How to Get Publicity for Your Law Firm
At The Rainmaker Institute, we mainly serve solo practitioners and small law firms that don’t have a lot of money to invest in marketing, so we are always mindful of using law firm marketing strategies that help get the word out about your firm without breaking the bank.
You’ll notice that I did not title this post, “How to Get FREE Publicity for Your Law Firm,” because publicity is really not free – it does take an investment in time for you and your staff. But it is free in terms of no cash outlay.
So if you can commit the time, generating publicity for your firm is one of the best things you can do to create awareness and attract new clients. Here’s how:
Be an expert. Not in the legal sense, but in the marketing sense. The media flock to experts. They put them on the covers of magazines; you see the experts quoted day and night on network news programs. Experts have columns in the newspaper. They are sought after for their commentary and background and the media wants to go to experts as soon as there’s a breaking news story.
Create a targeted media list. Target specific media outlets very narrowly. Don’t go after all of them out there because if you’re pitching your message to 5 or 700 media outlets, you’re going to have to go out there with a one-size-fits-all message and that’s not the way to do it. Media people don’t want the same story that everyone else has. Start by narrowly creating a list of targeted media outlets --your top 25 media hit list. For those of you who only do business in your own community or in a particular region, you might only have a media hit list with 10 media outlets on it. That just makes your job easier, because it’s all about creating relationships, and if you only have 10 media outlets on your list, that’s very doable. You can form relationships with 10 or 15 people. You can’t form them with 300. So target very narrowly.
Target trade publications. If most of your clients are in a particular industry – or you want to build a client base in a particular industry -- you want to get into the trade publications in that particular industry. Many of you have business journals or business magazines in your own community and they frequently quote attorneys and do stories on legal issues, so add those to the list as well.
Find the reporters. Sign up for a Google Alert to get emailed articles, websites, columns and blogs who are writing on your area of expertise or focus. This is a great way to find out who is out there writing about your topics. If you do a Google Alert, Google will do all the heavy lifting for you. If you’re trying to get into magazines, pay particular attention to the column in front of the magazine. It’s usually written by the editor. That will tip you off to all kinds of issues that they think are important.
Let’s say you’re trying to get on a National Public Radio program. Go to the NPR website and use the search box at the top to plug in your topic and it will bring up a list of programs that NPR has featured on that topic. Many of those programs are archived right at the website.
The smarter you are about the publication you’re pitching, the better you’re going to pitch and the more publicity you’re going to get. Your job is to help make a journalist’s job easy. Once you’re familiar with their publication or program, you can offer story ideas that are a perfect fit.
Identify emerging trends. A great way to make a journalist’s job easy is to tip them off to emerging trends. The media relies on really good sources to tip them off to emerging trends that they can write about. So if you’re starting to see emerging trends in a certain industry and you think it would make a great story and we haven’t seen a lot written about it, tip off a reporter on your media hit list to that trend.
Offer background information. Newspapers don’t want only one person quoted in the whole story, so if you can hand contact information and names to a reporter who’s interested in your story idea, you’ve just positioned yourself as a golden source.
Write letters to the editor. There are two types of letters that editors love to print. The first one is a letter that comments directly on a story they just ran in their publication. The second kind of letter they love to publish are letters that come down very hard on one side of a controversial topic. The media loves controversy, and if you have a strong opinion on a controversial law that they might be passing in your community or a controversial topic in your industry, write a letter to the editor about it.
Conduct a survey. The media loves surveys and the great thing about surveys is that they don’t have to be scientific. Now if you’re trying to get into the Harvard Business Review, they will ask if your survey is scientific. But if you’re trying to get into your local daily paper, they probably don’t care if it’s scientific. For those of you who speak to audiences, slip a simple five or six question survey into the handout and have the audience fill out the survey before or as they’re leaving. Or post a poll on Facebook or your website on a current topic of interest and publish those results.
Build reciprocal links. If you find an influential blogger who you want to get in front of, and Google Alert has told you that they’ve written about your topic of expertise, you can jump over to their blog and post a comment. That comment will give you a link back to your own website and it will position you as an expert.
Publicity isn’t free. It takes an investment of time to build those relationships. But the payoff for your firm can be invaluable.
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Upcoming Law Firm Marketing Boot Camps: Get In On the Action This Summer!
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