The beginning of the year is a great time to develop your plan for marketing and business development. Following are the top seven tactics you can employ now, to ensure your success in developing new clients and increasing work from existing clients in the coming year.
1. Review your professional bios
Your professional bios are being reviewed by potential clients regularly, so it is important to keep them current. The start of the year is a great time to update them – on your website, LinkedIn and in any directories/rankings where you are featured. What achievements, honors or awards did you receive that should be added? Did you add new substantive experience that you can highlight? Can you add case studies and/or representative matters to bolster your credibility as a seasoned practitioner in your area of specialty? Is your bio focused on the type of work you are trying to do more of and/or directed to the types of clients you are hoping to attract.
2. Refine Your List of Referral Sources
Create or review your list of top professional contacts and referral sources with whom you plan on keeping in regular contact this year. Also, identity potential new sources within your network. Schedule regular outreach with the people on this list, adding time on your calendar at least once per month for emails and calls. For key referral sources, get on their calendars now for lunch, dinner or virtual meetings in the first quarter to start.
3. Create Your Content Editorial Calendar
Plan your content strategy. What will you write and speak about this year? How can you focus your topics on the type of new work you are trying to generate? Will you focus on creating primers in your practice area (good for SEO), getting deeper into your areas of subspecialty or diving into a new area of subject matter expertise? Are there any statutory or regulatory changes or landmark cases on the docket that are expected to impact your practice area? Consider the format for your content: blog posts, articles, webinars, short form video, social media, podcasts? How can you prepare the content once and then repurpose it in different formats?
4. Commit to Enhancing Your Social Media Presence
In addition to updating your LinkedIn profile, what else can you do to improve your visibility and connections on social media? Can you commit to logging on at least once per week and spending just 15 to 20 minutes sharing your firm’s content and/or engaging with content posted by your clients and referral sources? Have you connected with all of your key clients and referral sources?
5. Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And Reviews
If you delivered successful results last year for clients, have you asked them for a testimonial? You can do the same via an end of matter satisfaction survey or through a direct request. Make it as easy for them as possible by showing examples of other testimonials or providing them a draft for review and editing. While you’re at it, ask them if they would be willing to provide an online review (provide the link for easy access) or to be interviewed for legal industry surveys and rankings.
6. Plan For Annual Conferences and Regular Networking Events
Legal marketing and business development still relies fundamentally on relationships. What annual national and/or regional conferences will you attend to build relationships with potential clients, referral sources and colleagues? Is there still time to submit a proposal or request to speak at these conferences? (Most conference speakers are selected six months to a year or more in advance.) What regular networking events will you commit to? Hint: try to select industry or affinity group events where potential clients go to learn and network, more than events that will be populated by other practicing lawyers, unless your practice is heavily reliant on lawyer referrals.
7. Have a Written Marketing and Business Development Plan
For decades, studies have shown that you increase the likelihood of executing your goals if you write them down. Marketing and business development plans don’t have to be elaborate to be useful. Committing the above tactics and any others you intend to implement this year to writing (or electronic document), makes it much more likely you will accomplish your goals for the year.
Please reach out if you would like to download a more comprehensive draft lawyer marketing plan to use to achieve your marketing and business development goals this year.