If you had asked me in January if I thought that I'd be writing advice for how law firms can weather a pandemic, I'd have thought you were watching too much Walking Dead. Yet here we all are.

Legal professionals have their work cut out for them right now. We are, to use a very common phrase these days, in uncharted territory. As we adapt to remote work life, worry about public health conditions, and try to keep our families safe and healthy, we also need to find ways to continue reaching our clients and meeting their needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic requires a shift in our practices. So what does that shift look like? How do we adapt our marketing, sales and communication strategies to best connect with audiences in authentic, true-to-practice ways, while still acknowledging the unnerving, uncertain realities of pandemic life?

In normal times, we market and use business development to build brand awareness, to increase sales, to target clients, to enhance relationships, and to grow market share (among other things).

We can still do the majority of those things during a pandemic. They just require a different approach.

Understand Your Audience

Before you make any substantive changes to your marketing plan, you need to consider that your audience—like everyone else—is struggling with the pandemic.

Depending on your client base, their struggles will differ. If you're in family law, they may be wrestling with how social distancing will impact their child custody arrangements. If you practice employment law, your clients may be concerned about how to handle sick employees and potential layoffs.

By understanding your audience's specific concerns right now, you can accomplish a number of goals:

• Determine appropriate messaging;
• Pinpoint what resources you might need to offer them; and
• Determine if you need to create any additional audience segmentation for your marketing efforts.

Adjust Your Services Accordingly

If you do all of this, you may find that—at least for now—you need to adjust the services you offer people. Not just how you offer them, but the actual services you are providing.

What does adjusting your services look like? It may mean prioritizing virtual consultations or creating scaled-down packages for clients who are facing financial constraints.

• Content Is Key

Focus on resource development by creating content that addresses pain points for your clients and industry, and offering actionable steps to resolve issues. Your inbox has likely shown you how many informative emails are being sent out—you need yours to stand out by providing real value. There's a flood of new information to process along with constantly changing dynamics, creating a perfect opportunity to help as an expert at a time when people need guidance.

On social channels, sharing news updates for your community, good works done by others, and relevant service and operational information for your firm is a strong plan of action. You can certainly share any initiatives and activities you've undertaken to support your community (we could all use some positive news in our feeds), but be mindful of tone, and focus on who you're helping rather than the firm.

Also, review your frequency of communication. With the rapid cycle of news and pandemic updates, as well as industry-specific compliance and regulatory guidance, your previously efficient schedule for social, blogging and email might not cut it. Every firm has different bandwidth for these projects, but upping your frequency on your most valuable platforms may pay off.

• Backburner Projects

Screen time usage is at an all-time high. This is an opportune time to make sure your existing resources are fine-tuned. Sarah Ryan, Director of Marketing & Business Development at Stark & Stark, recommends lawyers use this time to update their website bio (addressing skills, expertise and organizations), update their business development plans and break down their contact lists by client, referral sources and potential leads.

COVID-Proof Your Marketing

• Develop an information sheet and messaging on how COVID-19 is affecting your practice and your plans for moving forward.
• Update the following to reflect any new operational information: |
  • Website: Add a banner or slider to your homepage to catch the reader's attention.
  • Social media
  • Google My Business listing
  • Yelp and any other review platforms
• Pause any non-essential press releases, announcements or launches.
• Pause or cancel all your automated marketing—email campaigns, social media ads, etc. Thoroughly review before resuming.
• Adjust your CTAs (but make sure you're always including one).

(Don't) Always Be Selling

Selling makes a lot of lawyers (and even some marketers) uncomfortable even in the best of times—and these definitely aren't the best of them. So it may be good news to them that now is actually the time to step away from selling and move toward communicating.

This shift doesn't mean that the sales funnel and relationship building goes by the wayside. Far from it!

Social distancing is making old sales standbys like client lunches and happy hour networking a thing of the past. But what can you do instead?

We've gone over what type of information can be helpful to your target audience, but the big shift is in the delivery. To replace in-person business development, firms are looking to digital formats to help get their information out and create a way to establish themselves as an industry authority.

Webinars and podcasts have become a go-to for many firms, even for those that didn't use them two months ago. Thanks to technology like Zoom and GoToWebinar, creating webinars has become easier than ever—and there's no shortage of topics to cover either. Alexandra Zeng, Marketing and Business Development Manager at Norris McLaughlin, says her firm has been running virtual town halls with significant success: "People can come hear about a topic and then have the opportunity to ask questions. It creates a feeling of being connected even when we can't physically be together, and really lets their voices be heard."

For new clients, make sure you're easily accessible. Do you have scheduling software on your website? A chatbot? Is your social media set up so you're responsive to DMs and posts? If not, it needs to be.

Moreover, if you haven't fine-tuned your video conference capabilities, make this a priority. Video conferences help mitigate the effects of social distancing and connect with old and new clients on a more personal level.

And don't forget about LinkedIn! If you haven't spent time developing your profile, consistently posting valuable content and interacting with colleagues and clients, now's the time.

Get Personal

Don't rely on mass emails from the firm to keep you top of mind with clients, leads and referral sources. Ryan has taken the personal approach at her firm: "One of the most influential actions attorneys can take right now is to reach out personally to their clients. They need to sit down and make a list of the people that are important for them to stay top of mind with. Instead of sending a mass email every two to three days, clients should be getting an email or call from you as the attorney in addition to the emails from the firm."

This approach of personal rather than firm-level outreach, is one every firm should be adopting. At Norris McLaughlin, their attorneys are also actively encouraged to reach out. Zeng advises that it's important to be mindful of the different ways people communicate. She tells practice groups that "some people like to be contacted by text, others by phone and others by email. By reaching out to them in their preferred format, it really shows a sense of caring and connection."

You should be in consistent touch with your contacts, including both clients and referral sources. Personalized emails that check-in, that connect them with content and resources, and that see how you might help them are a great way to build on a relationship.

It can be helpful to set a daily calendar reminder for outreach, even if it's just for 10 or 15 minutes a day. "If you make it a habit now, this is something that's going to be more natural in the future. We don't know when things are going to go back to business as usual, but no matter how quickly or slowly it happens, this is a skill that will continue to be valuable", says Ryan.

Communicating

Beyond marketing and sales, communication is another important activity to address as you and your firm navigate the COVID pandemic. Communication should focus on:

• Getting relevant, accurate information shared as quickly as possible;
• Delivering intentional messaging from all staff members at all communication points, including in-person (or in-person virtually), written, and on social media; and
• Responding to external communications in a timely and consistent manner. Make sure you and all your staff are keeping predictable hours.

What's Your Endgame?

Your goal—all of our goals, in fact—is to make it out of the pandemic intact. But extreme situations like these give us all an opportunity to reevaluate what needs we meet and how we meet them.

This moment is an opportunity to deeply consider your law firm's approaches to their clients and community. Smart marketing, sales, and communication strategies recognize that there is a role for them in crisis response. This role often doesn't look for the bottom line, but instead looks at the needs of those who are being impacted.

Amanda Sexton is the founder of FocusWorks Marketing in Denville, an agency that uses the power of digital marketing to grow brands and businesses. Amanda is also the current Marketing Chair of New Jersey Legal Industry Providers.