Marketing and your personal brand
A personal brand is a powerful thing in today’s highly competitive marketplace, including the legal services space. Some lawyers might take the view that they don’t need a personal brand; their law firm does the marketing and they do the legal work. But what you know – your technical ability – isn’t enough. It’s also who you know and what people know about you that is important. If you want to be a lawyer that is bringing in new work and new clients, a personal brand can help you do just that.
Marketing yourself and developing your personal brand is an important part of career success. It includes marketing yourself to clients, but also encompasses managing how your peers and colleagues perceive you, too. In both cases, you need to know your target audience and what you have to offer them.
Building your personal brand
A good place to start is working out your particular niche. Why should people want to work with you? What can you be the ‘go to’ person for and in what particular market or group of clients or potential clients? What is it that you can offer that others can’t? It might be a specialist skill set, a level of experience, or maybe an approach or working style that you have cultivated. Perhaps it is a combination of these things.
Another aspect of your personal brand to consider is your individual characteristics and values. People like you more if they like what you stand for. Do you support a particular cause or charity? Perhaps you provide pro bono assistance, or volunteer on a board or committee. Maybe you volunteer in your local community. Find something that demonstrates your personal values and showcase those values as part of your personal brand.
Once you have identified and begun developing your personal brand, it’s time to get out there and market yourself. Often, this will overlap with your law firm marketing tasks. Present at client seminars and professional development events that align with your personal brand. Actively participate in networking functions and conferences. Join a committee or professional organisation. Write regular articles for your firm newsletter and keep your online profiles up to date. Many of these activities are easy to share on social media, helping to build your personal brand further still.
How to market yourself and your law firm well
Marketing yourself and your law firm well will take time and effort, so it pays to get expert input where you need it and delegate where you can. There are some aspects of marketing you and your law firm that are best done by you. Only you can build relationships with your clients and referrers. You are the one in control of managing, developing and leveraging your network. Seminars and events are marketing avenues that you need to do personally.
Other marketing tasks, however, are better being outsourced to people who you trust to do them well. Often, these will be the tasks that you would rather not do anyway, and delegating them pays dividends in freeing up your time to focus on legal work and personal marketing. Tasks such as managing your firm newsletter, creating and managing online content, maintaining your website and managing social media can all be delegated. At Lift Legal, we do all of these things for law firms around the country. Your firm could be one of them. We’d love to help you market yourself and your law firm well. Talk to us today.
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