The Top 5 Warning Signs Your Law Firm Marketing Team is Not a Good Fit

You really want to believe your law firm’s marketing team is doing all the right things. How can you be sure? Here are five signs your trust may be misplaced.

As an attorney turned marketing consultant, I feel a strong duty to be fully transparent with clients. Even when I’m making recommendations I sincerely believe are right for the law firm, there is always a strong possibility that clients may wonder if I’m merely “trying to make a sale.” 

Recently, while prepping to film a recent podcast with a client, he repeatedly volunteered that his trust in our agency was the key ingredient in growing his practice. While other clients have mentioned they appreciate our recommendations, his words struck me differently. He made me wonder how many attorneys put their faith — and money — in the wrong hands.

With that in mind, I’ve attempted to illuminate the warning signs for when a law firm should seriously re-evaluate its marketing team — whether agencies, independent contractors or even full-time staff.

Signs It’s Time for Your Law Firm Marketing Team to Go

Though most of these warning signs are geared towards working with agencies, I encourage law firms with in-house marketing teams to consider them as well. 

1. It’s been five years (or longer), and you haven’t been told to update your website.

Your website is the most critical piece of marketing you own. With it, you present yourself and your accomplishments, identify your location and practice areas, and convey “why you” to potential clients. It can, and arguably should, also be the anchor to your marketing in terms of things like SEO, Google Ads, and social media. 

Like any other piece of technology, websites need to be updated periodically for functionality. Over time, your site speed may decrease and mobile responsiveness and ADA compliance may degrade. Beyond that, websites that aren’t updated regularly look stale and unprofessional. 

Though you may need outside help to evaluate your website’s technical performance, your marketing team should regularly be checking the following:

• Are your attorney bios routinely updated with the proper practice areas and awards?
• Are there outdated laws or statistics on your site?
• Do you have incorrect contact information?
• Are your images starting to look outdated?
• Is it easy to navigate your site?
• Do you have recent case results and insight posts? 
• How does your website compare to your competitors?

Potential clients judge your website in a matter of seconds. Suppose your competitors’ websites are flashier, more informative, and easier to navigate. In that case, it’s time to update before you look less successful when compared to your peers. Even if you’re the best among your competitors, it doesn’t hurt to explore firms in other locations and practice areas for inspiration. 

2. You’re not prompted to have regular meetings to discuss your marketing efforts and results. 

I recently came across a shocking (to me) statistic: over 25% of attorneys don’t track their leads. However, when I stopped to think about how many firms tell me they only rely on “word of mouth” to get new clients, I realized the number does make a lot of sense. Similarly, many law firms say, “We don’t need more business.” 

While I do congratulate these firms on their success, I also offer a warning: You’re not preparing for a “what if.” No one expected COVID-19, and although another pandemic is, we hope, unlikely in the near future, there is always uncertainty. Firms dissolve. Laws can change. The economy can crash. 

If you’re marketing team is not keeping you informed and consistently tracking your data, it will be harder to pivot when changes need to be made. Moreover, more funds will be lost on wasted efforts because you lack a comprehensive understanding of how to allocate your resources. 

If you’re working with an agency or even just an in-house team, you need to fully understand your marketing efforts and how your business is performing. Without regular meetings, you’re given only glimpses that will not keep you educated enough to make crucial decisions if and when the time comes. 

Additionally, I often meet with firms that have been disgruntled with their agencies because changes were made without consulting the firm. This should never happen. Period. If you look at your website or other marketing and see something done without your permission, it’s time for a serious conversation.

Marketing is highly personal, and firms need to be kept in the loop. Additionally, you have to wonder: If your agency isn’t advising you of the changes, what else are they not telling you? 

3. You haven’t tried anything new in years.

Think about successful big brands. Oreo is constantly releasing new flavors. Target collaborates with different brands. Not long ago, Google changed the color pattern in its lettering for the first time in years. 

Law firms do not need to embark on that level of marketing variations. Attorney marketing is not consumer marketing. Still, marketing has to evolve to continue to grow your law firm. Accordingly, a good marketing team is always suggesting new ways to vary your marketing. 

While you shouldn’t make big changes to marketing strategies that have a consistent, measurable benefit, a marketing team that doesn’t offer fresh ideas should raise a red flag. 

