Client acquisition in the legal sector

Diana Jennen: “Marketing automation is becoming increasingly important in the legal sector”

In the legal sector, optimizing the client acquisition strategy is also key. It is no longer viable for a firm to wait for word of mouth to do its job: it is necessary to go out and look for opportunities. But where? The answer is simple: on the Internet. This is what a group of legal communication experts, including our Director of Communication and Business Development, Diana Jennen, talk about for Cinco Días.

All law firms will have the same starting point, despite being completely different. Each of them will have to draw up a communications plan with clear and realistic objectives, which will be fine-tuned along the way. Among the objectives may be to gain visibility through social networks -for example, by turning a brand into one of great renown within the legal sector- or to increase the firm’s presence in search engines such as Google or Yahoo. In this way, if potential clients search for specific information on the Internet, they will find the answer on the firm’s website, which will be among the first results.

When drawing up the communication plan, the firm’s target audience must be taken into account, which will lead the firm to carry out certain actions or others. For example, if the firm wants to offer its services to individuals, it is more likely to work on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook; however, if the service is aimed at company executives, its target audience is on LinkedIn and, therefore, that is where it has to be.

Whichever social network you have a presence on, there is something common that all firms should work on: communication not only from the corporate profile, but also from the personal and professional profiles of each person on the team. This action multiplies the effectiveness of corporate communication.

Automated marketing for customer acquisition

To boost customer acquisition we also add the use of SEO and SEM, which will make our website occupy the top positions of Internet search engines, and the appearances of our firm in the media.

We will always seek to be accessible to the client through communication. Diana Jennen explains that in this sense “marketing automation in the legal sector is becoming increasingly important, for example, through e-mails that are sent automatically after users carry out a specific action on the law firm’s website”.

She adds that these strategies “can work in the case of law firms that are aimed at solving the problems of ordinary citizens, since they make it possible to collect their data and filter their needs for subsequent more personalized attention”. However, she explains, “in the case of corporate law, this becomes more complicated. The main risk is the depersonalization of the answers. Can a bot generate trust?” she asks.

In relation to the media, it is important to know that it is a matter of technical positioning, and that it is not only a responsibility of the partners. All departments will have to pull in the same direction to position the firm in the best possible way on the Internet.

If you want to read the full article in Cinco Días, click here.