketing strategies focus more on creativity. Unlike their larger counterparts, the marketing strategies of boutiques and sole practitioners can be more nimble and adaptive to rapidly changing market needs and trends. They can thus better cater their marketing techniques to emulate the latest methods of branding. For instance, some early adopter firms are video logging, or “vlogging” their latest case commentaries on their website. These creative online marketing solutions offer cost-effective means for assisting boutiques and sole practitioners in establishing their credibility and standing out from the crowd to prospective clients.
Boutiques and sole practitioners can also enhance the user experience of prospective clients by establishing a more personal connection in their digital marketing strategy. On one hand, many of the larger law firms have short biographies and professional qualifications of their practicing lawyers on their website; while this certainly provides clients with a glimpse of who may potentially be in charge of a file, smaller firms can enhance their brand awareness by taking this a step further. Converting prospects at crucial moments in their decision-making would be more favourable if they had more insight into the lawyer(s). The possibility in establishing greater personal connections in digital marketing strategies is vast – ranging from blogs to social media.
Current Digital Marketing Solutions
An effective digital marketing strategy likely isn’t going to drastically convert prospects overnight. As previously mentioned, smaller firms may rely more on referrals to develop clients than their larger counterparts. One way to think about it is that establishing a digital marketing strategy is no longer much of a competitive advantage as it is a business necessity.
Companies such as f2 Marketing are full-service providers of digital marketing strategies for law firms. From design through implementation, measurement and refinement, f2 Marketing can cater to the unique digital marketing needs of boutiques and sole practitioners. The company can assist firms with creativity in marketing strategies through innovative methods of establishing brand awareness, as well as ensuring clients are able to engage in a more personal connections. Locus Group is another legal marketing firm that can cater to the unique digital marketing needs of boutiques and sole practitioners. The firm offers a series of online solutions to help convert web visitors to leads. For instance, firms can enhance their online presence by establishing better legal directory profiles. Locus Group can ensure a lawyer’s profile appears in the prominent legal directory profiles to the relevant prospects.
Legal Marketing Trends
Moving forward, online marketing will continue to be a business necessity. It will undoubtedly continue to grow with respect to innovative tools available to firms. As a result, new communities and new resources will emerge to make an even stronger case to focus on the creativity and personal connection of digital marketing strategies.
One legal marketing trend is the personalization of big data. In arguably less than a decade, big data has become a necessity in the world of analytics. As technological capabilities continue to grow, big data will become more effective through personalization. We are already seeing big data personalization tools that are available for users to democratize big data, such as allowing marketers to leverage cohort marketing – the ability to break your audience into like-minded segments, and sequencing – the ordering of online campaigns to have the biggest impact. Similarly to big data, we will see the enhancement of “snippet storytelling”. More than ever, marketers are expected to share a message faster and make that story digestible in emotion-provoking ways. We will see concise messaging, consistent branding and emotional content will be laced in everything we do.
In short, digital marketing strategies will continue to become more innovative. Companies such as Locus Group present opportunities to reach new clients and delight them in ways never once imaginable. The legal field, like any other field, will be taking advantage of new marketing tools; and boutique firms and sole practitioners would be wise to also embrace new ways to convert prospects online.