Business – SXSW Legal

How To Create The Perfect Digital Strategy For Your Law Firm

Creating an effective digital strategy for your law firm can be difficult. Even the best lawyers or legal advisors in the world tend to have trouble with complicated things like digital marketing, and you shouldn’t be too embarrassed to speak to an online marketing expert.

Unfortunately, small law firms and lawyers who are just starting out don’t always have the budget to be able to employ a digital marketing team. Digital marketing experts can be very expensive, especially if you want to see fast results and big returns on your marketing investments.

With this in mind, we’ve put together a short list of our top tips to help you develop your own digital strategy for your legal advice or law firm.

Note that you should always speak with an expert marketer if you’re unsure about what you’re doing.

Make sure you have a decent marketing budget:

The first, and arguably the most important part of your law firm’s digital strategy is your marketing budget and budget allocations. In most cases, your marketing budget will form a significant part of your annual expenditure, and a large proportion of it will be directed towards digital marketing.

You need to decide how you’re going to spend your marketing money, when you’re going to spend it, and how you’re going to build the maximum return on investment possible. Consider allocating money to some of the following:

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Getting Your New Business Off To The Best Start With Financial Planning

Starting a new business or buying a business can be an exciting time, but this needs to be tempered with some practical thinking about how you give your new venture the best chance of success. The financial aspects of any business are crucial so the wisest thing to invest in is a financial planner such as Andep. With their guidance and advice, you will ensure the success of your business is built on sound financial planning.

Sadly, many new businesses fail within the first year of opening, and the number one cause is lack of financial planning. Even with the best product or service, the finest marketing campaigns, and a captive audience, without financial planning in place, a business is going to struggle.

The first mistake new business owners tend to make, is to assume the best-case scenario when it comes to sales and profits. They then base the amount of costs they can incur on this figure and then wonder why their business has a cash flow problem before it is barely off the ground. A financial planner will generate forecasts based on several models so that you can see the situation from several different success levels.

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Choosing The Right Accountant For Your Law Firm

When it comes to running a small business, choosing the right employees and contractors to work for you is essential. In the same way, choosing the right accountants to help you manage your business’s finances can help save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

You should therefore think very carefully when you are looking for a new accountant, as choosing the wrong one can have significant ramifications for your business. You need to choose someone who is good at their job, who can be trusted and who can guide you as your financial situation changes. Consider the following when looking for a new accountant:

Their experience

If you want an accountant who really knows what they are doing, then you have to make sure that you consider their level of experience. In most cases, an accountant who has been practising for ten years will be much better at their job than someone who has just graduated from university. Look for someone with a very good reputation that has been built over time. Understand that although you may pay a higher rate for an experienced accountant, they will probably be able to work faster, which means that you won’t actually end up paying any more.

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How To Choose An SEO Consultant For Your Law Firm

SEO is one area of internet marketing that your law firm really needs to understand but unfortunately it has even the most seasoned of marketers running for the hills sometimes. Such is the amount of contradictory information, and indeed myths about SEO that it is virtually impossible to know what to believe.

If you are starting an online business you’ll want to get your website optimised for the search engines as quickly as possible, and unless you are already an SEO expert it is best that you employ someone who is. Unless you are already a very large business then this person is not going to be a company employee, but rather they are going to be an SEO expert who works on a freelance basis for clients.

To ensure you select someone who you can trust to do the job of optimising your website effectively, there are several enquiries you want to make first.

Prior to speaking to the potential consultant, you can undertake some research which will give you a fair picture of how credible and reliable they may be. Firstly, by visiting their own website you can establish how long they have been operating for. A consultant who has been around for several years doesn’t do so if their work is not up to scratch.

Next look for testimonials on their site, and even better, see if the names of the clients making those testimonials are present. Armed with the name of previous clients you can then contact some of them to discuss how they felt about the work that the SEO consultant has already done for them.

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How to Choose a Digital Agency for Your Law Firm

Digital marketing is essential when it comes to getting the most out of your modern business. Unfortunately, many small business owners don’t realise this, and they therefore get left way behind their competition – unless they are absolutely outstanding at what they do, and the number of businesses who can claim this is dwindling.

Unless you are an experienced digital marketing expert yourself, you need to seriously consider using a professional digital agency to make sure that you get the most out of your money. However, it is important to make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of using a cheap agency which doesn’t have a proven track record and a lot of experience. Doing this can cause a lot of problems. The benefits of choosing a digital agency with proven experience include:

You will get a quality outside perspective:

Sure, you might already have a marketing team which is doing a serviceable job. They might even be continually increasing your sales and working towards a shared company vision. However, an outside view from an experienced digital agency can still be invaluable. It can be the difference between success and extremely high success. If you are serious about getting the most out of your business, then employ an experienced, proven digital agency, even if it’s just for a short period of time.

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How to Stop Hackers from Destroying your Online Presence?

Anything from a bad review to a negative comment can ruin your online reputation beyond measures. Many businesses that are operating on the online forefront don’t realize that even hackers can cause damage to their business and make everyone run away from them. In order to protect the online reputation that you have built over the years, it is important to get good advice from a digital marketing company and learn to keep hackers from getting the best of you.

Below is a list of tips that will help you keep hackers from sabotaging your online presence.

Register Website Domains With Your Name
A good way to ensure that hackers are not able to destroy your online reputation is to purchase every domain with your name. Businesses should also ensure that they buy .net, .org, and .biz domains with their name.

Register Different Profiles With Your Name
Businesses should also create profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and MySpace with their company’s name and their own. This is a great way to ensure that your online profiles are safe from hackers.

Create Search Engine Profiles
Creating Google and Yahoo profiles with your name is also a good way to protect your business from getting hacked and used by others.

Conduct A Google Search
Every company should make it a habit to monitor Google search results with their name. This research will allow businesses to find identity thieves that are trying to steal their name and falsifying their image. This is also a great way to find out about those who are using your content on their pages. Once you track these thieves, you can contact Espresso to handle the matter.

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