Should I Hire a Law Firm Marketing Agency or In-House Marketing Professional?

For most law firms, it’s not a question of whether to market their services, but how. Law firm marketing is a necessary investment, especially in crowded markets and competitive practice areas. But most firms, especially small and solo practices, don’t have an unlimited budget. That means you have to be strategic to get the best possible return on your marketing investment.

You have more options than ever, which is great news. The less-great news is that those options can make the decision harder. If you are trying to decide whether to work with a law firm marketing agency or to hire someone in-house to handle your marketing needs, weighing the pros and cons can point you in the right direction. 

Let’s dive in!

When a Law Firm Marketing Agency Makes Sense

You do everything possible to show your clients how much they matter to you; you deserve the same dedicated attention when your law firm is the client.

Many marketing companies cater to larger law firm clients, making smaller firms feel like their needs weren’t a priority. But agencies like ours, have leveled the playing field so that smaller firms can afford marketing services that were once priced out of their reach. We concentrate just on sole practitioners and small firms, providing the responsiveness and support attorneys deserve from a marketing partner.

Working with a law firm marketing agency is often the best option for law firms that:

• Don’t have the time, resources, or marketing background to implement and monitor their own marketing efforts
• Want the benefit of a team with broad range of marketing expertise (SEO, paid advertising, social media marketing, content creation, branding, technical knowledge and support) that a single individual often can’t provide
• Appreciate an objective outside perspective that can guide the firm’s decisions in growing and expanding 
• Are looking for highly-targeted and nuanced lead generation strategies to quickly bring more clients on board
• Want ongoing access to practice area trends, data analytics, and marketing best practices for lawyers and law firms

That’s not to say that working with a marketing agency is automatically the right choice for a law firm. For practices with certain priorities and goals, having an in-house marketing professional is a better option. However, in most law firms, the choice often comes down to two things: knowledge and cost. 

Effective Marketing Involves Multiple Skill Sets

Effective marketing involves multiple skill sets: search engine optimization, paid advertising, social media marketing, content creation, branding, technical knowledge and support. In the legal marketing industry, it's rare for one person to be proficient in all of those areas. An agency has a team of professionals, each with a specialized focus. That means a single in-house professional may struggle to provide the comprehensive service that a collaborative agency team can offer. 

The Overhead Involved in Hiring an In-House Marketer can be Significant

The overhead involved in hiring an in-house marketer can be significant for solo attorneys and small law firms. An employee’s salary and benefits cost thousands of dollars per month, and that’s before a single dollar into marketing software or advertising spend. Additional considerations are the time spent for onboarding, training, and the cost of turnover if an employee turns out not to be a good fit, or finds a better opportunity elsewhere. 

When working with an agency, law firms can scale their spending up or down as needed. And even if agency team members change, the structure and tracking set up in an agency settings ensures that services continue uninterrupted.

When to Consider Hiring an In-House Marketing Professional for Your Firm

An in-house marketer may be better for law firms that have grown their team and practice to a point where marketing efforts require more in-person engagement, planning, and management. Your firm may want to consider bringing a professional in-house if: 

• Your law firm has grown to the point where it is conducting multiple marketing initiatives both online and offline that require consistent management
• Your firm’s marketing is event-heavy, (e.g. multiple dinner seminars per month for prospective estate planning clients)
• Your firm relies on local, relationship-driven marketing and you rely on your marketer to foster engagement with the community through consistent outreach
• You are confident that your marketing needs will be heavy and consistent enough to justify the ongoing overhead of an in-house professional.  
• You want hands-on control over every aspect of your marketing strategy

Law firms on an aggressive growth trajectory are the most likely to benefit from having a professional integrated with the firm itself. Depending on the firm’s size and goals, it may even make sense to assemble an in-house marketing team, rather than one person to handle all initiatives.

A Collaborative Option for Growing Law Firms that Need Both In-House Marketing and Agency Support

If you think that having an in-house marketing professional is the best choice for your law firm, but you don’t want to miss out on the advantages of a law firm marketing agency, you may not have to choose. Some firms opt to have their in-house professional act as a liaison with their marketing agency. 

The in-house professional is embedded within the firm’s culture and understands its values and priorities. Unlike attorneys who are busy, well, practicing law, the in-house professional’s role is to focus on the firm’s marketing goals. They can translate what the attorneys want into clear direction for the firm’s agency partner. Having dedicated marketing staff in-house at a law firm can help keep an agency aligned with the firm’s needs; working with a law firm marketing agency means the in-house professional doesn’t have to know and do everything.

Navigating Transitions from Your Marketing Agency to Another Professional

Sometimes changing up your marketing efforts is necessary, but even so, it should be done carefully to preserve online visibility and brand consistency. For the smoothest transition, it is important to ensure that the experience of an in-house marketer or another agency spans the services your current agency has been providing. 

A Reputable Agency is Here to Help Make Seamless Transitions Possible

Your law firm may grow and change over time, and your marketing strategy will need to evolve right along with it. But too much change at once can have a negative effect on website search rankings, ad campaign results, brand consistency and tone, and analytics tracking, which is the very opposite of what you are likely trying to achieve when transitioning. 

We find this can happen from changing from one agency to another, but even more so when hiring an in-house marketer after years of working with a multi-disciplinary marketing agency. At The Modern Firm, we put relationships first. So, if our clients make a decision to switch to an in-house professional or another agency, we do our best to make sure that transition feels seamless. 

Our team will package and deliver all marketing assets, analytics, and tools into one easy-to-access account. We also offer an off-boarding call to ensure the new marketers have what they need to be successful. During that meeting, we will provide expert guidance on how to handle the changes they may have planned for the firm's marketing strategy to ensure continuity after the switch.     

A Cautionary Tale for Small Law Firm Marketing Transitions

One of our very own clients decided to make the change to hiring a full-time marketing professional for their firm, after our marketing efforts were so effective that the firm ballooned from two attorneys to more than ten. When we help firms grow to this size, it’s not uncommon to help them transition to an in-house marketer or team. 

It was our goal to ensure that everything they had invested in with us was preserved, but the baton was not passed off to an expert with in-depth website marketing experience. Their new in-house marketer declined our assistance to ensure lucrative marketing efforts were considered and addressed in their marketing strategy. 

A new website was built from scratch, URL structures changed, most of the site’s content was rewritten,  strategic optimization efforts were removed, and website marketing best practices were disregarded. Unfortunately, those changes were significant enough to cause disruption with search engines and tanked the firm’s previously-strong search rankings that had been key for lead generation and business growth for over 5 years. 

A Word to the Wise

What we know about marketing professionals is that it is hard to wear all the hats. If you have done event marketing, or social media management, or copywriting, you likely have begun to specialize in these areas. That is why an agency gives law firms the opportunity to have a team of specialists so that there is not just one person expected to know it all, especially in the competitive and ever-changing environment.