Let’s face it, your marketing tactics from 5 years ago probably aren’t hitting all their marks like they used to. That’s probably no reflection on you or your practice but just the harsh reality that over time, markets change. This is why every few years reevaluating your brand is vital to your firm’s growth, especially in this Covid-19 era where you must make sure to stand out in the crowd. Take a look at these seven tips that can spruce up your brand.
Get To Know CBI
The Continuous Brand Improvement (CBI) Process is a very simple methodology that is all about continuous improvement in marketing to help you achieve a better return on your investment in marketing. This form of quality management focuses on making small incremental improvements to a process, rather than trying to achieve major changes at one time. Continuous improvement can be used to achieve goals such as increasing the accuracy of targeting, improving product or service quality, increasing customer satisfaction, or providing higher quality leads to the sales force. This process is beneficial for both businesses and law firms alike. We recommend taking a look at how this process works deeper and can benefit your firm’s growth.
Find Your Voice/Reevaluate Your Voice
The easiest way to establish your brand’s voice is to ask yourself, “If my brand was a person, how would I describe its personality?” Understanding what you want your brand to say is key to rebranding and marketing your firm. When finding your voice you should dive deeper into the emotion of your brand. For instance, as an immigration attorney, you might want your firm to be representative of the people you are serving, but if you were to dive deeper into the personality of your brand, you will see that you are serving the emotion of the case and not just the people.
Example: “The family law firm” vs “A firm that reunites families.” Look at how these two phrases say the same thing but the use of an action word creates a feeling that resonates more. Try utilizing feelings and emotions to appeal to more people. Most clients want to know that their attorney has their best interest at heart and this is a way to emulate that.
Your brand voice must not change across different channels or throughout the life cycle of your firm. Allow your branding to grow and adjust slightly to your audience if you must. However, your brand voice should carry a familiar quality to it that clients will recognize.
Set Brand Guidelines
Once you’ve re-established what the core of your brand is, it is important to set guidelines that ensure your voice remains consistent throughout everything you do. Think about how they would respond to you if you talked to them. What would your brand sound like in a conversation? What would their text messages look like? These are essential to establishing branding guidelines. Branding guidelines like this should be comprehensive and widely distributed throughout your company and beyond. Your brand guidelines should be understood throughout your entire organization. The easiest way to accomplish this is by creating a brand book or a brand identity guide that can easily be shared internally.
A brand identity guide should include your logo and the different ways it should be used and viewed, including color variations, other design elements, your firm’s vision, and mission statements, and the origin story of the firm. It should be a comprehensive guide that outlines the heart of your brand.
Communication with your audience is also part of your branding, to improve your brand’s strength, your words must resonate with who’s listening.
Get To Know Your Audience
The most important aspect of branding, knowing who your audience is. Without proper knowledge of your target audience, you will not be able to market to them effectively. You want your potential clientele to trust you and value your work simply by looking up your firm online or by seeing your advertisements. Understanding your target audience requires deep research and a lot of time and effort. An important rule of thumb for getting to know your audience is by taking the proper time to think, live, and function like them. This will give you the insight you need on how to market to them. Focus groups, online research, joining forums, and submerging yourself in their culture are all ways to better understand your audience.
Could you imagine marketing your firm to the wrong audience? Not only could it cost you revenue but it can also damage your reputation. You must take the time to pinpoint your audience and their ever-changing trends,
Revamp Your Marketing Material
Once you’ve taken the time to set your brand guidelines, now it’s time to put them into a tangible format to share with your target audience. Your website, brochures, business cards, presentation slides, signage, videos, social media, etc are all types of tangible marketing materials that will need to be revamped to match your new brand aesthetic. This isn’t about just placing your logo on something and calling it new, there’s so much more to it. Your marketing materials represent your client’s experience with your firm so make sure your brand is represented consistently and effectively across all boards.
Revamp Your Website
Your website is also considered to be a marketing material that needs to adhere to your new brand guidelines. As a rule of thumb, you want all of your materials to reflect the new branding, so there is no confusion from media to medium. Your website is a crucial part of your brand. It holds all of your talking points, reviews, services, and prices. Your website should act as a talking piece for your firm. This way if your potential client can not reach you for information they can still get a gist of what you have to offer. Not every attorney has the know-how to create an effective website so do not feel hesitant to outsource this task. Outsourcing your website redesign is a great way to go about this because it saves you time and you will receive a top-notch site.
Attaching a blog to your site will also help to create a more user-friendly interface. By blogging your experiences or tips that can help potential clients, they will see that you not only care about making a profit off of them but also strive to educate them.
Remember it’s always important to update the information on your site to reflect new projects, promotions, and other vital business information. Keeping your website up to date with all of the happenings of your firm will establish more credibility and show that your firm is dedicated to getting results.
Utilize Social Media
A quick and efficient way to show that your firm is hard at work is by utilizing social media. Sometimes social media doesn’t make sense for what you do and that’s ok, so take the time to research what apps will reach your audience and benefit your firm. Some businesses make it a point to have an account on every social media app, whether they use the app or not, just so they can retain their name and branding. It would be quite unfortunate to lose potential clientele because they searched the wrong firm on Instagram or Facebook. This is why consistent branding and content management are good for law firms.
Our society operates at a fast pace track where everything needs to be easily accessible, your social media presence can be just that.
Don’t let the idea of re-branding become so daunting that you stray away from it. To be successful in your firm, you have to adapt to the ever-changing times. If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of re-branding, take a moment to recuperate and then jump back into it with fresh eyes. Sprucing up your brand could be a game-changer for your firm and create more revenue than you could have ever imagined.
