Catherine Bailey represents Bar Marketing

Marketing is becoming ever more vital in the race to win new clients and retain existing ones. Whether you are a law firm or chambers you are seeing your marketplace evolve at an unprecedented rate. New entrants are streaming in and new ways of working are becoming standard practice. You need to be more responsive in your marketing or you will be left behind and your practice may wither. Sounds dramatic, but it’s actually reality.

It is predicted that the changes in the Legal Services Act will see a dramatic reduction in high street practices. Coupled with the Legal Aid changes and the future isn’t looking too rosy for law firms and chambers. However, all is not lost.

Whilst some of the new entrants to the market carry with them established brands and a great deal of marketing money, they do lack legal pedigree. They will be leveraging their existing brand loyalty and trying to convert that to their new legal offerings. Some of them will be successful.

So how on earth do you compete with that?

You have little marketing budget and few properly skilled marketing resources if any at all. However, you do have the flexibility of a small business. You have the ability to innovate without the endless rounds of management meetings and red tape that the larger players have. You are in a very good position provided that you think outside of the established box and are willing to take advantage of the innovations in the market.

Innovations such as LegalRSS and the soon to arrive BarristeRSS will help you market your business and differentiate yourselves from the competition.

What do they offer?

In short they offer you the ability to always be at the forefront of your client’s minds by providing up to date legal news for your website, newsletters and now you client’s mobile devices.

The services include:

• Legal content RSS feeds for your website. With this service there is no need for a new website. Simply refresh your existing site and add up to the minute content by area of law written by legal professionals in a manner your clients will understand and appreciate.
• E-newsletters. This service allows for the quick and easy to building of newsletters using the Legal RSS news feeds. Using predefined templates and images your client news can be ready to publish in minutes.
• Mobile sites for your client. This service puts your legal content directly into your clients hands. By personalising information and pushing it straight to their mobile device you will always be their number one resource for legal information.

LegalRSS and BarristeRSS Newsfeeds

Our range of legal content is written in plain English by our partners at Words of Business and includes the following:

• Private Client
• Commercial Client
• Employment Law
• Personal Injury/Clinical Negligence
• Commercial Property
• Tax, Trust and Probate

Our partners Words for Business provide all the legal content using their own staff, all of whom have relevant expertise, mainly in professional practice. All content is checked for accuracy and rewritten as needed by editorial staff.

Together we keep up to date with legal news and developments and are constantly looking for those stories that will be most interesting for, and have the most impact on, commercial and private clients. Not all new points of law are necessarily that interesting for clients, so we select those that are. We choose the issues that are likely to give you the most impact with your clients.

E-newsletters

Building on the content from the LegalRSS newsfeeds you can very quickly produce newsletters to send, via email, to your clients.

It’s important to remember that e-newsletters need to be inviting to read and not spammy. The higher the degree of relevance to the recipient, the greater the chances of your newsletter being read and the greater the chances of you receiving a positive response.

With that in mind you must make sure that your e-newsletters adhere to the following guidelines:

• Your company name needs to be in the From field – your clients need to be able to see who is emailing them.
• The subject line needs to be relevant. Cryptic subject lines tend to get deleted so keep it simple and relevant so they can instantly see what it’s about.
• Personalise the To field. This should be the recipient’s name not just their email address.
• Remember to include a one click Opt out so that people can easily remove themselves from your mailing list.
• Include a “view in browser” link so that they have the option to look at the full version and forward it to their friends.
• Do include your full contact details. Your newsletter will be viewed with greater credibility and your clients will be able to contact you quicker
• Include some text reminding them how and why they signed up to your list.

Mobile sites

LegalRSS and BarristeRSS Mobile gives firms and chambers the power to provide clients with up to the minute legal news as well as the firm’s own content on their mobile devices. You would be forgiven for thinking that sounds just like a website and therefore can’t be innovative. However, LegalRSS Mobile differs because it is client specific.

Think of it as taking your own firm’s content and then tailoring it specifically for one client. Then add in an RSS news feed specifically on the areas of law relevant to that client and finally brand the site relevant to that client. Imagine how impressed that client would be to have all the information they need (supplied by you) at their fingertips.

If that wasn’t innovative enough, it is possible to create a LegalRSS Mobile site for specific people within an organisation. For example, whilst generic staff within an organisation would receive a range of content, the heads of departments could receive information just on their specialism and would be personalised to them. It’s this kind of innovative marketing that clients respond well to. The clients feel that you have put a great deal of time and effort into producing this information for them. They trust your content and like the relevance. The result is that you gain a higher status as a trusted supplier and thus retain the clients and increase the number of instructions you receive.

But doesn’t it take a great deal of time and expense to do this?

Actually no! Because the LegalRSS Mobile product is easy to use, it means that firms can build and populate their specific client sites in a matter of minutes. It took me just a few minutes to build the Bar Marketing Mobile site. The most difficult bit is deciding what you want the content to be. Provided you keep the end user in mind and then select the content to match their interests you will have a site that is very quick to build, populate and publish. I have separate sites for my PI clients and for my commercial chambers. They see area of law content relevant only to them but also have Bar Marketing common content available.

The versatile nature of the applications means that is can be used across any touch-screen device including iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android and Windows phones.

It should be remembered that LegalRSS Mobile is not a replacement for your website, so you need to be selective as to the content you put on the mobile site. Always keep the end user in mind as regards the content and the amount of text required. The idea is that they have up-to-date legal knowledge supplied by you available to them at any time on the areas of law that are of interest to them.

How to sign up

Law firms wishing to register for LegalRSS newsfeeds, newsletters or mobile sites should visit www.legalrss.co.uk or call 01392 423607. You can download their app from the Apple app store or mobile site from legalrssdemo.legalrss.co.uk, or by scanning the QR code.

Chambers wishing to take advantage of the new BarristeRSS legal feeds, newsletters and mobile sites can do so by contacting Catherine Bailey at Bar Marketing.

Email catherine.bailey@barmarketing.co.uk or call 0771 434 5072