For estate planning attorneys with a heavy workload and a demanding schedule, your focus is on client matters and ensuring the highest standard of service. However, if you want meaningful growth and long-term stability, dedicating time to a strategic, intentional marketing plan is imperative.
A clear, proactive marketing strategy is the engine that drives a more successful growth trajectory. It directly influences the consistency with which you attract ideal clients, secures your position as the trusted authority in your market, and guarantees that you are maximizing your growth potential. With a thoughtful and consistent plan, you will increase high-quality referrals, solidify brand recognition, and maintain top-of-mind awareness among your target audiences.
In this article, we will guide you through high-impact marketing tasks that every estate planning attorney should implement to position their practice for sustained success.
1. Reflect on Your Performance
Before committing resources to any new initiatives, the most important task is to conduct a frank performance review of your past marketing efforts. Take a moment to deeply reflect on what has and has not worked.
What worked?
- Which marketing channels consistently generated high-quality prospects that converted into paying clients?
- Which topics or messaging powerfully resonated with your audiences?
- Which of your services generated the most inquiries?
What did not work?
- Which efforts consumed significant time or budget but delivered a poor return on investment (ROI) or attracted low-quality leads?
- Which marketing channels received the lowest engagement?
- Which topics failed to perform with your target audiences?
Use every available data point, no matter how small, to guide this reflection. Understanding these successes and failures is crucial for gaining a deeper insight into your target audience, avoiding costly mistakes, and maximizing the effectiveness of every dollar spent on future marketing efforts.
2. Solidify Your Plan for Engaging New Prospects
Having rigorously analyzed the past results of your marketing efforts, you are now perfectly positioned to establish clear, actionable goals that will sharpen your strategic focus. A major component of this strategy must be a proactive blueprint for attracting and converting new prospects.
If you find yourself without sufficient historical data or are unsure how to begin engaging new leads, the answer is clear: start with proven foundation channels. We recommend implementing email and social media marketing immediately. Their inherently low associated costs make them potent drivers of a high and rapid return on investment.
Remember, there is no single template for success. The best tactics for your practice are fundamentally tied to your target audiences and specific niche. This truth underscores the absolute necessity of reviewing your performance; it provides the vital intelligence needed to identify where your most valuable prospects are currently spending their time.
Your development plan should be built on a foundation of continuous improvement and strategic innovation. While it is imperative to streamline by doubling down on winning tactics and immediately cutting losses on failures, it is also necessary to dedicate resources to experimentation. Ignite engagement with informative outreach: orchestrate expert-led educational webinars; host engaging public Q and A sessions via platforms like Facebook Live; or coordinate visible, community-focused events to organically grow your prospect base.
3. Build Your Client Communication Strategy
While acquiring new clients is essential for growth, it is often easier and more cost-effective to nurture and generate business from your existing client base. Focusing on consistent communication with current and former clients often yields a strong ROI while also securing powerful social proof for your practice.
As you prepare your marketing plan, review the frequency and effectiveness of your current touchpoints and develop your client communication strategy. Consider the following tactics, if you have not already:
- Send a monthly email newsletter. A newsletter is a simple and effective way to share legislative updates, local news, and timely estate planning reminders, keeping your firm top-of-mind.
- Post regularly on social media platforms. Sharing helpful content on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook helps maintain your firm’s visibility and provides clients with educational insights about your services.
- Send a quarterly mailer. For a highly localized client base or one that is not regularly active online, a physical mailer can be a powerful and thoughtful way to stay connected.
Fostering these communications is a simple step toward acquiring valuable social proof, such as a five-star Google Business review and detailed testimonials for your website. Make it a part of your plan to actively reach out and ask clients for feedback after their matter has been concluded. Making this commitment can play a vital role in strengthening your credibility and trustworthiness with new prospects.
Furthermore, consistent client contact provides the perfect opportunity to remind them to update their estate plans after a major life event. By staying top-of-mind and encouraging these necessary updates, you serve your clients’ best interests while generating valuable repeat business for your practice.
