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Marketing your law firm can seem difficult for a number of reasons. First, you need to have the time. Second, there is the money. Third, you need to find the methods to market it in the first place.

There are many methods that lawyers have found to market their practices that are cost-effective and take little time through the utilization of professionals. There are also ways to market your business yourself that require just a little bit of your time. Combine professional services with your own marketing efforts and you have foolproof and powerful ways to get the word out about your practice.

Here are 50 of those ways to get you started:

1. Have a professional design your law firm website.

2. Your local Chamber of Commerce will open you up to many networking opportunities and give you credibility within your community.

3. Put your friends, clients, family, and others to work for you by giving them a business card to hand out and one to keep for themselves.

4. All of your employees should have their own business cards that state their names, their positions within the firm, and how they can be contacted. Of course, the firm name is included in this. They are likely to hand out the cards and increase exposure.

5. You should have a signature block present in all outgoing e-mail. The e-mail signature should include the firm name, your name, location, and contact information.

6. Talk to your local newspaper about writing an article that applies to the majority, such as the importance of keeping a will or bankruptcy information. The byline should include your firm name and how you can be contacted.

7. You can talk to local reporters about being a legal expert for them. If there is an ongoing court case, ask to offer commentary on the case. If you can put complex legal terms into layman’s terms, you’ll be in business.

8. You can talk to local community colleges or community centers about teaching classes. The classes can be for credits or they can simply be for those wishing to learn how the legal system works.

9. E-mail discussion lists can be used for increased exposure and to show off your legal expertise.

10. If you share your office building with others, you need to make sure they all know who you are and what kind of law practice you have so they know to direct people to the right place.

11. Send holiday cards to everyone you meet so that you can keep the client list on the upswing. Make sure they get them in enough time so that they look at them for a while rather than just a few days and then throw them away.

12. Personalized calendars should be made available at the end of each year to get ready for the new year. Those that stick on a computer monitor or refrigerator magnet calendars work out great.

13. If you are aware of a client’s birthday or anniversary, send them a card.

14. Ask your clients to refer others to you. Any time a client is grateful for the services you have provided, hand them business cards and tell them that you would love to provide your services to anyone else they know of who needs the assistance.

15. Send a news clip of a case to another professional and tell them you thought they would find that of interest. Attach your card. You should do this at least twice per week.

16. Your grocery store, beauty salon, community center, church, gym, and local barber may have bulletin boards available where you can pin up your business card.

17. Advertise in football programs and other event programs. Place ads in local yearbooks, local penny savers, church newsletters, and all sorts of places.

18. Make sure that everyone within the organizations you are involved with know you are an attorney and what kind.

19. Check to see if your local bar association has a speaker’s bureau. If not, you can talk to them about starting one.

20. Senior centers and community groups are great places to hold small seminars.

21. Send congratulatory notes to those in the news who have achieved great things.

22. Donate magazines from your waiting room to nursing homes, jails, schools, and other places that may need them. Drop off your business card and keep the address label on them.

23. Your local library would love to have outdated law books, even if they have bookplates with your name on them.

24. Leave your business card at restaurants and at other service places you visit regularly.

25. Get involved with the community.

26. Speak at the local high school about anything related to the law. The students and the teachers could become clients. Plus, you may encourage a student to one day enter law school.

27. Make sure you frequently network with other attorneys so that you are able to refer clients to one another. Make sure these are attorneys that practice in other areas.

28. Always remind your clients that you practice in other areas as well.

29. Remind your clients that they can contact you first any time they have a legal matter come about.

30. If you have a client who is a business owner, patronize that business if possible. Doing so reminds them that you are always there.

31. Make sure you have plenty of press releases written. You can submit them to local newspapers, but also have them submitted to online press release directories so they make their way into the online news and increase your exposure even more.

32. Make sure clients understand the services that you provide. The more they know, the better referral sources they will be.

33. Keep track of important dates for clients and send them reminders.

34. Congratulate clients on life events, such as marriage or a new baby in the family.

35. Make sure your firm employees, family, friends, and anyone close to you knows what you do and what your client base is like.

36. Come up with ideas for your business clients. Even if they don’t take them, they know you have their best interest at heart.

