Over the last decade generating reliable and affordable leads for legal firms has become harder. Market saturation, changes in consumer behaviour and new regulations have all contributed to an extremely competitive landscape. Most legal firms struggle to create a steady influx of leads and with the new regulations set to be introduced in 2020 generating solid leads will only get harder.

New Regulations

The combination of the Civil Liability Bill and the rise in the small claims limit will undoubtedly represent a new challenge for law firms and intermediaries when it is introduced. These reforms, similarly, to the reforms under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), seek to reduce compensation for claimants and suppress legal fees.

Claimant solicitors are predicting closures and redundancies as a result of Civil Liability Act reforms, according to the annual State of the Market survey from First4Lawyers. At Chit Chat Agency we have already seen a marked shift within the industry where firms are simply unable to take on some cases due to the financial burden of running a case compounded by the rising costs of generating qualified leads.

Marketing Impact On The Legal Sector

Advertising costs for both online & on TV will inevitably continue to spiral upwards as the fight to capture high value personal injury claims and market share intensifies.

Claims management companies (CMCs) are now scrambling along a legal tightrope to modify their business model as law firms will undoubtedly want to avoid taking on small personal injury claims once the new regulations are introduced. Legal firms who rely on CMCs to generate claims may now be looking to shift their reliance on them.

Popular Marketing Strategies & Channels

The latest Legal Marketing Association (LMA) survey revealed that social media marketing is by far the most adopted digital promotion method currently used by legal firms. Nearly all law firms (97%) share content and curate other relevant content for social media. Email marketing is the most popular digital marketing strategy, with 85% using email to get their marketing message out. In a sector with such high advertising costs, it’s unsurprising to see that only 22% of legal firms adopt paid advertising strategies (Search or Social).

Converting Changes Into Opportunities

Convincing decision makers to try new marketing and advertising strategies is never easy. However, now is the perfect time to step up your marketing efforts to counteract any potential loss of revenue.

As we’ve seen from the survey results email marketing is a strategy most legal firms use. Several studies have shown email to be one of the most cost-effective ways to market legal services. However, as communication evolves, email is starting to look seriously outdated due to emerging communication channels such as Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

With email such a popular marketing strategy it’s disappointing to see that very few legal firms are using 1-to-1 conversational experiences (chatbots) which outperform email in every way.

Messenger marketing allows you to target and engage prospects on a 1-to-1 basis with personalised, conversational experience designed to flow naturally into your sales pipeline.

Messenger marketing and chatbots are a fusion of social media marketing and email marketing which allow legal firms to start creating conversations, not just send messages.

It’s a huge oversight and the number 1 opportunity for legal firms to generate, qualify and nurture claims amongst many other benefits.

Learn how we improved the cost per lead for one legal firm by over 60% using Messenger marketing.

➡️ Read the case study on Facebook Messenger Now.