Guest Post: How to Market Your Firm Through Community Involvement

This is a guest post by Noble McIntyre, an Oklahoma personal injury lawyer whose firm’s community involvement has been a boon to their marketing efforts as well as a benefit to the local community.

I don’t advertise. I’m sure I’m not the only law firm owner who has made the decision to forgo traditional methods to reach prospective clients, but when I mention this to most people, they’re usually surprised. I have simply found that word of mouth and a strong Internet presence give me a greater return on investment than any television commercial or billboard would. I also feel that community involvement is one of the best ways to generate knowledge of and interest in my firm.

Don’t get me wrong. Publicity is not the best reason to get involved in your community. In fact, it’s not even a good reason. Serving my community has always been important to me. Every one of my firm’s employees knows how important community involvement is not only to me personally, but to the community itself, and they get their own satisfaction from participating and helping others. But volunteering also demonstrates a commitment to the community where we live and work, and that connection to our neighbors is priceless. There’s no reason why you can’t do some good while also marketing your firm through simple means such as photos, press releases, and social media.

Photo and Video Coverage

Our Web site has a Community Projects section where we share stories of our community involvement, along with photos and videos of our employees taking part. For one project, I decided to hire a professional photographer to document our involvement in providing Thanksgiving dinners to 3,000 people in Oklahoma City, where my firm is based. The video on our page was provided by local news coverage of the event.

All this takes is a couple of phone calls. Get a photographer on board, and make contact with a local news channel. If you prefer not to hire a professional photographer, an employee or family member with a digital camera, or even a disposable camera or two is enough to snap a few shots of your firm working to help the community. Then post the photos on your site, as well as your Facebook page, if you have one. Photos and video go a long way to helping your community see you and your firm’s employees as real people and members of the same community working toward common goals.

Press Releases

Press releases travel much further today than they did before the advent of the Internet. What used to be used almost exclusively for informing the press, thereby generating coverage, can now be accessed by anyone with a simple Google search. Whether someone is specifically seeking news about your firm, or happens upon it while looking for general information about you, a press release can be an invaluable tool to share information about your volunteerism, and to get the word out about your firm’s capabilities.

But be careful. If you put out a press release every time your firm makes a donation to a charity, you’re going to come off looking like a rabid publicity seeker, only doing good deeds for good press. Save the press releases for the truly exceptional events.

Blogging and Social Media

A blog has become an essential business tool, not just for advertising, but for engaging an audience comprised, in part, of current and potential clients. We use a blog mostly to inform people of important events such as recalls and product liability suits, and of course, our ability to represent clients in either. I mentioned, we maintain a separate community involvement page. But there’s no reason you can’t combine the two.

Sharing information about your firm’s community involvement not only gets the word out, but allows readers to provide feedback and comments, if you choose to let them. That’s a personal choice. Some sites invite engagement and discourse, while others would just as soon not deal with the possibility of trolls and spam. Either way, a blog will allow you to showcase your community activities while providing background on why your firm is involved in the causes it supports. Add a Facebook page and possibly a Twitter account to this, and you have the potential to build a large network of supporters and interested parties for whom knowledge of your firm’s community outreach may be a deciding factor in whether or not to do business with you.

If traditional marketing methods are working for you, great. More power to you. But if you’re looking to expand your marketing repertoire, or you’d rather put those advertising dollars into something that’s going to give you a better return, consider getting involved in your community. It means positive coverage for you, but more importantly, you’ll be providing help for those people in your community who truly need it.

Noble McIntyre is the senior partner and owner of McIntyre Law, an Oklahoma personal injury law firm.