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What Lawyers Can Learn from Big Brands About Marketing
•Rosen Advertising•Season 4•Episode 21
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What Lawyers Can Learn from Big Brands About Marketing
Most law firms make the critical mistake of selling their services rather than the outcomes those services create. While you're promoting "experienced divorce attorneys," potential clients are searching for emotional benefits like "peace of mind" and "a fresh start." Discover how to bridge this gap with messaging that speaks directly to client needs rather than practice areas.
Ready to transform your firm's marketing approach? Listen now and discover how small shifts in messaging can create massive results for your practice.
What lawyers can learn from big brands about marketing. Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. Let's start off today's episode with one of the biggest lessons we can steal from the world's top brands. They don't sell a product or a service. They sell what that product means in someone's life. Let's think about Nike. Sure, they make great shoes, but do you ever see an ad that's just hey, these sneakers have awesome cushioning and durable soles. No, Nike sells aspiration. Their message is about achievement, pushing limits and being part of something much bigger than yourself. The shoes pardon the pun are kind of just the vehicle for that. So how can we relate that to legal marketing? Let's bring it back a little bit.
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Most law firms, especially in practice areas like family law, criminal defense, estate planning we default to selling the service. We handle divorces, we draft wills, we get you out of jail, and it's factual. But let's be honest, it's kind of dry. And yeah, you're lawyers, so you're kind of dry. But come on, guys and your potential clients they are not waking up thinking I can't wait to hire a lawyer today. They're thinking about the outcome that they want Peace of mind, a fresh start, security for their family, whatever it is. They want control over this stressful situation. The magic happens when we shift our messaging from what we do to what they get, and that's where the real emotional connection and the trust starts to actually build.
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So here's a quick exercise. Let's take a look at your homepage headline. Does it say something like experience, divorce and custody attorneys? Try rewriting it without mentioning your practice area at all. What if it said we help you take back control of your life, or guiding you through the hardest moments with strength and care? You see the difference already. That positioning, that little tweak, it's what sets these big brands and the smartest law firms apart. From the rest, Clients are hiring you for the result, they're not hiring you for the process, and that's what we need to speak to in our marketing every single time we write a line.
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And another thing big brands never, ever mess around with like they're really kind of aggressive about it it's consistency. Whether you're in Tokyo or Tallahassee, a Coke is a Coke and, yes, anyone who's been to Tokyo will know that there are a bunch of different types of Coke in Tokyo and a bunch of different types of Coke in Tallahassee, but it's the point that you can get the same thing no matter where you are. It's the consistency. When you walk into any Apple store, you know exactly what kind of experience you're stepping into. It's this sleek, minimalist, friendly but polished. And that consistency is not accidental. It is engineered and it's engineered to build trust. Every color, every word, every interaction, it's all part of the bigger picture.
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Now think about your law firm. You might have a sharp website, but what happens when someone calls your office? Does the tone of that conversation match what you've put out online? Does your Instagram feel all buttoned up, but your email newsletter is kind of casual? Or maybe it shifts too far in the robotic direction? Inconsistent branding, even in the tone of what you're doing. It sends mixed signals, and mixed signals they create doubt. Clients want to feel that same sense of trust and predictability, no matter what brand they are interacting with and how they are interacting with you. It's not just about the colors and logos. Again, it is about the tone, it's about the timing and it's the feeling of the experience across every touchpoint they have with you.
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So here's an easy place to start. We're going to do a quick audit. You pull up your website your latest ad campaigns, a few social posts, your last email blast and your intake phone script. Maybe you don't even have one of those. You probably should read them through back to back, each one of them, one after the other. Maybe have someone in the room with you to listen. Do they sound like they came from the same person, or from the same firm, even? Or do they feel like sound like they came from the same person or from the same firm, even? Or do they feel like five different voices that are fighting for attention? Big brands get this right because they know that trust isn't won in just one big moment. It's built in all the small, consistently spaced out ones. And the more seamless your brand feels, more integrated you have your brand feeling into the person's life, the faster these potential clients are going to feel confident choosing you.
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And here's a little secret People forget the numbers, but they remember the stories, and big brands have known this forever. Think about Apple Whenever they announce a new product. Yeah, we're going to get the tech specs, we're going to get the screen size, we're going to get the processing, but that is never the headline. Instead, it's all about the impact. When FaceTime came out, it was about how you can connect with people. When the first iPhone dropped, it was. This changes everything. This wasn't a list of features. It was a story about how your life is going to be transformed.