As an example, there’s a corporate rule of thumb that businesses should update their logo every seven years. Far too often, I see law firms that haven’t given their logo a single thought. Worse yet, they’re using a generic image that is now blurry or formatted incorrectly on various screens. With just a small investment in a new logo, a law firm can appear fresh and appeal to the newer trends in marketing. 

No doubt, at least one of your competitors is staying on top of business and cultural trends and experimenting with their marketing. If they do something that causes an influx of clients their way, you’ll need to come up with a plan to measure up to their new efforts. 

Varying your marketing also increases your exposure to audience groups that may not be familiar with your work. Attorneys lament over how to promote new practice areas or showcase their younger associates, but marketing strategies that work for established services and practice areas may not work for new initiatives.

Your marketing team should be on the ball when it comes to offering creative ideas and trying new things. It doesn’t have to be expensive; you can make a small investment to see if mailouts grow your brand, for example. Or, perhaps a few branding videos can invigorate your campaigns. 

One caveat: It’s not always about being trendy. Many attorneys tried to quickly dive into Snapchat advertising, though it was an unrealistic market for attorneys.

4. Recommendations are presented without the data to support the suggestions.

Marketing can have a hefty price tag, and marketing budgets often shock attorneys. There is truth to the adage that you have to spend money to make money, but not without understanding why you need to pay a specific fee to market your firm.

Recently, a client scheduled a meeting with me, but I wasn’t sure what was on his agenda. Before the call, I decided to research Google’s local service ads in his location since criminal law often performs well with that kind of marketing. Ironically, the client had scheduled the meeting in error, and his jaw dropped at the projections our team made regarding the costs of those ads and the anticipated increase in leads. He had been paying far more than we were suggesting, and he quickly signed with us. 

I tell that story not to showcase our sales strategy, but to illustrate just how many firms are not being presented with the data to back up why they should pursue a particular kind of marketing. 

If a marketing team suggests pricey endeavors like Google Ads or SEO, there is no reason they can’t show real data on anticipated leads and expected ROI.

Of course, there is the risk that agencies and marketing professionals could be promising the moon with falsified or unresearched data. If the agency has been in business for several years, you are perfectly within your rights to ask to speak to some of their clients who have used these marketing services. (Also, it never hurts to price shop with other agencies.)

Even if leads can’t be forecast, your marketing team should always be able to present you with some form of data to justify their efforts. For example, blogging may be vital to attorney marketing, but even the best marketers cannot tell you how many leads you’ll get from your blog. That said, tools like Google Analytics let you see how these blogs are performing in terms of page views, and there are other tools to measure where these blogs appear on the search engine results pages. 

In complete candor, some expenditures may not show any form of concrete data to measure. Social media, for example, is a tough platform to measure a concrete ROI. I also believe in client relations items, such as gifts or client spotlights, that may never present a numerical benefit. It’s perfectly fine to use these tools for non-monetary wins as long as your team is presenting you with other options that will measurably help with the growth of your firm.  

5. You feel like a number — there is no trusted relationship with your marketing team.

Over the years, our agency has developed strong relationships with long-standing clients — we hug, go to lunch together, and even share family pictures. You may not be interested in that kind of relationship with your marketing team, and it is certainly not required. There are, however, some telltale signs that you may be just a number to your marketing partners:

• Your phone calls or emails are not returned promptly.
• Your main point of contact has varied over the years. 
• You don’t feel as though your team truly understands your brand or goals. 
• There is no personalization to your communications. 

Customer service is table stakes for any marketing agency or marketing professional. If it’s a struggle to communicate with your marketing team, or if you don’t feel as if you’re being heard, then they may not be the team for you. 

It Comes Back to Trust

Your numbers in terms of your budget and ROI matter most, but as my client so eloquently pointed out, if you don’t trust your agency or team, you may not feel confident about making changes or taking the next steps to build your practice.

Marketing is too important to your firm’s growth to put yourself in the hands of a law firm marketing team that doesn’t instill confidence or demonstrate that they will fight for your firm’s success. It may lead to difficult conversations, but it’s your money and your investment in your law firm’s future growth.

Image © iStockPhoto.com.

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