Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing for Law Firms: Let the Fish Swim into Your Net
By Tanner Jones
I
magine a world where going fishing meant taking a net to
the lake and waiting for the fish to swim into it. While that
strategy might not make for an ideal fishing trip, the concept is
ideal for marketing. Inbound marketing for law firms focuses on
making it easy for people to find you and making your marketing
appealing enough for them to convert and contact you when they
are ready to evaluate or make a decision.
Why should your firm care about inbound marketing?
In short, because you are wasting money if you ignore inbound
marketing. HubSpot’s recent report on the State of Inbound
Marketing in 2013 details some of the key data points that
substantiate the importance of inbound marketing.
• Twice as many marketers say inbound marketing delivers
a below average cost per lead compared with outbound
strategies.
• 34 percent of all of the leads generated in 2013 are coming
from inbound marketing sources. Inbound delivers
54 percent more leads into the marketing funnel than
traditional leads generated from outbound.
• 43 percent of marketers generated a customer via their
blog this year, although a blog requires roughly 9 percent
of marketers’ total full-time staff dedications and just 7
percent of their total budget.
In summary, “Inbound marketing produces more, better
quality, cheaper leads.” Who wouldn’t want that?!
So what is inbound marketing for law firms?
Are you unsure of whether or not you’re already using inbound
marketing? If so, you’re not alone; also noted in HubSpot’s study
was that 19 percent of marketers are unsure whether their
marketing activities should be characterized as inbound. Even
Google’s auto Web definition says that “inbound” has “various
meanings depending on the context.”
How does an inbound marketing strategy work? First, attract
people to your website using high quality content. Second,
offering calls to action that match your visitors’ needs helps
to convert them. Third, close your leads and turn visitors into
clients. Lastly, it is important to continually please your clients to
encourage them to bring future legal clients to you – or become
a repeat client when applicable. When these steps are taken, you
don’t have to go out and search for clients. Instead,