Being a lawyer is already as stressful as it is but starting up your own law firm can sometimes be more complicated than it seems. For instance, are you qualified enough to own a law firm? There are so many questions you have to ask yourself that add to the pressure of owning a law firm. On top of that, if you’ve just started a law firm, how will you get clients? How can people discover you? You need proper branding to ease most of the pressure of owning a law firm. Allow us to enlighten you.
What Is Branding
As a whole, branding is the process of building the image of your brand in terms of personality, visual identity and everything in between. It includes everything about your company from internalization to externalisation. Branding sets a standard to be followed for internalization and it sets a reputation and perception meant for externalization. A lot of companies build their brand around their brand message. This means that their visual identity, mission, vision and objective are based on one main message that they want to represent.
Branding can sometimes be a long process but in the end, you’re left with a presentable brand that allows your targeted audience to better understand your company and what you do. Speaking of, you should always consider your targeted audience when you are building your brand because they are one of the main keys to your business’ success. From when they first discover your business and experience what you offer to whether they want to be loyal customers of your business, what you present to your targeted audience and make or break your brand.
Why Do Law Firms Need Branding
All businesses are different but law firms need branding just as much as any other business. Without branding, it’s almost as if the company is naked (or just very underdressed). For law firms, one of the most important things is that clients see you for your values and what you stand for. This can all be done through branding.
Thus, to further explain why law firms need branding, allow us to tell you why it’s important:
1. Builds Awareness
Brand awareness is basically how well people can recognise your brand and its qualities. This can either be through advertising, word of mouth or even their own experiences. Since branding covers everything from internal to external, it creates an image that your targeted audience is meant to see and remember. For instance, when a person sees a Coca-Cola logo or bottle, they instantly know what brand that is and what the quality of their products is like. If you, as the owner of a law firm, have certain values that you want to represent and a certain target audience you want to reach, then it’s important to do branding for your company.
Not only does it show the values of your company through your visual identity, but it also helps convey your values through your website, social media accounts, as well as any physical marketing you want to do such as posters, billboards and so on. All of this contributes to your brand awareness and allows your targeted audience to find you a little bit easier.
2. Builds Connections & Trust
A good branding strategy can help a company go from seeming untrustworthy to looking reliable. For instance, when you see a website with a lot of text, too many stock photos and bad colour combinations, the first thing you would think is that “can I really trust this company?”. On the other hand, when you see a website with a sleek and professional design with minimal text and good use of a few colours that go together, you’d think “this website is really user-friendly and nice to look at, they must be a reliable company”.
In other words, first impressions matter a lot when it comes to gaining client trust and loyalty. This includes all the forms of media mentioned in the earlier paragraph. A good branding strategy consequently provides a consistent look and feel for you to apply to all those forms of media. On top of the visuals, the content that is visible to the public also becomes more likeable and understandable when the branding is done. This is due to having solid values, vision, mission and overall personality and identity.
3. Provides A Marketing Focus
Since a good branding strategy includes creating a comprehensive brand guideline or brand identity, this will in turn create a marketing focus for you to stand out in your field. For instance, it shows your potential clients that you understand them. It also shows that you understand your competitors and know what makes your firm different from other firms in the same field.
4. Generates More Leads
Generating leads is basically obtaining clients who generate revenue for your business. To put it simply, good branding can help you obtain paying customers and paying customers is what keeps your business from shutting down. Therefore, along with the contribution from the previous points, once branding has helped your firm gain trust and credibility as well as give out a good first impression, this will attract potential clients that are looking for firms that fit their needs.
How To Start Building Your Brand
It’s important to understand why you need branding because what’s the point of doing something that you don’t fully understand? Now that we’ve explained the importance, let us guide you on how you can start:
1. Understand Your Targeted Clients
It’s good for a law firm to have a speciality. Therefore, choose a speciality to focus on and this will narrow down your targeted clients. Once that is established, the way you market your brand should be appealing to the clients you are targeting. For instance, your firm specializes in divorce cases. Therefore, your marketing should be appealing to couples who are getting a divorce. However, it shouldn’t be done in a tacky way. Rather, show that you empathize with them.
2. Determine What Makes You Stand Out
In the marketing world, this is what we call a “unique selling point” or a USP. Your company could have multiple USPs but as the phrase suggests, they should be unique to your brand. In other words, something you offer but others do not. For instance, let’s take a look at fast-food chains. KFC’s USP is that they “offer different varieties in chicken meals, especially burgers” whereas McDonald’s USP is their “speed of service” which made them one of the largest fast-food chains there is. Thus, your USP should convince clients to hire you instead of your competitors.
3. Establish A Brand Visual Identity
For many reasons, this is important for how your clients see and perceive you. From the colours you choose to the fonts you choose, everything affects public perception. In addition to that, you also have to think about what your logo is gonna look like and every other aspect of your visual identity from your website down to your business cards.
Conclusion
We understand if all of this information is overwhelming. When you own a law firm that needs branding, it can be a lot. However, you can instead rely on a branding agency like CR8 Consultancy to help with the entirety of your branding strategy. We are always prepared to provide branding and marketing solutions from the biggest part to the smallest part. As a reference, you can check out our past experience with creating a brand strategy for a law firm.
Let us assist you in elevating your brand!
At CR8 Consultancy, we offer full branding services that will help you create a unique identity, brand and marketing communications. Request a free consultation with us today and start growing your brand!