37. Choose a day of the week to write down your marketing goals for that week. Monday is a good day and at least 5 activities should be chosen to reach those goals.

38. People don’t have a lot of time to listen to what you do within your practice, but they can spare at least 30 seconds. Write down a 30 second description and memorize it.

39. Make a list of your 10 newest clients and your 10 best clients. Survey them so you know why they came to your firm. That way you can increase your marketing efforts based upon their answers.

40. Make a list of at least 10 individuals or businesses you would like to acquire as clients. Find a way in which you can get their attention.

41. Make sure you network as much as possible.

42. Always participate in enjoyable activities that can gain you more business. Doing things you enjoy means giving it your best effort.

43. Don’t make mention of the size of your firm. The reason is because individuals choose small firms for a reason. There are also those that choose large firms for specific reasons.

44. Utilize free directories and listings in both print and the Internet.

45. Always have meetings with the other lawyers in your firm just to discuss how to better benefit clients and cross sell services.

46. Other lawyers will enjoy receiving an e-mail newsletter from you about your practice. This is a great way to gain referrals from attorneys practicing in other areas. Clients may also like to receive an informational e-mail newsletter from you.

47. Joining the local trial lawyers association can gain you the exposure that you need and get your name out there.

48. Give clients a free gift during their first visit. Small brief cases or other items that can hold their important paperwork will be greatly appreciated.

49. Give out cards with information on them, such as “what to do if you are injured due to no fault of your own” or “what to do if you are in a car accident.”

50. Give away pens and key chains to friends, family, clients, and others that you encounter. Giving them something useful means they will be reminded of you every time they use it.

It’s a union that seems to be made in Cyber Heaven: Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook have joined together in hopes that Microsoft can give Google a run for their money with their Bing search engine.

Bing has been gaining steam in recent times. Now, users can “like,” comment, and choose for their search engine activities to be posted on Facebook and Twitter. In other words, users are able to show their friends more of what they are doing on the Internet and this gives the social networks more information about what each of their users like so that they can better target advertising. It’s a win/win for all involved.

Facebook does need such a winning situation since General Motors pulled as advertisers on the site. This amounted to a $10 million loss and a lot of questions as to whether or not the social networking giant is, in fact, the best place to for advertising to a user base that is not in a “spending money” mindset.

This could change for Facebook thanks to the new Bing Interface.

The new interface also allows Bing to utilize information gathered from social network use to alter the way search results are delivered. The integrated sidebar focuses on a person’s search queries, on the people within the social circles of the user, and what each user things of particular websites.

For instance, a user performs a search for your law firm. The “social sidebar” will show you a list of people you know or may know, combined with your typical search results. What this does is allow you to interact with individuals who have liked your Facebook page or who you have interacted with in some way. It also allows the user to ask their friends questions about the topic they are searching.

What does all of this mean for Google?

Google does have their Google+ social network. They standalone and this could play against them. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users worldwide, while Google has not opened Google+ so widely. This means that Microsoft’s new partnerships could put Google at a disadvantage. They do not work with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the other popular social networking websites on the Internet.

What Microsoft’s move could do is benefit the user experience and it could very well give Google a run for it, according to some analysts. Bing has been the underdog since it was first shown to the public in 2009. Being allows on the same team as the social networking giants could be exactly what Microsoft needs to show Bing to the world.

So what does this alliance mean to you?

First, we all know that Google is going to come back with a counterattack. It is going to be interesting to see what they do and how they do it. It is also going to be interesting to see if Facebook can break through the mobile advertising barrier. Approximately half of its users use its mobile application to access the site, but their advertising is limited on the mobile app. How are they going to address this? It’s just a matter of time before they do.

While all of these developments are taking place, it is important that you monitor them so that you can determine your best move when it comes to advertising your law site. The positive search experience of the new Microsoft and social networking alliance could ultimately increase your exposure and give users a more positive experience when interacting with you in the online world.

As a law firm, you have probably been solicited by the local Yellow Pages to list in the print version of their telephone book or on their website. If so, you have probably wrestled with whether or not listing in the online or offline versions of the Yellow Pages is what you need to do to promote the legal services that you offer.

Know that if you have wondered, you are not alone.

A lot of discussion has taken place online and within businesses as to what the true value of Yellow Page advertising is. In fact, you can do a simple Google search and find online conversations that have taken place. This can help shed even more light on the debate that has been plaguing the advertising world for a while.

