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Attorney Marketing 101: Inbound v. Outbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing Carousel
Photo Credit: Flickr

Unfortunately, not everyone can be an expert at everything. We all have to pick our niches, and then rely on others to do the rest.

With that in mind, it’s kind of strange that lawyers are expected to not only provide top notch legal work for their clients, but also market their law firm so they can attract new clients and stay in business, as well. Marketing and advertising are professions, in and of themselves. Expecting attorneys to be expert marketers, while still also being experts in the legal field, can be unfair. Expecting attorneys to be able to hold their own at anything outside of the highly demanding legal profession seems steep.

To help attorneys and law firms develop marketing strategies that work, Myers Freelance bridges the gap between the world of marketing and the legal field. With feet in both markets, Myers Freelance understands the needs, limitations, advantages, and abilities of both sides of the situation. This gives them the insight they need to help describe esoteric marketing concepts, in ways that attorneys can understand and use.

One of these concepts is the idea of inbound marketing. This is especially important for law firms to understand, because the legal field is controlled by a strict ethical rulebook that regulates how marketing can be done.

Inbound marketing focuses on bringing customers to a law firm through passive promotion. This includes website work, social media, and blogs that are meant to showcase your firm’s skills and reputation without actively grabbing a potential client’s attention – the distance between you and your clients gets traversed by your client.

The alternative is, of course, outbound marketing. This includes active advertising like cold-calls, media advertisements, direct mailings, and flyers, which bring your firm to your client.

The distinction between outbound and inbound marketing can, however, dissolve into shades of gray. Search engine optimization (SEO), for example, is a form of inbound marketing because it structures web pages and content to organically improve a site’s prominence on search engines. In this way, it’s a passive act, and an example of inbound marketing. However, buying adwords achieves this same result – it moves your website up in search engine rankings – but it works by purchasing ad space with the search engine. This makes buying adwords much more like inbound marketing than traditional outbound techniques, like door-to-door sales, but doesn’t quite get all the way into the inbound marketing realm.

Generally speaking, inbound marketing is less frowned-upon by bar associations than outbound marketing. Inbound marketing involves creating an attraction, like a carousel, and then waiting for potential clients to flock to it, realize that it’s what they want, and get on for the ride.

Myers Freelance exists to create that attraction for you. Using our knowledge of both the law and inbound marketing, Myers Freelance crafts expertly-made legal blogs that are timely, legally accurate, readable, and SEO-friendly. With our writing on your side, you’ll watch as your website brings in new potential clients, and converts them into real clients.