In the sea of law firms delivering similar services, engaging your client could be that one thing to help your firm stand out. Providing outstanding legal services should be the top thing that comes to mind when thinking about how to engage clients, but for this particular blog, we will focus on other best practices.
Once you get the client in the door, the rest of the case is a piece of cake, right? Not so fast! Obviously, you will have to win the case for the client, but what about maintaining that person as a client, and possibly earning some referrals as a result? Engaging your client and earning referrals go hand-and-hand, and in theory, the evil cycle of fighting for new clients should subside as time passes.
How to engage with your client effectively can be argued. Here’s an easy, short list to take the mystery out of current strategies:
Personalize – Find out how your client prefers to communicate. Texting? Sending video messages? Using law firm tech?
Maximize CRM and Case Management tools – Texting has become an easy way to keep your clients engaged! Send regular case updates. Solicit feedback. If you haven’t heard from your client in a bit, have a good meme or article to pass along that might help...almost anything to keep the relationship open.
Use other tech or app options – If your CRM/Case Management tool has a client portal, use it, and keep conversation threads going. Still using email as your main communication tool? That’s cool, too. Just beware, if you receive lengthy, labor-intensive questions via email, pick up the phone!
By working with a different approach to building cases, law firms can effectively engage clients and then enjoy the benefits of higher retention and reputation. Repeat business is easier at every level, and this model should prove viable in most legal service applications, but if you can think of any more, please drop them in the notes below!
Understanding Client Engagement in Legal Marketing
In a legal marketing context, client engagement matters because it has a direct impact on the very things that drive your law firm's financial engine: client retention and satisfaction.
Taking a more active role in driving engagement gives you the perfect opportunity for kicking off real, personalized conversations that allow you to connect with clients on an individual level. That’s one of the best ways to build up a sense of trust and loyalty that leads to the longer client relationships you need to maintain your revenue levels in an overcrowded marketplace where every office you visit is being transformed by digital technology.
Put simply, a well-placed, well-timed, and well-executed complaint call can make all the difference to a client. Encouraging that sort of interaction and having conversations about your products and services (it all feels a lot more personable than a series of faceless email broadcasts) is important. So is personalizing (where you can) the digital marketing your law firm is doing.
At its core, your existing CRM is a database that manages interactions with a client and stores information about their wants, wishes, likes, and dislikes. Use it!
Take note of what key marketing information it provided you with during that onboarding call and segway it into your outbound conversations with clients to get the value to return. Let your client relationship manager use the data contained within your CRM to add real client value and manage the small things better ("It's all about the data, right?").
Building Strong Client Communication Channels
Clear and consistent communication will make your clients’ experiences much better. Understanding that their business cares, values them, and attempts to reach out to them will make them happier. Some places your business should contact clients are through:
-Emails
-Phone Calls
-Social Media
One pro-tip for maintaining clear and consistent communication is to ensure you are communicating concisely. The fundamental first impression any business should make on its customer base can be summarized in a few short sentences or less! The quicker and more engaging the read, the more effective the text.
Plus, conveying the bigger picture to consumers will allow them to better understand the business, therefore better acknowledging the brand itself!
Leveraging Digital Marketing for Lawyers
Digital marketing speaks your customers’ language and hangs out where they are. SEO—search engine optimization—helps increase your online visibility to make it easier for potential customers to find your business’s product or service. This increased visibility improves organic (read: non-paid) traffic to your website, which gives you more leads to convert into clients.
Content marketing is the flip side of the SEO coin that focuses more on engaging with customers by providing something valuable (often information). A good content marketing strategy is tailored to your customers' interests and needs. Social media, too, overlaps with content marketing; a good social presence lets you broadcast to them directly and your audience can reach out to you any time they please.
Predictably, a bad website leads to a bad user experience, which leads to fewer converted leads. As part of your larger digital marketing strategy, your website gives potential clients what is (probably) their first impression of your business: how absolutely professional you are (or aren't), how engaged you are in your product, service, or business.
Personalizing Client Interactions
Personalized marketing can enhance client engagement and retention by making the client's journey more applicable and enjoyable. When the TV lanches with content that fits a viewer's exact taste (because the client's taste was the basis for most design decisions), the viewer will feel an applicable connection of identity to that content. The provided media aligns with personal interest, which doubles the chances of the viewer consuming it—that's just good business.
But that's not all—referrals and any form of client-designer follow-up can yield advantageous results (so long as your career isn't built on being a temperamental artist). Clients want you to keep in touch with them. A happy email on Batman Day to the guy who hired you to draw a full back tattoo of the Bat breaking the Joker's back will be welcomed. The artist should use whatever valuable analytics they can to get back in front of the one person who matters in their business—the client.
Creating Valuable Content for Clients
The key to engaging clients and establishing yourselves as an authority in your field is to create valuable, insightful content. Blogs let you write about frequently asked questions or problems that you know your clients often experience. They might not even relate to your product, but they position you as a “thought leader.”
A newsletter is a different type of content — rather than typed-out paragraphs, it allows your business to have an open line of communication with clients. You can keep them posted about updates (product or otherwise), what's coming next, and the newest, best-promoted deal, while also fostering a sense of community. You can comment on recent news (industry, local, or fun) and note clients' milestones (the number of years or months with us, birthdays). Think about it as an inbox blog.
Then there are webinars. You can send out newsletters in your sleep. With webinars, you have a conversation with your clients, get to them on a deeper level — it's the difference between them giving you their email and spending an hour with you to discuss your latest product in a way that's accessible and educational.
Measuring and Analyzing Client Engagement
Every business looking to improve its marketing and client relations should be following client satisfaction metrics. Use surveys, feedback forms, discussions, and other tools to get people to voice their opinions about their experience with your brand. These sorts of metrics will include information about what products and services they enjoyed, where you fell short, and what your business could be doing better.
Continue to improve any weak points in your marketing approach using these metrics. Since all metrics will be so specific (and also a little opinionated) to each niche market, you can very carefully tailor a campaign that’s designed to win over this particular group of shoppers. Business owners can also get direct feedback about what people from the community are saying about your business and take actionable steps from there to make bigger changes. Eventually, this group of strategies for driving more personalized touchpoints starts shooting up customer satisfaction and loyalty scores and makes it easier to ensure the safety of your market share and sustain long-term project goals.
Enhance your client engagement in legal marketing today:
- Move over to personalized communication today. Clients have needs; let’s tailor our messaging to show them we can help.
- Be like Nike. Just do it! Get your law firm out on established platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook and be social with your clients.
- Blogs and newsletters are great ways to create content that shows your clients you’re an expert. Just be sure to create good, useful, and informative content.
The value of an engaged client is lifelong and multifaceted: clients who are engaged with you are more likely to be referred within their social networks (relative to digital), they’re more willing to stay with you, and they’re more likely to voice their concerns and suggestions (this is a good thing!). To us, this sounds like fast, low-cost wins across reputation management, client service, and business development. So, be more because public interest means public opinion, too!
