With many different brands and law firms out there vying for the public’s attention online, ensuring your firm is seen in all the right places, as well as present on all the right platforms is essential. While brand awareness for law firms has its unique aspects, it’s not all that different from your favorite brand building awareness for its company either. One of the most important differentiating factors of brand awareness for attorneys and law firms is claiming, setting up, building out, and maintaining up-to-date industry specific directory listings (like Avvo) to showcase your firm and its services.
In order to fully understand how these directory listing services can further your firm’s brand awareness, it’s important to know what brand awareness is and why it’s important.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness represents exactly how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognize it. Brands with greater brand awareness are those you see more frequently, which can be referred to as more “popular.” An example of this could be seeing more frequent ads for Coca-Cola rather than your grocery store’s name brand soda. Establishing brand awareness is valuable when it comes to marketing your law firm and its attorneys.
Brand awareness also allows potential clients to gain trust in your business. Once a potential client bonds with your firm, they’re more likely to retain you as their legal counsel and/or refer you to others who may need legal help. Brand awareness efforts can showcase you law firm’s “personality,” and serve as an outlet for sincerity, the receipt of feedback, and to tell a story. These are all ways we, as humans, can foster trust with each other, akin to building a relationship with a brand.
Brand Awareness and Lawyer Directory Listings
As many in the legal industry may know, there are a myriad of legal directory listings out there, such as Super Lawyers and Lawyer Legion. These resources allow both law firms and attorneys to create profiles detailing their history and accomplishments within the legal field. Having this information on display is important because it assists potential clients in vetting your law firm for a particular practice area and learning where the lawyers went to law school, how long they’ve been practicing, case results, and more.
According to PEW Research Center, about 40% of American adults “always or most always” check online reviews prior to deciding to consult with a business or make a purchase. Another 42% only “sometimes” read reviews, which means roughly 82% of a law firm’s potential clients will go online to research the firm and review its previous related work. Directory listings (or structured legal industry citations) like Avvo provide both peer and client ratings and reviews of your work. When a prospective client reads positive reviews, it helps them determine your firm is reputable and furthers your brand awareness.
Another thing to keep in mind is when an attorney or firm has multiple directory listings – as well as an up-to-date website – this strong digital presence provides potential clients, referral sources, opposing counsel, and more personal and professional contacts with verifiable evidence of your reputable standing. Being listed in a trusted online directory also adds more of a zest to a law firm’s credibility. Rather than simply relying on Yelp or Google, Internet searchers now have several credible and trusted legal resources to review to ensure your law firm is the best fit for their needs.
Online legal directories provide an additional online method of searching for lawyers. If a potential client needs an insurance litigation attorney in Chicago, Illinois but your firm and/or its attorneys aren’t listed or haven’t claimed and built our your directories, you are missing a big opportunity to further brand awareness of your law firm. By ensuring your firm and its attorneys are featured in pertinent and legitimate directories with the consistent and correct information, you further ensure more eyes will be on your firm, keeping it top-of-mind for potential clients who may not otherwise know about you.
Want to Learn More?
While directory listings are an incredibly important factor in helping build online brand awareness of your law firm, ensuring all listed information is both consistent and correct can be a huge burden for busy attorneys. At Stacey E. Burke, P.C. we are well-versed in not only what the most viable and important directory listings are, but also what information is most pertinent to include. If your firm needs assistance with directory listings and furthering its brand awareness, contact us today to see how we can help.
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