Let’s define the strategy of preeminence before we even go any further into this. It is essentially being the superior choice within your market. It attracts clients to your law firm, eager to hire you rather than your competition.
Don’t you want potential clients to feel like your firm is there to help them and not sell them? When your law firm is perceived as the authority it naturally draws clients in and they don’t feel like they are being sold anything. They truly feel that your firm is there to help them – because they see you as the leader.
Once you get on the path to preeminence and authority domination, you will never have to worry about where your next case is going to come from. You will never have to worry about what marketing strategies are losing you money and which ones are barely delivering a ROI. Your business grows exponentially and the financial reward is an added bonus.
So, How Does YOUR Law Firm Get Preeminence in YOUR Market?
Preeminence comes when you completely change the strategy and focus of your business growth. You have to see and position your firm as the local authority in your market. Not only do you need to appear to be the top dog, but you also have to believe it, feel it, and live it daily. This attitude will help you to position your law firm as the most reputable and trusted option in the eyes of anyone seeking legal help within your market.
You also have to love what you do. The business is going to come, the money will follow, and the growth will be rapid. When clients come into contact with your firm they need to sense you have a genuine interest in helping them, personally. When they sense that you care more, they will engage with your firm because they will feel you are a far better choice than any other law firm out there.
It Starts With Genuine Communication
Preeminent law firms are those that are trusted, mainly because they have established themselves as the authority online. When a potential client performs a search in Google and they see one firm occupying the top real estate it is automatically viewed as the best option.
Now, when you combine top Google rankings with authority placements and mentions on some of the largest and most trusted news and media websites, what do you get? When a potential clients sees that you have the search results covered as well as major media exposure they not only feel like they already know you, but they completely trust you before they even speak to you. The power of a digital presence is unlike anything else that you can do to brand your firm.
• How do you get potential clients to feel like they know you before they even meet you?
• How do you get them to feel as if they already have a personal connection to you?
The answer is simple: Personal Branding.
Take a look in your local market for a moment. Chances are that the other law firms that you compete with have absolutely no persona in your market. If you simply step outside the box and work on your personal branding the impact will be substantial.
We have single handedly helped law firms grow from one and two man operations to huge firms that had to change office locations multiple times to accommodate their size as they grew.
Very few law firms understand how to do this correctly. They believe that their degrees and accreditations are enough that cases and clients are magically going to call their firm and hire them. We live in a digital age, where people instantly turn to the Internet when they want to look up information or attempt to solve a problem.
Now, let’s assume that your law firm was in Los Angeles and you practiced criminal defense. What would happen if someone in the Los Angeles area went to Google and typed in “criminal defense attorney Los Angeles” – would your law firm show up? If you aren’t at the top position find your firm in the search results and ask yourself these questions:
1. If I were the consumer looking to hire a law firm would I click on this listing that is down below with hundreds of other search results?
2. Why would they click on my website rather than one of the top search results?
3. Will they feel confident about hiring my firm seeing as we aren’t ranking on top and viewed as an authority in our local market?
Having a digital presence that makes your firm desirable automatically results in consumers taking action.
So, how do you get your firm to that point?
Attract Authority
Many law firms feel that in order to sign a client they need to overwhelm them with information and statistics, but that is not the case at all. Trying too hard to “sell” or impress a potential client will only push them away.
The best way to ”sell” is to not sell at all! When someone can take the information available to them and make a decision whether or not they want to hire your firm or not, it is always going to result in a higher quality client. These types of clients are less maintenance and they are hiring your firm because they truly believe that you are the best choice. They didn’t base their decision on a fancy sales pitch.
Ways to Make The Decision Easier For Potential Clients
1. Rank on top of the organic Google search results
There is nothing more powerful than showing up on the top of Google’s organic search results. This instantly gives your law firm major credibility and a potential client is automatically going to believe in his or her mind that your firm is the best.
