Featured · Ideas
Marketing ideas ranked by return, not by novelty
Lists of marketing ideas are usually unordered, which is why firms pick the interesting ones and leave the valuable ones undone. The interesting ideas are almost always the expensive, slow ones, and the valuable ones are usually free and dull.
These are ranked by what they return against what they cost. Work down the list. Most firms will find they have not finished the first group, which is the group that costs nothing.
Free, and most firms have not done them
Nothing here needs a budget or a supplier. Several need an afternoon and a decision.
Ask every client for a review at the point the matter concludes well. The single highest-return habit available to a law firm.
Complete your Google Business Profile properly — categories, hours, real photographs of the actual premises and people.
Make the telephone number tappable on every page, and check it works on a phone rather than assuming.
Answer enquiries faster, and measure how long it currently takes including evenings.
Follow up three times rather than once. Most of the recoverable value in a firm's pipeline sits in the second and third attempt.
Write down which matters you want and which you decline, and tell whoever answers the phone.
Contact the enquiries that went quiet six months ago. It costs an afternoon and it is the most under-used list any firm owns.
If your firm has not completed all seven, everything below is premature. They cost nothing, they compound, and they raise the return on every paid channel you might add afterwards.
Most firms reading a list like this will skip to the paid ideas. That instinct is the reason the free ones remain undone.
Cheap, and worth a week each
These cost time rather than money, and each can be finished inside a week by one person.
Split your combined services page into one page per practice area, each written to a single situation.
Rewrite your attorney bios in the first person, opening with what each person does for clients now.
Photograph the actual team. It replaces the stock imagery that quietly undermines every other claim on the site.
Compress the images on your site and check the first screen loads on a mid-range phone over mobile data.
Write down the twenty professionals best placed to meet your kind of matter, and contact two a month.
Send one short, useful email to former clients this quarter, from a named person, inviting replies.
Claim and correct your listings in the directories that are genuinely used in your jurisdiction, and remove the defunct ones.
Costly but worthwhile, and four to skip
These need budget and patience. They work, and they work considerably better once the free and cheap items are done.
A small, tightly targeted paid search budget on your single best matter type, stopped if it does not produce in a quarter.
Proper content for the three searches that precede your most valuable matters, written once and improved rather than added to.
An intake service or a dedicated person, if the measurement shows enquiries are being lost rather than never arriving.
Video, but only of the people who will take the call, and only if you will keep doing it.
And the four to skip: buying followers or engagement; bulk link packages; a rebuild of a site that works; and a monthly newsletter you will abandon by July.
Also skip anything you cannot sustain for a year. An abandoned channel costs more than an unstarted one, because it leaves a stale presence behind.
Judge everything here on instructed matters, not on activity, and give each a defined period before deciding.
Then re-read the free list, because most firms will have let two or three of those slip while doing the interesting work.
There is no clever idea on this list, and that is deliberate. The firms that do well at this are not the ones that found something novel; they are the ones that finished the dull first group and kept doing it.
FAQs
What is the highest-return marketing idea for a law firm?
Asking every client for a review at the point the matter concludes well. It is free, it takes seconds, it compounds, and it raises the return on every other channel — and most firms have no habit for it at all.
Where should a firm start?
With the free group: reviews, a complete Business Profile, a tappable phone number, faster responses, three follow-up attempts instead of one, written criteria for which matters you want, and re-contacting enquiries that went quiet. Anything paid is premature until those are done.
Which ideas are not worth doing?
Buying followers or engagement, bulk link packages, rebuilding a site that works, and starting a monthly newsletter you will abandon by July. Also anything you cannot sustain for a year — an abandoned channel costs more than an unstarted one.
Is video worth it for a law firm?
Only of the people who will actually take the call, and only if you will keep making it. Video of the wrong people, or three videos then silence, does less than nothing because it leaves a stale presence behind.
How should we judge these ideas?
On instructed matters, with a defined period before deciding. Activity measures — posts published, pages written, followers gained — will make the interesting ideas look better than the valuable ones every time.
End Note
Nothing on this list is clever, and the ordering is the only part that matters. Firms that struggle are rarely short of ideas; they are working on the interesting ones while the free ones sit undone.
Finish the first seven. Then do the second group. Then, and only then, spend money — and re-read the first seven, because two will have slipped.
Key Takeaways
Ranked by return, not novelty — the valuable ideas are free and dull.
Seven free items first; most firms have not finished them.
The instinct to skip to the paid ideas is why the free ones stay undone.
Skip bought followers, bulk links, needless rebuilds, doomed newsletters.
Never start what you cannot sustain for a year.