4. Invest in Your Referral Network
Developing a robust professional network is a key driver of long-term stability and high-quality referrals. For estate planning attorneys, establishing reciprocal relationships with financial advisors, certified public accountants, and attorneys specializing in other practice areas is crucial to sustaining practice growth.
While finalizing your plan, strategically review your professional relationships and determine how you can cultivate more proactive communications and strengthen mutual value.
The first step is to conduct an honest audit of your existing network. Ask yourself: “When was the last time I checked in with my core referral sources?” or “When was the last time I provided value to my referral sources?”. If the answer is “more than a few months,” it is time to optimize your approach.
To nurture these relationships and keep your firm top-of-mind for referrals, you must consistently provide value. Consider incorporating the following efforts into your strategy:
- Schedule regular email outreach. Whether you can commit to regular email communications on a monthly or quarterly basis, remaining consistent is key. This outreach can range from brief, personalized emails to newsletters that share relevant industry updates.
- Host joint informational webinars. Collaborate with a financial advisor or accountant to host an educational virtual webinar for a combined audience. This allows you to showcase your expertise directly to their clients, building credibility and trust.
- Attend conferences. Identify and attend industry-specific events where your professional partners are present. Face-to-face interactions can help foster durable professional bonds and secure new partnership opportunities.
These actions are strategic investments to ensure that your professional relationships remain mutually beneficial, leading to a steady flow of qualified referrals.
5. Verify Digital Touchpoints for Accuracy
Today, a client’s first impression of your practice is almost always your online presence. It is crucial to conduct a comprehensive audit of your digital footprint and ensure that all information is accurate and consistent across the internet.
Outdated or inconsistent information not only reflects poorly on your practice but also creates a poor user experience, actively causing you to miss out on new opportunities. Any prospect who uses a phone number or email address that your practice no longer monitors immediately becomes a lost client.
Check that your essential information (address, phone number, service offerings) is current across all digital channels, including the following:
- Google Business profile. This is a critical online asset because it is likely the first result prospects see when they use Google to search for your practice. Verify that your hours, services, address, and phone number are accurate.
- Directory listings. Review and update specialized legal directories such as EstatePlanning.com and all relevant bar association listings. While inclusion in these directories reinforces your firm’s credibility, inaccurate data actively undermines its professional integrity.
- Social media accounts. Ensure that your firm’s profile information, including the “About” section and contact details, is consistent across all social media platforms. Take the time to confirm that all profile photos and staff headshots are current as well.
- Website. Review your practice’s website and verify that all contact forms are functional, contact information and address are accurate, and staff bios, including headshots, are up-to-date.
Achieving this level of consistency and accuracy across your digital channels is the final step in our checklist for optimizing your practice’s marketing trajectory.
Position Your Practice for Success
With this checklist to guide you, you can establish a strategic foundation for consistent growth. To make implementing these tasks easier, we have compiled all the essential action items from this article into one convenient resource. Click here to download your free “Marketing Checklist for Estate Planning Attorneys.”
While this checklist is helpful, executing several of these efforts can require a significant amount of time and resources. For an estate planning attorney, time is often your most valuable and scarcest asset. If completing portions of this checklist feels more like an overwhelming challenge than an opportunity, you can streamline your marketing with WealthCounsel’s Marketing Source™ subscription.
A Marketing Source subscription provides legally accurate, turnkey content delivered directly to your inbox, including resources specifically designed for your outreach efforts to both clients and referral sources. Each month, subscribers receive ready-to-use blog articles, social media posts, newsletters, brandable client handouts, and more.
And, for a limited time, when you subscribe to Marketing Source, you will also get a website from LawLytics, the all-in-one law firm website solution, included for one year with your subscription. LawLytics handles all the maintenance, backups, security, and other technical details so you can focus on showcasing your expertise and gaining new clients.
