Looking for some marketing ideas for your small law firm? If you want to get more clients without needing a big budget, you’ve come to the right place!
We interviewed Neil Tyra, solo practitioner and driving force behind The Tyra Law Firm, LLC as well as host of The Law Entrepreneur Podcast, to get his insights into the marketing ideas for small law firms that have the best ROI (Return on Investment).
Neil shared the expensive mistakes he made in marketing his practice and what he’s learned through trial and error that’s been the most successful and cost-effective for getting new clients.
“I’m one of those ‘shiny object syndrome attorneys’. I’ve thrown money at just about every marketing opportunity looking for that silver bullet. You name it, I’ve probably tried it.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
The challenge with getting new clients
Having a steady flow of new clients coming in is essential to running a business. The challenge is that as an attorney, chances are that your law degree didn’t come with any training around marketing for your small law firm. So you do what most attorneys do, you try out a bunch of marketing methods – often spending thousands of dollars and months, or even years, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work.
If you’re like Neil, you’ve learned the hard way that expensive marketing agencies that promise to help you get traffic and leads, may not actually be the most cost-effective way of getting clients.
“When I first started I paid giant sums of money to a well-known company who’s famous for promising you’ll be on the first page of Google search. I’d say that was the least effective marketing activity because it had a negative ROI.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
So if you’re tired of spending giant sums of money on marketing and you’re ready to learn the most effective marketing ideas for small law firms that actually get new clients, keep reading, my friend!
Top 4 marketing ideas for small law firms that have the best ROI
We’ll share the top 4 marketing ideas that can help your small law firm get new clients without having to fork out heaps of money.
Social Media Marketing (Plus Using Social Media Groups)
Social media marketing has been Neil’s top most effective marketing idea to help him get clients and ironically, it was the last marketing activity he tried. But we’re not talking about Facebook ads or posting 5 times a day on Instagram. While social media ads and regularly posting on social media is beneficial, the most effective way of using social media to get new clients for your small law firm is having a presence and using Facebook or LinkedIn groups whose members are your ideal client.
There’s a Facebook or LinkedIn group for almost every community that caters to geographical areas or interest groups. So if you’re in Family Law, for example, mom or dad Facebook groups within your area are a great place to start.
“I live in a small community where there are 300,000 adults, which is more than enough to sustain my Estate Planning practice. I joined 3 Facebook groups and gently introduced myself. I respond to questions and every once in a while do a PSA (Public Service Announcement) about a case I feel people can learn from, to get the information out there. Through doing that, pretty soon people started asking me questions about my specific services.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
Neil also found it effective to show his value by sharing infographics, ebooks, and checklists to people via social media.
“That’s how my practice took a big leap forward. It’s almost 0 cost, very low effort, and has a very high payoff.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is a relatively low cost and low time investment marketing strategy that helps build trust between you and potential clients.
“I had a mentor that told me the average person can’t tell a good lawyer from a bad one. Your bio and resume means nothing to them because most people can’t tell if it makes you a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ lawyer. What they can tell is if you’re someone that they like and trust. Creating video content that addresses your ideal clients’ problems is a great way to build trust and it’s easy to do.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
The explosion of video on the internet is well documented and with smartphones, the ability to create video content is easier than ever. It doesn’t take much to take a short video that addresses your ideal clients’ concerns, polish it up, and put it up on one of your social media channels. You can easily upload it to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and your blog.
Neil found that by only spending about 10-15 minutes a day he could record and publish 1 video a week and worked his way up to 2-3 a week. And by batching that task to film one day a week and changing outfits for each video, it’s even faster to churn out.
“The drawback is that as attorneys, we want everything to be perfect. But something I’ve learned is that done is better than perfect.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
While your first few videos might not be amazing, the more you do it the more comfortable you get on camera, the easier it gets, and the better the videos are. I’ve personally experienced this while creating our Daylite YouTube channel. Watching the first few videos makes me cringe, but I knew that would be the case because the more you do it, the better they get.
Here’s a quick list of Neil’s tips and favourite equipment for video marketing:
- The cameras in iPhones are more than adequate for good quality video.
- A good quality microphone is a good idea. Lavalier mic clips are super cheap and provide a great sound.
- Use a tripod so it’s more stable or a selfie stick if you want to record videos while walking.
- Professional lighting helps but natural light is perfectly sufficient.
- iMove is amazing for post-production of video.
- You can start doing the post-production work yourself but if you want to offload it to someone else, you could hire a Virtual Assistant or hire a student in video production to help you.
If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out Sam Mollaei and Andrew Stickel’s content.
Referrals
Referrals are a great way to get more clients, and while it’s more of a long-game, it’s no less important. When it comes to referral marketing, Neil creates 2 lists of referrals. The first is a list of clients he loves working with and by keeping in touch, he’s banking that they hang out with like-minded people that could lead to more clients that are easy to work with. The other is a list of centres of influences – these are people who have a client base that align with his ideal client.
“I do a number of things to keep in touch with these 2 lists. It’s a fair amount of touching base by email, handwritten cards, birthday and anniversary gifts, and always thanking them when they’ve given me referrals.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
Neil uses Daylite to create Smart Lists by filtering his contact list by the Keyword “Referral Source” or “Centre of Influence” to make it easy to stay in touch with these people.
“I do a lot of work with Stacey Brown Randall and she’s written a book Referrals Without Asking. I follow her approach to layout on the calendar a series of touch points and try to develop a low cost way to reach out to those referral sources.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
Blogging & General Content Marketing
Neil’s 4th most effective marketing idea for small law firms is general content marketing which involves writing blogs and regularly posting content on social media.
“I keep a list of blog topics as I get inspired by different ideas and I rearrange those to prioritize them. At one point I had another company writing my blog posts for me, so that’s also another option if you don’t like writing your own.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
After publishing a blog post, Neil posts it on all his social media channels and uses SocialJukeBox and HootSuite to automate re-posting his blogs on social media.
“The great thing is that you can create a pool of content and it sets a defined publication schedule so once I publish a new blog post, it’ll schedule it for the next month. For the first month it will post it every 3 days but at a different time each day. Then after that it goes into a pool of posts and those get re-posted at random so you’re able to recycle your content.”
– Neil Tyra, The Tyra Law Firm LLC.
Time to start marketing your law firm
We hope you found these marketing ideas for small law firms helpful! Give them a try and let us know in the comments below if you found them helpful. And be sure to check out Neil’s podcast The Law Entrepreneur for more great ideas and insights for running your law practice.
About the author:
Kristie Holden is an online marketing consultant. She helps startups get more leads by clarifying their message and creating a marketing strategy to attract and convert their ideal client. Connect with her on Instagram.
This is really informative and useful information from Neil Tyra. Four great approaches for growing a law firm!