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But in the legal world, we lean way too hard on the stats. We've won 95% of our cases. We have 130 years of combined experience and, yeah, those numbers can be impressive in a certain sense, but they don't stick in the mind of a client the way a compelling story does. Here's why Stories create emotional connection. When a prospective client is facing a legal problem, they're stressed out, they're overwhelmed and what they really crave is reassurance. Because, while it might be logical to say that we win 95% of our cases, the person is only ever going to think about the 5%. You don't win A story that's about someone that's just like them, though, someone who got through this situation with your help.
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This hits home in a way that no statistic ever can. So how do we actually bring this to life? We've talked about client story before, but what we can do with this is start simple. We can pick literally just one success story, one client success story. We can either get permission to use it or we can just anonymize it and we record a quick video where we explain what the client was going through and what it was like when they came to your office and then what you said to them and how you helped and ultimately what the outcome was. Or just write it up as a blog post, or put it into Chad GPT and, you know, turn it into a nice thing. Or social media. Again, that's not the point.
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Big brands know that stories sell because they tap into something that is much deeper than just a number. They tap into the trust and the hope and the possibility. That's just as true as in law, as it is in tech, or in consumer goods or children's toys, because your firm has incredible stories to tell. So don't just let them sit on the shelf. Big brands know something that a lot of businesses are overlooking the best marketing doesn't feel like marketing at all. Think about Dove's Real Beauty campaign or Red Bull's Extreme Sport. Think about Red Bull's YouTube at all. Neither of those are traditional ads and we do see them as ads now, but the reality is they're value-packed, entertaining, educational pieces of content that we have built loyalty with over time. Maybe HubSpot? They basically invented content marketing by giving away everything for free, all this helpful information that people just started to naturally trust them when it came time to actually buy things. And now they're a public company, so it works pretty good. And it works pretty good in legal too.
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Your potential clients have a lot of questions like a crazy number of them because you guys complain about how much. They call you all the time. So if you're not answering the questions, they're Googling things like what happens after I'm served divorce papers? Do I need a will if I'm under 40? And if you're the one answering those questions clearly and compassionately, you're winning their trust before they even pick up the phone. When we educate, we're not just attracting clients and expanding our presence on the internet. We are building serious authority. This is one of the most major platforms for leadership in the world, and if you're building authority on it, you're doing well.
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But now let's talk about one of the most overlooked secrets of big brand success. I think the biggest one that a lot of lawyers forget is that they never stop marketing. Coca-cola has been around for like 180 years I have no idea it's over a century but they're still pouring billions into advertising every single year. Why? Because staying top of mind is a constant battle. People have short memories, and they did so way before TikTok existed and attention is always shifting. There's always something new. The moment you start to think your brand is established enough to coast is the moment you're going to start to lose.
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Now let's contrast that with how most law firms handle marketing. It's kind of either feast or famine. Right, when the leads are slow, the ad budget goes up, the firm scrambles to pump out blog posts, social media updates, all this stuff, but once the caseload picks up, marketing right back on the back burner until the pipeline starts to dry up again and you guys freak out and the cycle repeats itself. I don't know how many we've been through and how many different industries, but it always does this. Big brands they don't fall into that trap. Their mindset is incredibly simple. Marketing isn't something you switch on and off. It's a long-term investment. That is a core element of the business. Every ad, every blog post, every social media touchpoint, every comment that the social media manager makes it is a brick in the foundation of their brand equity. That's what keeps the clients coming back and the referrals flowing in.
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Even during the quieter times, Everybody's still buying Coca-Cola, and for law firms, what this means is making a commitment to consistency. I think this is really the biggest thing you can take away today, Even when you're slammed with cases, keep your content engine running, Whether it's one blog post a month, a weekly Instagram tip, a quarterly newsletter. It doesn't have to be an overwhelming back-breaking schedule, it just has to be steady. And what's that word? Consistent? Because here's the reality the firms that keep showing up. They keep showing up over and over. They are the ones that stay on people's minds and they're the ones that stay at the top of the market. The big brands know it, the smartest law firms know it and your competitors know it. That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out RosenAdvertisingcom for more Thanks.
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