The name of the game for any practicing attorney is to continuously bring in clients. Without clients, we can’t practice law or pay our bills. The law is an ultra-competitive space, and solo and small firm lawyers often don’t have the capital to invest in expensive marketing strategies that are needed to compete to attract clients. For attorneys on a short budget or for established attorneys who want to complement their existing overall marketing strategy, there are multiple low-cost grassroots marketing tactics that are effective in bringing in clients. These tactics are old school and work well, and the returns compound over time, but they do take time because they don’t make the phone ring immediately. These are all long-term, long-view tactics. Patience and persistence are both imperative here. Here are three grassroots marketing tactics that individually cost less than $500 per year and work very well in bringing in clients to my law firm.
For under $10 per week, you can treat one lawyer to coffee. I am a big fan of always paying whenever I have a coffee meet-up because I believe it creates goodwill between myself and the attorney. Assuming you take a two-week vacation each year and meet with one lawyer each week, that is 50 different lawyers to network with. Each lawyer likely knows hundreds of people, and you can potentially tap into that lawyer’s network. At the conclusion of each meet-up, I always ask the attorney if they would like for us to introduce two people in our respective networks to one another. Additionally, I always ask what their perfect referral is, and I share that I would love to receive their personal injury referrals. The total cost of this marketing tactic is $500. This works.
Send out five handwritten cards each week to people in your network. Assuming you take a two-week vacation each year, that is 250 cards per year. I always send a card to someone I just met for coffee, thanking them for meeting me, and I also send cards to others in my network because I always want to stay top-of-mind. For my stationary, I always like to have a picture of myself on the card and list out my practice area (personal injury). I always write my cards using a blue pen instead of black—I have heard that blue ink makes a greater impression. For the price of stationery and plus postage, the total cost should not exceed $500 for the year. This is very effective for me.
Send out one weekly email blast to your network. There is extreme value in marketing to your database of people who know, like, and trust you. I initially thought sending one email per week was too aggressive, but I quickly changed my mind when I started seeing the open rates of the emails I was sending out. When you start doing this, you will find that there will be people who unsubscribe—never take that personally. Unsubscribes whittle your list down to people who want to hear from you as opposed to those who do not. After all, it is better to communicate with 100 people who enjoy your content rather than with 1,000 who don’t care for it. Make sure, though, to always make your email newsletters interesting and never boring. The more interesting your emails, the longer your recipients will stick around and open your emails. There are very affordable websites such as Constant Contact and Mail Chimp that have plans for less than $500 for an entire year. These platforms provide ease of use and functionality that allow you to get creative with your emails. Make sure your subject lines are interesting as well. This gives people a reason to open the email, and email marketing is useless if your emails don’t get opened. Somewhere in the email, always make it clear not only that you want referrals but also the way in which people can send you a referral. I have been doing this week after week for years and can tell you it works.
There are, of course, other low-cost marketing strategies that work, but these are a few that have given me the greatest returns on my investment, and they compounded well over time. They definitely take time to gain traction, so stick with them and don’t give up on them. You will slowly see them bring you cases. If you have other ideas about grassroots marketing, I would love to hear from you, so please email me at [email protected].
