Marketing for lawyers isn’t just about networking and delivering seminars. Lawyers need a marketing edge like this.

Once you have captured those leads you need to market your services to your contacts on a regular basis until they need to buy your services.

How to use You Tube to market your law firm

This week  I had the pleasure of discussing niche marketing for lawyers with two switched on partners in a small high street law firm. Much to my amazement they told me that they have a You Tube strategy!

Yesterday I wondered how many lawyers were using Linkedin. A quick search on Google provided some interesting answers.

10 percent of attorneys said the use of online social networking such as Linked in resulted in new business according to the American Bar Association. This seemed quite low to me especially in light of the volume of lawyers actually using social media as a means of marketing for lawyers.

Customer Service on the High Street

WH Smith and Currys Digital have been been voted the UK's worst shops in a survey by consumer group Which? after a poll of more than 14,000 people by the consumer watchdog. Stores in the top 10 were Apple, cosmetics companies Lush and The Body Shop, John Lewis, Ikea.

Securing referrals to grow your practice

Marketing for lawyers usually involves referrals. In fact, as a lawyer, you probably gain most of your instructions from referrals, either through your colleagues, business associates or existing clients.

Lawyers can work smarter not harder

The likley impact of the Legal Services Act 2010 will result in a move to niche marketing for lawyers in thousands of firms as they strive to compete with the big brands. A fascinating debate on the subject of niche marketing for lawyers unravelled on Linkedin this week.

The practice of law is very different from the business of law.

When he first started practising law, Michael Siri, says his main focus revolved around the actual practice of law. But, he says, he now focuses on the business of law which doesn't deal with elements of a cause of action or a three-prong test used by the court, but with making sure that the lights are on and the clients are happy. Here is an extract from his article published in 'Generation JD, A blog for young lawyers'.

Can law firms really justify corporate hospitality?

Corporate hospitality events is a traditional method of entertaining clients as part of your legal marketing mix, but as lawyers it’s easy to fall into the trap of putting on the same old events and inviting the same clients each time. Here are some top tips for ensuring you get a good return on investment for your corporate hospitality budget.

New statistics show why lawyers must blog

The team at HubSpot has produced a report called “The State of Inbound Marketing” which provides insights into the growth of blogs and the effect on legal marketing. Blogs and social media channels are generating real customers, for example 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.

Educational Marketing for Lawyers is going to be huge

Over 15 million people in the UK watch 200 million videos daily. ComScore Video Metrix, January 2011 and we know that in 2009 1.4 million out of 3.4 million UK small business owners visit an online video site each month and are 32% more likely to visit an online video site than the average user. TGI Net

These statistics are available on Google's random stats pages and demonstrate how media can help you reach your audience online. As lawyers we can easily find content for our promotional marketing efforts and so we use educational marketing regularly as a means of reaching our audience. Most often we rely on ‘free seminars’ to reach the audience but if they are going online to YouTube in their droves then video blogging will be the next big thing for lawyers.

When it comes to law firm marketing we have to think beyond the quality of the work we do. To prove this point the Law Society Gazette published an article in 2010 which revealed that ‘more than 60% of the public were unable to name a single law firm brand, even though 78% had used a solicitor before’.