How can legal firms attain growth through peer referrals and reviews?
Saffron Edge
Sep 14, 2021
7 min read
Law firms should not neglect the importance of online reviews. These reviews or feedbacks can encourage or discourage a prospect from doing business with you. According to the survey conducted by Statista in 2020, in the USA, 17% of the respondents said that they use an online search engine to find an attorney. Hence, online reviews of legal firms can allow users to choose which firms they can work with.
As per the Google Consumer Surveys, 27.6% of the respondents read Google reviews of legal firms before approaching them. 18.4% of the respondents said they would consider reviews of a law firm available anywhere on the internet apart from Google. Therefore online reviews have become an extremely crucial factor in determining the success of a legal firm. Other review platforms like Yelp, Yahoo, etc., are also important. Hence, if a law firm ranks higher on search engine page results, it must ensure excellent ratings or reviews.
Why are online reviews crucial for your legal business?
1. Reviews bring credibility to your firm
Regardless of how your law firm generates clients or new cases, your brand credibility and authority remain among the most crucial factors that help you develop long-term benefits. Therefore, you need to establish a polished online reputation for your legal firm. Before analyzing your final work, potential clients check your online reputation. You can alter the first impression they make of your firm by establishing an excellent online reputation. You can maximize the potential of these impressions by maintaining online reviews. As an attorney, you have to appear innovative, robust, and reputed. Online reviews can help you achieve so.
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2. Confirms your legal expertise
The legal business is a competitive space. Hence, it can be highly complicated for a new law firm to attract high-value audiences. Today, several legal firms invest in various advertising techniques to build their reputation, spread word of mouth, and gain more business. However, in the internet era, there are affordable ways to showcase your legal expertise. If a legal firm implements a sophisticated online reputation strategy, it can showcase its unique expertise to targeted audiences. Boosting online reviews can be a robust way of building your brand name in the market. An excellent online reputation can act as a powerful tool for an online legal firm to speak out its success stories. If you have an online business, there are huge chances that your clients are already posting their experiences. It can be on different social media websites or search engines like Google. With a forward-thinking approach, your firm can encourage client conversions over the internet through online reviews. Your previous clients can narrate the positive experiences when they hired you for a particular legal niche. All this will allow new prospects to know more about you; hence, it will help you showcase your legal expertise.
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3. It gives you an advantage over your competitors
If your law firm can develop a professional way of encouraging clients to upload their positive reviews, you can beat your competitors. Showing off successful cases can prove an effective way of establishing your superiority over your competitors. You can develop email marketing tactics, social media message campaigns, personalized emails, etc., to encourage previous clients to drop their reviews. You have to request them, don't make them feel pressured! Remember: asking for a review should not sound like a marketing plan! To make the process seamless, you can create a separate webpage for reviews or ask them to write a review on search engines directly. Just provide them the link and guide them on how they can drop feedback. You can also explore other avenues like Facebook reviews, LinkedIn reviews, etc. However, you must encourage online reviews on Google because Google reviews have the most significant influence on new clients.How can your firm get more reviews?
Why are Referrals crucial for your law firm?-
Quickly build relationships with other clients.
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Promote your victories.
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Credibility & authority
How Do Law Firms generate client referrals?
Prioritize Key Referral Sources
Prioritizing the best referral sources is a critical element of business development. You need to focus on attorneys who are bringing high-value clients to your law firm. You need not focus on attorneys with the most cases; you should concentrate on lawyers bringing the best cases. Once you start recognizing these critical aspects, you can analyze the funnels. You must evaluate funnels that help you to capture leads. If you can realize these referrals, you can spend time and resources on them. You might end up getting better results than before.Schedule Meetups Efficiently
As discussed in the previous sections, conferences and meetups are great to establish brand authority and credibility. However, such networking events are great for building referrals. You can make the most out of these events by getting aware of your target clients or peers. The value you get from these events depends upon you. Once you are aware of your target peers attending the event, you can gain valuable returns.Take Up Pro Bono Cases
Pro Bono cases are where the lawyer provides their services to a person without expecting any return from them. Pro Bono cases are often seen as community work where lawyers tend to help others. However, offering Pro Bono services can help a law firm drive more contacts, leads, or recognition.
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Start Automating Your Newsletters
Once you start automating your newsletters, you will be able to keep in touch with your clients, business partners, and attorneys. It's a great way to help your business scale further. You can send a newsletter via email, or you can send it in a physical form.- Benefits to Email Newsletters - Email newsletters are very budget-friendly; they are highly scalable too. Once you develop a template for your email campaign, you can smoothly pitch in your law firm's blogs, case studies, submission forms, etc.
- Benefits to Physical Newsletters - Many people observe the numerous advantages of email newsletters. However, there are some significant advantages of using physical newsletters. Many email newsletters go unnoticed, in the bin, or end up cluttering themselves among hundreds of other emails. The best part about using a physical newsletter is that it allows you to stand apart from the crowd.
Conclusion
The legal industry is highly competitive; therefore, you need strategic ways to gain new clients. You need a robust client acquisition strategy through which you can keep your business alive. If you are a legal firm, you might be aware of the exponential rise in searches for online legal-related queries for attorneys. If you want to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy for your law firm, contact us today!Subscribe to our newsletter
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