What Law Firms Can Do Now During COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things, including how you manage your law firm. By now, you’ve probably gotten used to this new temporary “normal.” Maybe you have a website banner up, and maybe you’ve created some content. But most law firms are at the point where they’re asking, “Now what?”
Some businesses will hopefully start reopening in a couple of weeks or months, but what can you do now in terms of marketing to get your phone ringing a bit more? It’s all about focusing on the right things and identifying a message that is relevant to your audience. Read on to learn more about what you can do now, during all the challenges COVID-19 is creating.
Address the problems
As an attorney, one of the most important things you do is solve problems—namely, your client’s legal problems. Right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty around the issues of health, family, and even economics, including keeping families healthy, what people should be doing, and how best to protect families in the event of health issues arising.
In fact, there are uncertainties about nearly every field of law.
In Family Law you may be:
- Speaking to parents having different interpretations of social distancing orders.
- Navigating modifications to agreements due to job losses.
- Fielding domestic violence concerns with people trapped in the same house.
In Estate Planning Law you might be:
- Communicating to clients that now is the perfect time to plan to protect their family.
- Relaying the importance of will and trust creation.
- Answering health and personal agent designation questions.
As a Personal Injury Lawyer you are probably navigating:
- Numerous wrongful death claims for nursing homes and other public spaces handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Economic uncertainty in terms of unemployment, job losses, salaries.
The bottom line is, this pandemic has introduced a lot of new legal concerns and heightened others. You can be the go-to source who solves problems for clients, who provides valuable content in these areas. Identifying your message and the problems you can address is the first step to creating relevant digital content that’ll drive more clients to your website and firm.
Create timely and relevant content
Gone are the days of writing out long blog articles about your area of practice. While these can still be helpful, you also have a whole arsenal of tools at your disposal that people are becoming more accustomed to using. You can create content that resonates with your audience, conveys your firm’s message, and helps clients in the process. Consider using mediums like:
- Zoom calls or other video messaging
- Video or audio recordings
- Short blog posts that address particular topics
- Webinars to dive into topics and answer questions
Creating content that is timely and relevant will urge clients to call you either immediately or in the near future. With all these different ways to get your message out, remember that the important thing is to do something rather than nothing. It certainly won’t hurt your firm’s reputation, and could even put you on the map as a resource.
Promote your content
Writing up or recording good content is only half the battle. You need a way to reach out to everyone who is staying at home, and there’s no better way to do that right now than to promote your content through social media and email.
If your firm has a newsletter, send it out to everyone on your list. If you have a piece of content that needs some attention, consider using Facebook ads. With budgets as low as $4 a day, or about a hundred dollars a month, you’ll reach thousands—if not tens of thousands—of people in your key neighborhoods with just that small effort. A good rule of thumb is that for every dollar you spend on creating the content, you should spend $10 to promote it. So, if you spend some time on a blog post or another piece of content, it’s cost-effective to get it in front of as many people as possible.
Your ads should reflect your message in a short, but engaging, way. Keep your ads informative but brief, and be sure to also use your website to promote your content.
Remember your goals
At a time like right now, your goals should be to provide value, offer comfort and peace of mind, and become a thought leader on the ever-changing legal issues raised by this pandemic. Believe it or not, very few people are speaking about them.
You’ve established your COVID-19 response, but now it’s time to get innovative and keep the ball rolling. It’s a great time for someone to provide thoughts on what’s going on in the world and how to navigate various—and complicated—legal issues.
Learn more in the video above.