Yes, the Yellow Pages may benefit some types of businesses more than others, but has not always been a premier way to advertise legal services. In fact, there are many other and more effective ways to market a law firm website. These ways are more powerful than a simple ad filled with guarantees that are not backed up with supporting information.

The Cost

One area you are looking at when it comes to advertising in the Yellow Pages is the cost. Every business wants to save money in order to preserve their bottom line. When it comes to cost, the Yellow Pages are right out expensive. In the end, you may be paying a lot of money for something that people overlook. An ad is not like public relations where you can be quoted in the press. You also have a limited amount of space in an ad to talk about what is being offered. This can cause the ad to look like everyone else’s.

For the cost of a Yellow Pages ad or listing, you can reach a much larger audience through other business development tools such as press releases, a website, a blog, and other tools that utilize methods that optimize them for search engines. Rather than getting lost in a sea of lawyers in a book or in a list on the online version of the Yellow Pages, you can stand out in search engine results. Your website can become more noticeable. In fact, think about how you find goods and services on the Internet and apply that to how you market your own business.

Who Is Using The Phonebook Anyway?

In recent years, many telephone companies are making it optional for customers to receive printed directories. The reason is because the Internet has become the source for contact information and most people just place their phonebooks in a drawer somewhere and forget about them.

The Internet is faster than leafing through the pages of the telephone directory and the information tends to be more up-to-date and more in-depth. A person can also acquire more information about a law firm by seeing their website versus making guesses based upon a small ad. The only people really using telephone books are those that don’t have computers or they are simply not yet comfortable enough to use the Internet to find what they are looking for. This population is very small.

Just think of the last time you looked up information in a phonebook. It may have been a while. Then again, it may not have been that long ago. Take a look at your own habits, but also keep in mind that the majority turns to the Internet first for contact details and in-depth information that tells them why they need to utilize the services of a specific business. Everything you do to market your business online works hand-in-hand to give you the exposure you deserve. The Yellow Pages, however, tend to standalone and are hardly utilized when compared to finding information on Google, Bing, or other search engines.

Lawyers are always looking for ways to promote their law firms, making the online press release a very cost-effective tool to get a lot of attention.

A press release that is well-developed and submitted to the proper outlets on the Internet can help your firm gain the recognition that it deserves through the traditional news media. Once published, your news release has the ability to show up in the news search results of Google News and will appear in search engine results. Your press release can also be linked to on your website, blogs, and many directories that will enable you to increase your credibility and your exposure.

Basically with a press release, you are creating news. Other media outlets can take a press release and quote from it, refer to it, or they may choose to post it verbatim in one of their own online or offline publications. In other words, a quality press release is a great way for media outlets to reference your firm.

Readers put a lot more faith in a press release than they do a standard advertisement because there is more information included. If you state in an advertisement that you are a “premier law firm,” you do not have the space to back that up. In a press release, you do. In the end, ads and press releases can complement one another in order to create a bigger picture that people are more likely to trust.

But some lawyers feel that a topic is hard to come up with.

The fact is, you can have your press release written about an achievement within your law firm, a new employee joining the staff, a new practice area that has been added, a new website, a new blog, and so much more. You can also have your press release cover:

• Recent legislative changes, while also utilizing the opportunity to explain the changes in layman’s terms. People want to know how a legislative change is going to affect them, so it is important to make sure that question is answered. Cover the pros and cons of the changes in order to show the public your legal expertise.
• Other legal happenings within the news, such as a unique case and how it influenced the outcomes of cases like it. There are many cases that set a precedent and it is good for the public to know what that is and how it could affect them if they are in a similar situation or ever find themselves in a similar situation.

But the press release won’t mean much if it isn’t well-written.

If a press release doesn’t read like a news item, then it won’t be respected as such. Too much technical jargon can be a turnoff and so can information overload. No more than two clear points should be made and too much shouldn’t be said about each point or the message is going to seem a bit watered down. There should be a strong opening, a strong quote from someone within the firm, and the practice areas do need to be emphasized. Search Engine Optimization techniques must also be used within the press release so that it will rank well within search engine results. The better it ranks, the more people will see it.

