In the past, a lawyer needed little more to market their practice than be good at what they did, which may have included one or two client lunches to keep a practice at the forefront of clients’ minds. However, times have changed. Now, lawyers are going online to get noticed by potential clients.

Using Social Media

Many legal professionals are choosing social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about their practices. This is due to social media’s popularity and reach. It was noted in Susan Cartier Liebel’s article, “Making a Case For Social Media For Lawyers,” that almost fifty percent of young Americans use Facebook to get information about the latest happenings. The fact that the average Facebook user not only has 130 friends but is also connected to 80 groups, events, and community pages reveals just how powerful this network can be for online marketing and word-of-mouth referrals that solo legal practices rely on.

But the number of friends and pages being connected to is not the only reason Facebook and Twitter are so ideal for marketing your legal practice. Facebook, for example, is available in over one hundred languages and boasts more than 500 million international users. Placing a link on your website to these social networks will not only encourage your visitors to tell their friends and followers that you speak their language, but it will also make it easy for those friends and followers to communicate with you. But it’s important to ensure that any link(s) you place on your site is also in the language of your target foreign language audience and leads to a landing page in the language of your target foreign language audience.

Elements of Successful Brand Promotion

Promoting your practice online to your foreign language audience can begin with cooperative marketing, or advertising with those companies that may already be well-established in the community you are targeting. This marketing can include any number of tactics, including special offers in email newsletters, link exchanges, and writing expert articles on any number of legal topics with the purpose of being featured on targeted sites.

Asking new website visitors to provide their feedback on new foreign language elements on your site can provide you with a golden opportunity to continuously improve what you’re offering. Your visitors will not hesitate to tell you when something is not working for them and may also be likely to offer suggestions about how you can improve certain site elements.

Testing is a vital part of any online marketing campaign. A/B testing can be an efficient way to gauge visitor reaction to your online marketing efforts with your foreign language audience. This means presenting two different versions of content to your target audience. This can be done by making two versions of a Web page, text ad, or any other material you may be using to attract foreign language clients.

If you are building a bilingual solo practice, your online marketing campaigns should no longer only target English speakers. Create a foreign language online marketing campaign that will get your firm’s name in front of an often forgotten market; non-English speakers.  Begin to interact socially with your potential clients by speaking their language. Once they get to know you and are in need of your services, they will come to you for help.