Why telling your story is the best way to market your firm

Storytelling might sound like something for your kids, but in digital marketing it is a wonderful and effective way to grow your firm.

The idea of storytelling is much broader than some may think. The first mention of the word sounds like something you might read to your children before bedtime, but in marketing, it is something much broader.

In reality, your story may be considered more like the narrative of a film, or at least a documentary. Yours is a story that should be told, because it can tell your potential customers just what you are about, what you offer and, most importantly, why you do it.

Why a law firm should tell a story

This can be a real game-changer for a legal firm. To many people, dealing with lawyers can seem like a strange, daunting prospect, with the process involved set to be impersonal and transactional, and the experience clouded by esoteric terminology and processes.

However, you can demonstrate a very different perspective through telling a story, one that does not just give your firm a ‘human face’ - important though that is - but can show your potential client why helping them is not just a way of making a living, but part of a quest to bring justice, right wrongs and contribute to making for a better world.

If all that sounds ambitious, it isn’t. It simply describes the basis on which you should set out to tell a story.

Not all of your rivals will manage to do this. To some, the idea of a story is to list a load of dates and names, all about when a firm was founded, merged, moved offices, changed ownership and so on, all of which will be of interest and relevance to almost nobody.

What your story should really be about

By contrast, a story rooted in a highly motivated quest to help people out and support a worthy cause can give any firm in almost any industry an appeal that will help them stand out from their rivals.

Your story should never focus on the who, when, or where. It has to be chiefly about the what and the why - what you set out to achieve and why you wanted to do it.

There are many good examples of how you can begin such a narrative:

• If you are a criminal lawyer, whether defence or prosecution, you can highlight your commitment to seeing that justice is done
• If you are involved in family law, you can speak of your desire to resolve difficult problems, get the best solution for children and ensure disputes are settled amicably
• An immigration lawyer can highlight their commitment to ensuring just outcomes, especially in the aftermath of the Windrush affair

These are just some of the examples where featuring motivation can form a core part of your story.

How to progress your story

Your story is not just a matter of what got you going, however. It can then have an unfolding narrative about how you and your colleagues went about making your plans happen and outline the kind of successes you have had. All of this will help focus your potential client’s mind on how you can offer a similarly dedicated and high-quality service to them.

Finally, you must remember that this is an ongoing story; one in which meeting the needs and solving the problems of your clients today and tomorrow will be all part of the latest chapter.

All this is what will help market your firm as a compelling proposition.

The digital means at your disposal

Digital marketing is extremely effective at telling your story, as it can be updated very regularly and provide frequent content for people to follow.

Content marketing is ideal for story telling because you can outline your narrative at length. Moreover, as you will need to publish optimised content for several months to reach the first page of the search engine rankings, you can and must produce a lot of articles. That offers an opportunity to keep the narrative flowing.

Social media offers another way of keeping the story moving forward, with more bite-sized posts keeping people right up to date with the latest, demonstrating that you story is not about what happened before, but what is going on now.

How BeUniqueness can help

At BeUniqueness, we can help you identify the unique selling points of your story and enable you to tell it to the world. By showing potential clients what you do and why, we can help you bring in new custom from people who are happy to let your story become part of theirs.