Complete domination is key, ranking on top for several keywords that pertain to your location as well as the areas of law that your firm practices. If a client is searching a generic term like “lawyer in (your location)” as well as “personal injury lawyer (your location)” and sees that your firm is listed on top for both they are going to instantly see you as the best choice. It is human nature to see impressive search results and automatically associate them with being the best. There is a reason why the majority of Google searchers never navigate past the first page, and why the majority of clicks go to the top three results. Naturally, we want the best, or at least what we assume is the best!
2. Compliment your organic rankings with paid search rankings
While organic search rankings deliver an incredible value it is also a good idea to occupy the top of the paid results as well. Implementing a PPC campaign into your marketing effort is a way to make sure that you completely own the top of the Google search results.
There is going to be a small percentage of individuals that gravitate towards the paid results – after all they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t receive a large percentage of clicks. By dominating the organic as well as paid results it ensures that your firm will receive the majority of search traffic from both the organic and paid channels. When you are just getting started you can focus on organic rankings, but once the revenue and growth is on the rise you need to ride the wave and keep up with the exponential growth and allocate advertising funds toward pay per click marketing. It will actually
3. Build authority through PR
Public Relations outreach is very effective for helping you to build that authority and image as the best choice. When we take on a brand new client for our law firm SEO services, the very first thing we do is syndicate a news worthy press release throughout network of journalists and media contacts. This gets picked up by some of the largest news media outlets, including ABC, Fox News, CNBS, and others. How do you think prospective clients would view a local firm that received press in these major news outlets? Are these outlets currently featuring your competition? The answer is most likely no.
This media trust can also be leveraged on your website as well. A simple “As Seen On” section complete with logos from the major news outlets that featured your firm builds instant credibility and a potential client is going to be more comfortable picking up the phone and calling your firm or submitting your consultation request form after seeing them. These are outlets that every consumer interacts with almost daily, so the familiarity factor combines with the trust and authority factor to make them completely comfortable.
4. Leverage media placements for branding and link building
Being features on huge websites such as The Huffington Post, Business Insider, and Inc are great for what we just discussed above, public relations, but they also help to enhance the SEO effort. Links from these types of major authority websites are virtually priceless. They are the links that your competitors would love to get but they have no idea how to get them. They are the links that every SEO company will tell you they can get, but none of them can deliver them.
Law Firm Authority can get you those links using our strategic outreach, and these are the types of links that help to push your law firm to the top of the Google search results. A single link from an authority source such as The Huffington Post is worth more than thousands of low quality links that the other SEO companies are building.
As SEO switches gears and more emphasis is place on actual PR and natural link building rather than spammy keyword heavy anchor text, these placements become extremely valuable. Automated software isn’t placing these links all over and a team of link builders isn’t building them. They are earned and placed by the media outlet. Leveraging a piece of custom content or a recent case that your firm handled allows us to get picked up by these outlets and earn the most highly desirable links.
You want these links, don’t you? You want major media coverage, right? You want to completely dominate your local market and be able to pick and choose the most appealing and profitable cases for your firm, right? If you answered “Yes,” then you need to contact us today and schedule a free strategy session, where we will review your current digital footprint and develop a custom strategy to have you controlling the search results and being the authority law firm in your market.
Achieve Greatness Using The Strategy of Preeminence
Every law firm wants to be the best. They all want to have more business rolling through their doors than they can handle. They want to be able to grow. Nobody wants to be average, but not everybody is willing to take the steps necessary to reach greatness. It doesn’t happen without the hard work and strategic planning.
Step #1: Picture what you want to achieve in terms of growth and revenue
All of your competitors that aren’t achieving greatness are stuck in a rut because of this first step. They simply can’t picture in their mind what complete domination looks like. They can’t even fathom what being the authority firm in your market would be like.
You have to be able to envision what it would be like to be the top firm and have your phones ringing off the hook. Take a look at some larger markets and look at the biggest and most successful firms. If you can’t picture yourself in that position it will be difficult to ever achieve it. In fact, if you can’t envision greatness you will never experience it and know what it feels like.
Step #2: Establish the solution to help you reach your growth and revenue goals
You need to identify what is going to help you achieve your goals and experience greatness. Dominating the digital space will help you reach your goals, and Law
