Client: Andrew Abramowitz, PLLC
The Challenge:
Our client, Andrew Abramowitz, is the founder of a small law practice in New York City. Needless to say, he’s got a lot of competition! New York is jam packed with lawyers — how do you distinguish yourself among so many other small business attorneys?
Solo law practitioners and small law firms rarely have the internal resources to devote to marketing activities. For the most part, these attorneys have a standard brochure website comprised of attorney bios, practice area descriptions, and perhaps a list of books or articles published by the partners; static, uninteresting content that doesn’t give the reader much insight into an attorney’s personality and style, or demonstrate what he or she actually does for their clients.
Andrew is a corporate and securities transactional lawyer who had such a website: a simple four-page site with his basic bio, practice description and contact information. We met with him, talked about his experience and goals for his business, and we discovered two things: (1) Andrew has special expertise in working with private placement investors (on both the buying and selling side), and (2) Andrew has been carefully following the legal and regulatory developments surrounding the American JOBS Act and how it is giving rise to a new model of business financing known as “crowdfunding.”
Strategy and approach:
Another thing we learned about Andrew – he can write! He enjoys sharing his musings and thoughts about the nature of his work, the evolution of new securities laws and how they impact small businesses. Andrew had already considered blogging on these topics for his own pleasure, but wasn’t sure how it could be useful to his business. We explained that a blog was the perfect place to showcase his knowledge and expertise, week after week, on a range of topics – not just those he has listed as practices areas on his website. We also explained that by adding fresh content to his website’s blog, he improves his SEO, as the search engines favor sites where new materials are published consistently.
It takes time to build a readership for a blog, so we recommended that Andrew also send a quarterly newsletter to his friends and clients. These generally take the form of a recapping of the most popular posts from the blog, which builds awareness of Andrew’s practice and drives new traffic to his website. We also asked that Andrew share each of his blog posts as a LinkedIn update.
Outcomes:
Andrew has been blogging and sending out newsletters for about a year now, and we’ve seen an increase in his website traffic averaging roughly 35%, month over month. More importantly, Andrew has gained exposure for his law firm in new business sectors. When real estate developer David Behin of MNS Real Impact Real Estate received Andrew’s newsletter, he invited him to guest post on his blog, The Behin Report. Andrew’s article on crowdfunding for real estate investors was a timely, relevant piece of information, delivered to a targeted audience. Without having the advantage of an on-site marketing or communications department, Andrew’s blogging and email newsletters go a long way toward building Andrew’s professional reputation.
