How would you want yourself to be known in the world? Is it by your humbleness or by your work ethic or maybe by how you deal with and talk to people? Answering this question might be easy for you, as you know how you would want to make an impact on the world? Similarly, making your business and its ethics known is vital for its growth and success. This applies to all business and legal sectors and is not an exception. In a world full of commonness, how and what would you want your law firm to be known for? Cutting yourself from the sea of sameness by creating a standout brand is what law firms need in their growth strategy.
For law firms, it’s important to grasp the perfect clientele. It’s not just important for law firm growth but the purpose of your practice that we all set at the start of your law firm, and to achieve this we need to curate a brand name in the market for your law firm.
What is law firm branding?
If you are new to this, you might wonder what law firm branding is and what its elements are. Let’s start with what branding means for your law firm. Branding is your effort to make your work ethic, your promise, and your unique selling proposition known in the market. This is something that makes you different from all the others in the market. A law firm with a brand name would attract more clients because of its exceptional reputation and word for fulfilling its promise.
Now you know why branding is important for law firms, in this blog we are going to cover all the key aspects and strategies on how you can build up a brand for your law firm.
What Makes Your Brand Strong in The Legal Market
Clarity – If you need to speak and explain why you stand out, that’s worthless. That’s the reason why your message and motive should be crystal clear to your audience. They should immediately understand why you and your services differ from the rest of the others and why you will give them an exceptional customer experience.
Consistent – All your points including logo, website, social media, and content should align with the brand message you’re sending to your audience. Your logo and website shouldn’t look like they belong to different businesses, the color scheme of your logo and website should match and the brand should look consistent.
Self-Confidence – If you can’t believe in yourself, nobody will believe in you, you need to have self-confidence about your brand and its services and you need to show it to the world by branding. Since we are talking about law firms here, law firms cannot directly exude confidence with their clients. Law firms need to rely on lawyers’ brands to bring confidence in their services.
Key Aspects of Personal Branding for Lawyers
- Answering ‘Who You Are’
Since branding is the foundation of an individual lawyer’s branding, knowing yourself and your colleagues is vital for the initial stage. Asking this question to you might make you uncomfortable, but if it doesn’t then you might not be growing. Coming to work daily, how do you execute certain things, how do you handle situations, how are you as a human? All such questions will help you determine the answer to ‘who you are’ and further help you to outline the vitals of your brand.
- Determine Your Brand Promise and Story
Making yourself stand out would not be a straightforward task. If you want your clients to feel that you differ from everyone else in the legal industry, you need to show what makes you different. To feel connected to your clients, show them why you work the way you work, your story should include the good, bad, and ugly. If you want your client to truly feel connected to your law firm after your story is drafted, lay down your USP or promise to make to your clients.
- Clarify Your Target Audience
You cannot sell your services to everyone. There has to be a set target audience with similar background, demographics, or status. Most law firms target people who can afford them and pay their bills. If you are targeting your audience in such a way, then you are narrowing down your options and losing some interested clients. Target your audience according to your image of your favorite law firm client, make a profile, and write all the points as a personality.
- Ratifying Your Core Message
Branding is not entirely about what your clients think about you, it’s also about what you think about yourself. Your ‘core message’ must be unified and consistent. Have a brainstorming session with your team and colleagues, and understand the core value you want your law firm to personify.
Building and Advertising Your Law Firm as a Brand.
Lastly comes putting your law firm brand in place, which means making a logo, developing a website, curating a marketing strategy, leveraging social media and other advertising platforms.
1. Website & Logo – Get a website design that includes your previous work, your contact information, legal services, your core brand values, and differentiators. Your website and logo should align, they should follow a certain color scheme, convey your brand name, and make an impact. Your audience should remember immediately that it’s your law firm by your logo.
3. Social Media – Putting your law firm consistently out is the key to the initial stage of branding. Your audience should know that you exist, maintaining your social skills is the key to this stage. Make social media accounts on all platforms, but post valuable content that aligns with your brand, and post it consistently.
4. Legal Directories- Legal directories are another great way to advertise your law firm brand. Most of all potential clients start their search on Google. Legal directories list all the law firms that are in their area. Make a detailed and professional profile on legal directories to bring in leads from Google to your website.
5. Reviews- Reviews are a vital part of your brand and the same is your reaction to them. Get as many reviews as you can, and plan a dedicated process for getting reviews from your clients. When you ask your clients for reviews, you’ll get both negative and positive. Responding to negative reviews in a way that clients feel that you are worth giving a chance. Meet them in person, figure out their problems, and fill the gap between you and the client.
Summing Up
Now you have a detailed idea about what branding is and why it is so important for your law firm. You can convey the idea of your brand smoothly with ease to your targeted customers. Branding is not an element that can develop overnight, it needs constant work and efforts to make going and visible to your audience. Building a brand might mean that you need to put extra hours, funds or might also need to make slight changes on your website. You may even need to completely redesign your logo and changes in your website content. Create realistic plans according to your needs and start implementing elements of your plan in your daily growth strategy. Since you are new to this it might sound overwhelming and a time taking effort but making your brand known to your customers is that part of the business that gives you the never-ending benefits and growth.