Law firms face many challenges when marketing their services. These result from the specialized nature of their legal services as well as the lack of knowledge, experience, or resources for selling those services to the right audience.
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is an area in which many law firms operate. It requires a unique set of marketing strategies that may not apply in traditional business-to-customer (B2C) marketing scenarios.
B2B Marketing Challenges for Law Firms
Law firms working in the B2B space need a different approach when targeting and reaching their ideal clients. In most cases, law firms need to engage with prospective clients over time.
Many clients work with multiple vendors, and as a result, their decision to purchase legal services may not happen right away.
Nurturing prospects is critical to this process and lets your team develop the trust and credibility needed to succeed in B2B marketing.
This can be accomplished through the content marketing, email newsletters, webinars, and other strategies that allow you to demonstrate your expertise while building relationships with your target audience.
Law firms can lack the marketing expertise to sell their services. In addition, the changing landscape of the marketplace forces lawyers and their teams to stay up-to-date with the latest market trends.
Law firms need to be familiar with marketing concepts such as lead generation, KPI (key performance indicators), analytics, sales funnels, PPC (pay-per-click), and others when developing and implementing their B2B marketing strategies.
The Lifetime Value of Your Clients
Many law firms see marketing as a necessary expense while overlooking the returns it can provide to their practices. B2B marketing requires law firms to take a different perspective that provides them with more success in their marketing campaigns.
There are metrics related to the generation of new leads and the conversion of those leads to paying clients. But it’s important to consider the lifetime value of each client. This highlights the importance of investing in the right marketing strategies.
By measuring the revenue that’s generated over the lifetime of the client, law firms can improve the ways in which they establish their marketing budgets and the returns that they should expect to see.
B2B relationships typically last longer than traditional B2C relationships, and some clients may offer your firm a higher potential for growth over the long term.
Determining who your high-growth and profitable clients are allows you to get the greatest return on your B2B marketing campaigns.
Lead Nurturing in B2B
The process of nurturing leads is critical to your B2B marketing success. It considers the different stages of your sales process, where prospects are at any given time, and the marketing message that achieves the best results at each stage.
Lead nurturing helps prospective clients learn more about your services, legal team, and past successes. It makes your brand familiar and keeps your law firm “top of mind”.
Prospective clients are more likely to call on your services when you’ve taken the time to nurture them over time.
This is especially important when selling complex legal services. Prospects must understand the benefits that your services provide, and your marketing messages must address the questions they have.
Lead nurturing creates a dialogue between your law firm and its target audience. In the B2B marketplace, this supports the short- and long-term goals of clients while ensuring that your business objectives are met.
Law firms need to understand how to implement the right B2B marketing strategies in order to achieve measurable and lasting results.
Recognizing the marketing challenges of law firms, determining the lifetime value of your clients, and taking the time to nurture them further into your sales process are the keys to lasting success in the B2B space.
Let us know what B2B marketing strategies have worked for you in the comments below. If you’re struggling with developing a marketing plan that works, we’ll provide you with the resources that allow you to reach and engage with a growing audience.
