Law firms rarely receive enough business from a single client to pay all the bills. In the case of personal injury law, you shouldn’t see repeat business. This makes marketing and lead generation essential to your firm’s success. Here are 7 ways to get referrals for your law firm.
Create Referral Networks
Life should be a give and take. If you specialize in estate planning, family law or intellectual property rights disputes, you’re not qualified to handle personal injury cases. Yet you may see clients who are seeking advice regarding trusts due to a family member being left disabled by an accident or faced with a divorce due to the financial and personal stress that can follow a serious injury. Consider referring personal injury cases to Baumgartner law firm. They can then refer any cases that fall under your umbrella to you.
Ask Your Clients to Refer a Friend
The best source of referrals for any service business is word-of-mouth marketing. Attorneys can ask their current and former clients to refer their friends. You shouldn’t do this while you’re handling an active case. However, you can send them thank you cards for their business or seasonal greets with a request that they refer a friend. You could also put a request that they refer their friends on bills and general correspondence.
Upgrade Your Social Media Presence
Create a social media profile for your business. Share content related to your area of expertise. Seek reviews from your clients, and share any praise anyone posts about your law firm. Ask your staff to list the law firm as their employer. Don’t forget to set up a law firm profile on LinkedIn.
Improve Your Local Search Engine Optimization
Many people do online searches when they don’t have an attorney recommended to them by friends or family. You are competing against a million other attorneys when you try to outrank them in general internet searches. However, you can rank well in location based searches. These searches will draw on data in business directories. If the information is conflicting, such as “123 Business Road” and “123 Business Street”, you’ll rank lower in searches for “attorneys near me”.
The next step is making sure your business is properly classified. Choose your most profitable or highest volume niche as your subcategory on the business directory site. Then you’ll come up in searches on sites like Yelp for that type of service.
Seek Online Reviews
Showing up near the top of general internet and business directory search results is essential. However, it is your online rating that will distinguish you from the competition. If you don’t have any online business reviews, you’ll be skipped in favor of the competitor with four stars. Ask your current and former clients to give you positive reviews online.
Create Great Content
We’re assuming you have a business website that’s already optimized to attract clients in your geographic area to the page. The next step is creating great content. If you can create content that answers their most important questions, you’ll demonstrate your competence. Focus on articles that lead into a discussion on when someone should hire an attorney.
Consider Doing Pro Bono Work
If you’re willing to take a few cases for free such as cases referred to you by a charity, you could generate follow up referrals. You can ask the charity to mention the charitable work in their advertising or promotions. You can discuss your charitable work, as well. And these pro bono clients are likely to generate word of mouth referrals.