OPINION
Monday, September 14, 2015 7
Digital Marketing
Boutique Firms and Sole Practitioners
michael c. ly › contributor
B
ou tiqu e fir ms a n d sole practitioners
may rely more on referrals to develop clients
than their larger counterparts. However, it
is still prudent for boutiques and sole practitioners to take advantage of the vast digital marketing tools available to convert online prospects into
clients.
There are few marketing plans that exist today
without a digital strategy. Digital marketing necessities such as achieving search engine optimization (SEO) allow marketers to ensure their content is
effectively reaching the targeted market – whether in
the legal field or other. As such, competition is fairly
stiff between legal content providers for medium and
large law firms; for instance, companies including
Thomson Reuters offer premium content solutions for
lawyers and law firms wishing to expand their online
presence.
It is also important for boutiques and sole practitioners to establish a strong online presence.
However, these smaller firms may rely more on referrals to develop clients than their larger counterparts,
and it may be difficult to justify paying premium
prices for legal content marketing. In this article, we
will look at the unique digital marketing needs of
boutique firms and sole practitioners, what services
are currently available for this market segment, and
trends of digital marketing moving forward.
Unique Digital Marketing Needs of
Boutiques and Sole Practitioners
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a marketing technique of creating
and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent
content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” It is prudent to note that “valuable”
content could look drastically different for sole practitioners in comparison to large full-service firms.
For instance, prevalent factors such as target audience need to be taken into consideration to cater to
the unique marketing needs of this particular group.
One digital marketing need of boutiques and sole
practitioners is that they need to have their marketing strategies focus more on creativity. Unlike their
larger count