How Do You Market a New Practice Area or Law Firm?

What happens when you have branded yourself as an attorney focusing on business law, but then later decide to change your focus to personal injury or bankruptcy? That is one of the points addressed in a recent article in the Arizona Republic entitled, “Lawyers Try New Specialties.”

The reporter explains how the economy has prompted many lawyers across the country to venture out on their own or open small firms with one or two partners. While the main point of the news piece was the dilemma of learning a new specialty, it does prompt another interesting consideration – how do you go about marketing yourself when you are entering a whole new practice area?

Marketing = Internet

In today’s day and age, spending money advertising your services in magazines, newspapers, the Yellow Pages and other print publications is not the most effective use of your budget. Television commercials certainly aren’t as profitable as they once were with the onset of TiVo and DVRs. Things have evolved quite heavily in the marketing world as more consumers use their laptops, smartphones, tablets and other devices to locate information. Therefore, if you have one marketing dollar to spend, it should be on something Web-related.

The good news is that attorney Web marketing is relatively inexpensive. Let’s take a look at a few online marketing tools:

Social media: Social media is not going away. The major players might change, but as a whole, you can expect this form of communication to stick around for a while. If you haven’t already started using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Avvo and other social sites to market your law firm, you need to start. You should order our book, Secrets of Social Media for Attorneys Revealed, if you need help jumpstarting your social media campaign.
Video: Not only is Web video a great way to capture the attention of your target market, search engines also love to index video clips. That means your videos will have a good chance of appearing on page one of search results with Google and other major search engines. The key with video is to optimize it correctly and to syndicate. To learn more, visit our attorney Web video page.
Your own website: You have to view your website as a way to market your law firm. It is your own platform to broadcast to the universe what exactly it is you offer. Make sure you are adding interesting content on a regular basis. Fresh content will make the search engines happy, as well as your potential clients.

Whether you are changing the focus of your practice or continuing along the same path, we can help you get the most out of your attorney marketing campaign. For more information, contact us today at 888.886.0939.