Top 6 Legal Marketing Strategies Used by Growing Firms in 2023

The most potent strategies can vary slightly from firm to firm - dependent on geography, specialization, etc. -  but there is some consensus around high ROI activities. The following 6 strategies are your opportunity to create impactful marketing campaigns that help your firm generate sustainable growth. 

Law Firm Growth Continues to Accelerate

While changes in the business landscape have left some industries feeling the pressure of a looming economic downturn, the legal industry hasn’t felt that same pinch. 

US law firm revenue climbed 14% during the first nine months of 2021 over the same period the year before. While this rate declined to a more modest 5.4% in 2022, an upward trend is expected to continue, with a projected 3% growth yearly until 2030. 

The revenue growth is led by strong demand, not rate increases. 

Law firm marketing and business development departments can capitalize on this demand by adopting five impactful marketing techniques used by high-growth firms to attract prospects, build engagement, and turn the opportunities into clients.

1. Focus on the Data First

Data is king, especially for marketers. The better data teams have, the better marketers can create targeted campaigns that generate real results. 

Harnessing data is a primary focus for Chief Marketing Officers of large companies across the U.S. And law firm marketing departments need to adopt this mindset as well in order to grow. 

But data must go beyond basic demographics. The best data should include your clients’ online and offline media behaviors and preferences. It’s also becoming increasingly important for firms to have a centralized and reliable experience database to keep track of the work your clients do with your firm. 

Understanding what drives your clients can help you customize messages to them across multiple channels.

2. Get Active on Social Media

While law firms often underestimate the power of social media for their growth, it’s a necessity in order to connect with clients in the modern world. Even in more “traditional” industries like legal. 

Leveraging social media for networking is a tactic used by high-growth firms. According to a 2022 report, 89% of respondents noted that their firms are active on at least one social media channel. If your firm doesn’t have a presence, it’s far too easy to be overlooked. 

Encourage your lawyers and other professionals at your firm to use these social media platforms to stay connected with clients and peers, helping you to harness their personal branding. 

But on the firm side, you should utilize corporate social profiles to increase brand recognition, share thought leadership and encourage brand loyalty. 

Pay attention to the social media platforms you use. According to Sprout Social:

• LinkedIn’s user base is well-educated, making it great for in-depth, industry-specific content.
• Facebook and YouTube are both excellent places for ads due to their high-earning user bases.
• Instagram and YouTube are top social networks for Millennials and Gen Z, the largest demographic in the workforce today – and while it may feel strange to market a law firm on these platforms, you can be sure that current and future purchasers of legal services are there.

3. Invest in Custom Content Automation

Trust is everything in legal services. The work that you do has a significant impact on the lives and businesses of your clients. Because of this, building a strong relationship is paramount to winning new business. Customizing content to prove to prospective clients that you understand their specific needs is a necessity for a set of strong legal marketing strategies. 

In our upcoming report on professional services growth teams, custom content was identified as one of the highest-value investments that a firm can make, with 62% of firms indicating that they create custom pitches and proposals for each prospect and 26% indicating that they generated custom social proof-boosting content like tombstones, case studies and testimonials.

While custom content is a valuable resource to help firms generate trust and win new business, it’s also time-consuming. This makes it a difficult strategy to scale. However, many legal marketing teams are now investing in content automation tools to solve this pain point and get the best of both worlds. 

Content automation solutions like Pitchly make creating custom content as simple as the click of a button, giving you the hours this process previously took back to work on more strategic marketing tasks.

4. Create an Omnichannel strategy

In 2023, the proliferation of a variety of marketing channels makes it almost impossible to reach the complete audience you need if you’re depending on a single channel for your marketing efforts. 

Law firm marketing teams must use multiple digital spaces to grow in 2023. Business News Daily mentions that using digital spaces to find and nurture new customers exploded in the last few years. Firms should make sure their online presence appeals to a broader audience. 

According to HubSpot research, 92% of marketers leverage more than one channel and 81% leverage more than three. If they haven’t already, marketers will want to spread out their marketing focus to multiple channels including website and blogs, email marketing, video marketing, and social media, often referred to as omnichannel marketing.   

Neil Patel, CMO & co-Founder of NP Digital, concludes that all good channels eventually get saturated. And in 2023, firms will need to broaden their spread to ensure that decreases in engagement from a single platform won’t cripple their overall marketing strategy.

5. Incorporate Video Marketing Into Your Strategy

Audience engagement is paramount for an impactful marketing strategy. It’s not surprising that high-growth law firms are increasingly video marketing as a part of their legal marketing strategy.  

HubSpot shares that video has overtaken blogs and infographics as the number one form of media used in content strategy. Video has a variety of proven benefits. 

For example, video is flexible. A video can be uploaded to YouTube, embedded on a blog (or vlog) and shared on social media. 

You can also improve your organic search position by with video content. Google sees the existence of videos on a website page or blog as a strong indicator of valuable content, giving it a slight bump in the algorithm. YouTube, the second most visited site after Google, also plays a role in Google rankings as well as acts like a search engine in itself. If you pair valuable video content with optimized descriptions and titles, your firm will be much more visible online for potential clients. 

Firms looking to grow in 2023 will improve reach, brand awareness and ROI by using video.

6. Implement Marketing Automation

Utilizing marketing automation is another top technique used by high-growth law firms. On some legal marketing teams, automation is crucial to handling a growing workload with a shrinking budget and team. 

 Technology can reduce or even eliminate manual activities to help improve efficiency and productivity. While law firms use certain tools like CRM and email marketing activities, most do not leverage them in more complex ways like marketing teams in other industries do – this points to a huge opportunity for the firms who do invest in more savvy marketing automation. 

Common marketing practices that offer valuable growth opportunities are:

• Nurture campaigns
• Re-engagement campaigns
• Cross-sell campaigns
• Automated meeting calendars
• Website chatbots

With new types of marketing automation, you can increase your firm’s touchpoints with clients and prospects in a more productive way.

Technology as a Legal Marketing Strategy

It’s not surprising that the top marketing techniques are tied to technology. Solutions like Pitchly’s data enablement system help law firms leverage their data, enabling them to streamline and simplify marketing and business development activities. 

Pitchly makes other tools, like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, SharePoint or IT-owned databases, more efficient. When data is king, using a system like Pitchly can deliver essential information and boost productivity. Pitchly reduces the time to collect and manage your firm’s experience - even if it’s currently in multiple disparate locations.

Having a well-rounded, connected tech stack is one of the best legal marketing strategies there is. See it for yourself! Request a demo today!

This post was originally posted February 2022 and updated in February 2023.