Standfirst: Winning clients away from the competitors is a surefire way of getting them to go to you, and increases your share in the market. Read on to find out what you can do to win and retain clients for your law firm.
Whether you’re in a large or small, boutique law firm, chances are you have already thought of how to boost your law firm business. Not only winning but also retaining clients is critical to growing your law firm and its reputation. That being said, client service and client acquisition or retention are not always prioritised in the law field, hence, it’s important for us to find ways to change this perspective.
Without further ado, let’s get on with laying out some very important points for you to consider. Follow these steps to outshine the competition:
- Be responsive and accessible
Although it may seemingly just be one case among many for your firm, for the client, it could feel like their entire life hangs in the balance. When clients reach out to you, regardless what their case may be, it’s imperative that they feel like they have a good chance of getting through and being heard. That means giving timely callbacks if you missed one (or a few). It’s best to never let the client wait for more than 24 hours.
Besides that, you should also provide various ways for your client to contact you. For example, be accessible via email, scheduled or walk-in appointments, the phone, on social media, etc. Though that may be a challenge for walk-in appointments now, other ways are still workable. If you have a blog or anything else where clients comment, be ready to form part of the conversation and stay engaged.
- Increasing your firm’s profile
This may work best for new firms, but actually it works just the same for any type of law firm. Work out what the local media might be interested in and start to build the profile of your firm. Perhaps hiring an agency may do the trick too, to keep marketing efforts current. It is important that your firm has a presence within your local market as you want to make sure you are “Top Of Mind” when someone is considering appointing a new legal firm to look after their affairs. Think about what you have to say and then develop a plan to raise your profile through a number of specific initiatives. Trust us on this.
- Increasing the profile of your key lawyers
A great way to generate a profile for your firm is through your lawyers. Articles, “Ask The Expert” columns, Quotes, or Comments can all be a great way to position your lawyer as a Thought Leader. And before you know it, prospective clients will remember them and consider asking them to pitch for a particular piece of work.
It should be said that this approach isn’t for everyone, however, it is quite often the case that across a firm there will most probably be one or two lawyers who won’t mind putting their name to something in the press. All you have to do is to work out who.
- Create valuable content using SEO for your website
Here’s the thing, in Search Engine Land, the organic and the paid positioning are complementary and that it is essential to understand how they work together. Although investing in Google AdWords and optimising your campaigns make it possible to appear among the first three results on Google, it is not always possible to achieve it for all of your other relevant keywords. And the same is true for organic positioning.
While it is true that changes introduced by Google in recent years have impaired the performance of organic results, matter of fact is, users are still clicking on these types of results. For that reason, the more presence you get in Google SERPs —be it organic or paid—the better. There are ways to go around the content with strong SEO practices. However, to obtain the best results, it is advisable to hire a professional SEO expert.
- Modernise your legal practice
…and that you could do with CoreMatter. In this day and age, every established firm should have a modern, attractive, and functioning website (and running on an equally excellent legal software). People have more choices now than ever, and a professional-looking website will create that first impression you need to stand out from the crowd.
Apart from that, there are also many tools that law firms can use to improve their customer service and streamline their work processes. If you’re tired of having your office buried in paperwork, legal document software CoreMatter can help you effortlessly draft professional documents and manage them digitally.
Times are definitely changing, and law firms have to keep up with them as well. Follow through these (non-exhaustive) steps and you should be able to win and retain more clients for your law firm in no time.
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