If you wanted to, you could easily spend all your working hours on marketing your firm. There are countless platforms and channels for digital marketing at this point and it’s just about impossible to master them all, especially if you’re running a small law firm and don’t have a dedicated marketing team. That’s why you need to get creative and consider focusing your limited marketing capacity on scalable lead generation and intake techniques, like webinars.
Webinars have become an important marketing tool for law firm owners in many different niches. If you’re used to only working with clients one-on-one, then you may not have considered hosting webinars. But they’re a great way to build interest in your firm and cut down on the time it takes to onboard a new client.
How Will Webinars Help Your Firm?
Webinars will not only help to improve your intake process, but they will also help you to become more confident on video.
– Bill Hauser
What Is A Law Firm Webinar?
Law firm webinars are virtual presentations, usually in the form of a seminar, lecture, or Q&A. They’re perfect for speaking to a large audience at once because there’s almost no limit to the number of people who can join in virtually. You can use webinars to educate and connect with prospective, current, and past clients without spending additional time on private consultations.
Many people love learning through video. Today, it’s important for lawyers to get comfortable on camera and to be flexible about providing virtual services. Webinars will not only help to improve your intake process for your firm, but they will also help you to become more confident on video.
Webinars Allow You to Scale Your Time
As a busy attorney, you have to constantly prioritize and streamline your processes in order to grow your business. The more you can automate and get creative with client acquisition, the more cases you can take on. One way to do that is to scale your time during the intake process.
Working with clients one-on-one is important for building relationships, but remember that those relationships are usually built after the intake process. When you really stop and think about it, lots of clients have the same questions initially and might not even decide to work with you after they get the answers.
If you could answer all of these frequently asked questions in a single webinar, you could save countless hours walking each client (or potential client) through their questions individually. That’s the power of law firm webinars: allowing you to scale your time and focus more on cases and business strategy than on going over basic information.
You’re only one person and spending time on tasks that can be minimized just doesn’t make sense. Leveraging webinars will free up more time for other important activities.
Potential Clients Will See You As An Authority
In addition to improving your intake process and allowing you to use your time more efficiently, webinars will add a lot of value for your clients and prospective clients. By hosting a webinar, you’re communicating that you care about people’s questions, concerns, and hesitations in hiring legal representation.
Webinars are yet another way to connect with clients for your law firm. It also takes some of the pressure off for someone who is interested in learning more about your services but isn’t quite ready to schedule a one-on-one consultation. Plus, they don’t even have to attend live—they can gain the value of the information on their own time by watching the replay!
Building authority is important for law firms. Your brand will be built on what kind of value you can offer clients and the more convenient and helpful you can make your content, the better. Webinars are an excellent tool for building authority and trust among potential clients.
Why Webinars, Why Now?
You need to evolve your approach and be willing to continually question the way you do things in order to remain competitive.
Stand Out From Other Firms
Webinars have been around for a while, but very few law firms are taking advantage of this powerful marketing technique. You have the opportunity to use law firm webinars to stand out from the competition and become a leader in your niche. In competitive markets, you need to be able to take a step back and think about how to showcase your expertise in a way that builds trust and is convenient for prospective clients.
Many lawyers are so wrapped up in cases (understandably) that they start to neglect any type of innovation in their marketing and processes over time. Don’t fall into this trap! You need to evolve your approach and be willing to continually question the way you do things in order to remain competitive.
Step 1: Sign up for Zoom
You’ve probably already used Zoom by this point, but if not, now is the time. There are different subscription options, but many are very low cost and will allow you to host a large number of people during a single meeting.
Downloading Zoom is easy! Just sign up on their website and download the app on your computer. You’ll want to get familiar with the webinar settings and do a test run before the live presentation to ensure that everything runs smoothly. And don’t forget to practice recording yourself!
Step 2: Drive signups to your Eventbrite page
People won’t attend your law firm’s webinar if you don’t provide them with all the details! Using Eventbrite is a great way to stay organized and to deliver the links participants will use to join the session. As a bonus, you’ll also be able to give people the opportunity to opt into your email list by signing up.
You can connect your Eventbrite account with Zoom to automate signups. Once you’ve set up your event, all you need to do is drive signups to your Eventbrite page and your attendees will get all the details. Use your other marketing channels, like social media, to promote your event.
Step 3: Host the webinar
This is the fun part! Plan out what you want to cover in advance. A good place to start is a FAQ session to go over questions and concerns new clients often have. You might want to write them down in advance so you don’t forget to cover anything (you can even do a slide show if you want!) but it’s always best to speak from your experience, rather than from a script.
It’s always a good idea to leave some time at the end of the webinar for questions. Have attendees drop their Qs in the chatbox throughout the webinar and answer them as you’re wrapping up. You’ll have yet another opportunity to develop rapport!
You might feel self-conscious the first time you host a webinar. That’s okay! It will get easier and easier the more you put yourself on camera.
Step 4: Follow up
People won’t take action without reminders. Plus, not everyone will be able to make the live event and might miss out on the content if you don’t follow up. You should send a replay of the webinar to all your attendees and invite them to reach out to you if they have questions or want to book a one-on-one consultation.
Remember, webinars won’t replace all of your one-on-one meetings, but they will save you time and give you scaling opportunities. Following up is key for gaining new clients from webinars.
Step 5: Repurpose the recording
Webinars can give you other marketing opportunities long after the event is over. There are tons of ways you can creatively use your existing video content in future marketing efforts. Attract more clients by repurposing your webinar in different ways!
Some ideas are very simple and easy: upload your webinar to Youtube! People who are searching for information on hiring legal representation will then have the opportunity to find you on a whole new platform.
You can also use your webinar as source material for blog posts, or even cut the recording into short videos to share on social media. Repurposing content in this way will reduce the time you spend on marketing and give you lots of valuable material to work with.
Think Bigger with Webinars & Creative Marketing
Most law firms think small when it comes to marketing. They often think that they need a huge budget to host webinars or break into video content. The truth is that all you need is a little creativity and the willingness to think expansively about your marketing.
At SMB Team, we’re experts at helping small law firms think big. If you’re not sure where to begin with creating a digital marketing plan, we can help. Get a free online marketing consultation, sign up for our webinar series, or give us a call at 866-747-1354 to learn more!
