The Rainmaker Blog : Law Firm Marketing and Business Development : The Rainmaker Institute : Stephen Fairley : Professional Legal Marketing

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I have posted previously about the need to build trust with potential clients by first building a relationship with them.

There are several marketing channels you can use to build those relationships.

Some, like Twitter, are designed to create a two-way dialog so you can engage your potential client base in online conversations that help you understand their needs better. Others, like legal blogs, help position you as an expert (in the marketing, not the legal, sense).

Each plays a role in your law firm marketing strategy.

But when it comes to reaching out to potential clients on a consistent basis, few law firm marketing tools can match the success rate of newsletters.

However, before you can engage prospective clients through law firm marketing newsletters, you first have to find them.  Which brings us to one of the foundational tools of law firm marketing: list building.

There are list services where you can purchase names, e-mail addresses and home addresses that match your target demographic.  But I don’t recommend them for law firm marketing for one important reason:  the client’s choice in legal counsel rests so much on trust, my opinion is that contacting clients without their permission is suspect. 

However, there are many proven ways to build law firm marketing lists without purchasing names from a service. Below are some of the best:

• Insert a newsletter sign-up form on the most highly trafficked pages of your web site, including a brief summary of the benefits of receiving no-cost, ongoing legal information they can use.
• When you have a speaking engagement, provide a sign-up sheet for your “complimentary” newsletter. This technique has a very high response rate because the audience is already interested in your area of the law. They also see you as an expert, whose legal counsel they could benefit by.
• Partner with other professionals who serve a client base similar to yours. For example, if your area of practice is estate planning, financial planners or brokerage houses might have a target client similar to yours.  Once you locate these “list partners”, you can insert your offer for a free trial newsletter into their outgoing communications to that client base (and they can do the same with yours).  In that way, you are getting permission from the recipient prior to sending your law firm marketing newsletter – which is much more effective than purchasing a list.

In addition to using these proven ways to build your law firm marketing list, be sure to make it visible and easy for recipients of your newsletter to unsubscribe. It does you no good to contact someone regularly that does not want your information -- and making it clear they may cancel at any time sends the message that you care about them and they can trust you.

Adding these list-building tactics to your law firm marketing strategy will help you build a solid, highly responsive list of prospects that have real potential to turn into paying clients.

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