In the end, you will find that a professionally written press release is a cost-effective and to-the-point method of promoting your law firm to potential clients and getting a message out to the public. You gain exposure, you generate links to your website, and you gain credibility. All of this can happen with just one release, but can yield even better results and allow you to generate even more links and name recognition when you have a press release created every time you have a new law to comment on, have accomplished something, and for everything newsworthy that you can make relevant to your firm. Pushing your name into the media as much as possible can put you a step ahead of the competition.

The whole point behind having a website is so potential clients can contact you. If that wasn’t the point, you’d be providing individuals with free information and that is it. Nothing else would happen.

The whole reason behind providing the public with valuable information on the website is to show your legal expertise and to also show potential clients that you know what they’re going through and you can produce a strategy for them that can ultimately lead to the most favorable outcome. This text is put in place to let them know they can contact you and talk to you. It then informs them of how they can contact you. This is where your contact page comes in. Pointing people to your contact form is just as important as telling them your telephone number.

Why People Use Contact Forms

Potential clients like to have options. If you have online chat capability, they may want to talk to you that way. Then again, they may choose traditional telephone interaction. The contact form, however, is used for various reasons. For instance, a parent may be home with the kids and, sometimes, it can be almost impossible to have a telephone conversation with kids interrupting and making a lot of noise. Then again, a person who is at work may not be able to use the phone, so this is the easiest way for them to initiate contact. The contact form also adds to the confidentiality of initiating contact because they may not want people in the immediate area to hear their business.

Another reason why people use contact forms is to see which attorney will respond to them first. It can sometimes be difficult to choose an attorney, so some individuals use this as a way to help them make their choice. Plus, there is the fact that many people work during your business hours, so calling you may mean getting your answering machine and some people are uncomfortable with leaving voice messages. Filling out the form gives them more time to construct their message than an answering machine does.

The Anatomy Of Your Law Firm Contact Form

The form should be inviting, but it should also be as simple as possible. You do not want to discourage someone from filling out the form because it looks overly complicated. Unfortunately, someone can land on your page and leave after seeing a complicated form as opposed to proceeding to another page on the site.

It is suggested that your form has the standard name, telephone number, and/or email address fields. You may also have a comments or questions box that will enable the individual to tell you a little something about their case, if they choose to do so.

Law Firm Website Design

It is ideal to have a lot of useful content on your website for each practice area. This allows your website to be search engine optimized, while also providing visitors with information that is relevant to their legal situation. That information should not be repetitive (such as repeating practice areas on every page) and should be void of information that could entice them to leave before opting to contact you.

The page has to focus on encouraging the visitor to make contact with your firm. There should be links on each practice area page, blog entry, and any other area of the site where there is information that could entice the visitor to fill out the contact form. The telephone number should be visible on every page and the visitor needs to know that you will get back to them when they make contact with you. They also need to know that any interaction with you is confidential. It’s all about building trust so that they will make contact with you.

Here are 50 tips compiled by attorney Terry Berger of West­minster, Md. Many came from the ABA’s Solosez discussion group, which boasts more than 2,000 solo and small-firm lawyers as members.

1. Join your local chamber of commerce. It’s great for networking and community credibility.

2. Get a unique business card and hand it out freely.

3. Give a client or other nonlawyer contact at least two cards—one to keep and another to give away.

4. Give every employee his or her own business cards with name, title and e-mail address, along with the name of the law firm. People are more likely to hand out cards with their own names on them.

5. Offer to write an article for your local paper on a topic such as why everyone should have a will or questions to ask a contractor. Make sure the byline includes the name of your firm and, if possible, your e-mail address.

6. Add a signature block to your outgoing e-mail that includes your name, firm name (or simply attorney at law) city, state and phone number.

7. Try to get a local reporter to use you as a legal expert. Send an e-mail offering commentary on a court case. Learn to translate legalese into English and reporters will love you.

8. Join e-mail discussion lists at the local and state bar level, as well as the ABA’s Solosez group. (You don’t need to be an ABA member to join Solosez.)

9. Apply to teach at a local community college, community center or similar venue. This could be a for-credit course or a one-day course on your area of legal expertise.

10. Make sure everyone in your office building knows who you are, that you’re a lawyer and what type of law you practice.

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