The Lifecycle of a Personal Injury Claim: Marketing

This is the first installment of our series about the lifecycle of personal injury claims, in which we focus on what you can do to get more clients while providing them the best service possible.

When personal injury attorneys seek opportunities to grow their firms, they’ll rightfully examine the many steps in the process of filing claims to look for ways to improve or streamline. But one of the most overlooked steps in the lifecycle of a claim happens before the actual claim even begins: your marketing.

It’s important that firms avoid the mistake of seeing marketing as a separate process from handling cases. In fact, it’s the first step of a claim’s lifecycle. That’s because marketing is what gets clients to reach out to your firm in the first place.

From raising general awareness of your firm to making your firm visible to people who need a personal injury attorney, let’s look at why marketing is essential, and more importantly, what you should do to create successful marketing campaigns.

Raising Brand Awareness

One of the biggest (and most challenging) priorities for every personal injury law firm is raising awareness of their services. This is a long-term endeavor, and the ultimate goal is to become a familiar name in the minds of people in your market, regardless of where they’re at in their “buyer’s journey.”

Pro tip: One of the most effective ways of approaching any marketing campaign is to think of audiences in terms of their “journey” to your firm or, put another way, to think about the stage of the “sales funnel” they’re in. Top-of-funnel audiences are just beginning their search for a lawyer (perhaps they don’t even know they need one yet), while bottom-of-funnel audiences are those who are on the verge of contacting (and hopefully hiring) your firm.

You have several marketing strategies available to raise brand awareness in your market. The strategies you choose will largely depend on your budget. For example, broadcast advertising is typically more expensive than online advertising.

Here are a few of the tools you can use to raise awareness of your brand:

• Television and radio advertising
• Print advertisements in newspapers or magazines
• Billboards or bus advertisements (also referred to as outdoor advertising)
• Blogs, videos, or other informational content on your website that is meant to educate audiences rather than sell them on your specific services
• Online advertising pushing informational content about topics that could be relevant to top-of-funnel audiences (for example, downloadable e-books created by your firm)

Building Trust and Demonstrating Value

Building trust with your audience is an extension of your efforts to raise brand awareness, and you’ll want to make it a key part of your presence online and offline. Any informational content that you provide audiences online helps build trust by demonstrating your expertise on relevant subject matters.

However, you want to make sure that you tell your audience why you are different (and more valuable) that the other firms they might be considering. There are several approaches to do this, including:

• Highlighting any awards or recognitions your attorneys have received
• Sharing the results that you’ve achieved in your previous clients’ cases
• Sharing videos or written testimonials from your previous clients

These strategies are particularly effective on your website, but they can also be incorporated into offline campaigns.

Being Visible (and Top-of-Mind) When the Client Needs a Lawyer

Once a potential client is ready to hire a firm (which means they’re at the bottom of the funnel or the end of the buyer’s journey), you’ll want to be as visible as possible. Many searches for local lawyers happen online. This is why it’s so important to have marketing strategies that increase your online visibility.

Here are a few strategies to make sure you’re the firm people find online when looking for a lawyer:

• Identify relevant search terms and work to rank your site organically for those terms (for help, check out our free SEO guide for law firms)
• Invest in local service ads (paid, pre-screened results that display on the top of Google’s results pages for designated terms)
• Invest in pay-per-click (PPC) ads, which also display near the top of search engines and point searchers to your most relevant page
• Create a Google My Business listing and fill out all available fields as thoroughly as possible so your firm can be visible on Google’s “map packs,” which are listed right below search PPC ads

If you’re unfamiliar with many of the terms and online strategies listed above, that’s okay. Online marketing is a huge topic, and you’ll likely need to do some additional research to become familiar with the many approaches that marketers use.

You can also consider consulting online advertising experts for help executing these tactics. They’re increasingly important for law firms that want to be as visible as possible to potential clients.

Marketing Doesn’t Have to End Once a Client Hires You

Even after you sign a client, you can still use marketing tools to keep them engaged. Consider creating resources you can send a client who recently hired your firm. Those resources can educate them about the personal injury claim process or give them tips of what actions can help or hurt their claim when it’s underway.

Once you’re finished representing a client, you should also stay in touch. For example, we’ve talked about sending former clients holiday cards, but you can also occasionally check in via email to check in. Your former clients can become your most important brand ambassadors and one of the best sources of client referrals.

Let backdocket Help You Throughout the Process

We created backdocket to help small- to mid-sized law firms grow and provide the best service possible. Whether you want to automate helpful reminders to your clients or keep track of your prospects, backdocket can help. Perhaps the best marketing strategy of all is to offer excellent legal representation, and that’s where backdocket comes in. Contact our team today to schedule a free demonstration of our practice management software.