While developing a strategy for family law marketing, you might have encountered referral marketing. Referral marketing can be a valuable source of clients for businesses because referrers and referees already trust your firm.
To cultivate an ecosystem of inbound leads, you will want to develop a strategy that provides excellent services and encourages referrals. In this article, we’ll discuss referral strategies, how to create one for your firm, the benefits and drawbacks, and tools and ideas to help you maintain your strategy.
Why Are Referrals Necessary?
Clients looking for a family lawyer are often under a lot of stress due to the sensitive nature of their needs—help with divorces and custody cases. Clients want a lawyer they can trust, which is the reason most law firms have websites that showcase testimonials and case studies. The only thing better is a referral from a trusted friend, colleague, or family member. A referral can take a client from the consideration period straight into the decision-making part of the buyer’s journey. Hopefully, they’ll also be willing to make a referral in the future.
According to Harvard Business Review, referred clients make more purchases than non-referred clients. They’re also 30%-57% more likely to refer new clients, which means there’s a good incentive to nurture a referral network. While you can’t control a client’s decision to refer you, you can nurture leads. Now, let’s break down the ways you can create a winning referral strategy that’ll get you more leads.
What Is a Referral Strategy?
Now that we’ve learned why it’s important to use a referral strategy when marketing a family law firm, what exactly does that entail? Referral marketing is a strategy that businesses use to encourage past, happy clients to refer other clients. A good referral strategy doesn’t just include satisfied clients but can also include industry peers and professionals in adjacent fields where it makes sense. You can consider traditional or digital channels, from word-of-mouth to email marketing, in your marketing plan, plus easy ways for referrers to give feedback.
That said, these strategies always aim to cultivate a community of clients who are satisfied with your services and want to give referrals, never to persuade or bribe. Let’s begin by discussing what every firm needs to do right first and foremost to ensure any referral strategy will be successful.
Related: 5 Simple Tips to Double Your Law Firm’s Referrals
The Foundations of a Good Referral Strategy
A good referral strategy can be one of your family law firm’s most powerful conversion strategies. The foundations of strong referral programs usually have a few critical things in common.
Provide a Great Service
Referral marketing is not about convincing clients of the value of your service but about encouraging someone who is already pleased with your service to refer you to others. Providing the best service possible will help you gain a client’s trust and make them happy to refer your firm in the future.
Maintain the Client Relationship
Marketing for family law attorneys involves maintaining client relationships to establish an ecosystem of nurtured clients and warm leads. It might not be enough to work with a client once without following up if you’re hoping for them to refer you. Maintaining the connection afterward can be as easy as sending a simple outreach email, offering periodic check-ins free of charge, or sending out a request for feedback or critique.
Ethics
It’s important to be aware of ethics when developing family law marketing ideas, especially regarding referral marketing. ABA Model Rule 7.2(a)(b)(4) states that an attorney cannot pay someone for recommending a client to them and must always communicate with a client when they’ve been referred to them by someone in their referral network. It’s important to be aware of ethics to maintain professional integrity and responsibility with clients.
Tools to Develop a Winning Referral Strategy
Once your foundation is in place, it’s time to determine how to execute your referral strategy. Let’s discuss common questions, different routes, and some tips you’ll want to think about when developing and executing your referral program.
Traditional and Digital
Family law marketing can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to deciding which channels make sense for your firm. Traditional marketing, like word-of-mouth, can be an effective way to get high-value clients for local businesses. However, digital marketing for family law attorneys has the potential to reach more people. Channels like email marketing and social media can greatly expand your referral network. You will want to weigh out the pros and cons of both to figure out what will work best for your firm.
Develop a Professional Referral Network
Apart from marketing your referral strategy to past clients, we’d recommend working with professionals in adjacent industries and non-competing practice areas. Some referral sources you could consider:
- Attorneys in other practices,
- CPAs,
- Therapists, and
- Bankers.
By letting sources know that you are looking for clients, you can create a robust ecosystem of inbound leads for your firm.
Stay Top of Mind
A big part of marketing a family law firm means staying top of mind. If you want to ensure your firm’s name comes up when a prospective client needs a referral, make yourself memorable. You can do this with email marketing, whether that be a newsletter on the industry or an
email with exciting and relevant updates about your firm. We recommend ensuring you don’t overdo it with emails, lest you end up in someone’s spam or blocked list.
Tracking Referrals
When doing any sort of marketing, including family law marketing, you should analyze the data from your strategy so that you can adjust it. This could mean using an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM), which will show you where traffic is coming from on any digital campaigns, or checking open rates on emails you’re sending out.
Contact Juris Digital Today for Help with Your Referral Strategy
Our team specializes in developing tailored marketing campaigns for law firms across multiple practice areas. Marketing can be complex, so let us help your family law firm develop a referral strategy that converts. Contact us now, and we will get to work on creating your custom referral strategy.
