Just when most lawyers got used to traditional marketing – print ads, Yellow Pages listings, billboards, radio and TV ads – along comes a discipline called inbound marketing that turned everything you thought you knew about law firm marketing on its head.

Here at The Rainmaker Institute, inbound marketing is about all we do, and what we have done for years. Traditional marketing may have its uses, but it doesn’t do what we like to do – generate qualified leads. Traditional marketing is all about the push – pushing your message out to a mass market in hopes of finding those needles in a haystack.

Inbound marketing pulls people in who are interested in what you have to offer. It consists of social media marketing, SEO, blogging, e-newsletters, videos, free report offers on landing pages, email marketing and other strategies that attract consumers naturally.  

Inbound marketing allows you to nurture relationships with potential leads all the way along the various stages of the buying cycle. You can automate your messaging early in the cycle for the shoppers, then spend your resources more carefully on interacting with those who are in the later stage of ready-to-buy. 

This infographic from The Whole Brain Group, a Michigan-based inbound marketing agency, explains it simply and succinctly: