Marketing in the legal industry is both competitive and costly, and when it comes to social media marketing many law firms are trying to jump on the bandwagon with little success overall. This post is going to touch on the challenges social media presents, attempt to manage your expectations, and highlight a few ways firms can win using social media. 

The biggest misconception is that social media marketing for law firms is the same as marketing any other type of business, but in reality it’s drastically different. Think about it this way: Unlike a company with a product or service people buy on a whim (clothing, makeup, etc.) what are the odds of reaching someone on social media at the exact same time they are in need of a specific type of attorney (business, criminal, employment, etc.)? Very low. 

Now that I’ve cleared the air and gotten the negative out of the way, firms shouldn’t be discouraged and ditch social media marketing altogether, but instead use it strategically and understand that the ROI will likely be much lower than other forms of marketing like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads. And because of that law firms should look at their overall marketing spend and decide what portion they really want to devote to social media marketing. 

One thing I’ll mention is that content is king whether we’re talking about social media marketing, SEO, etc. so if you have great content already you might as well push it on social media. For example, you have an aggressive SEO campaign running and as part of that you’re creating unique, helpful and targeted blog posts to capture specific keywords/visitors. In that scenario, definitely use social media to amplify the content and improve SEO, though don’t rely on it to drive revenue directly. 

We hope this post was helpful and if you have questions about social media marketing for law firms or any other type of marketing, please feel free to shoot us a call or email!