Merging Online and In-Person Branding

As our digital world continues to grow, so should your firm’s digital presence. You may already be using traditional marketing tools such as brochures or print ads, but it is important to also use online platforms to market your firm. When using a variety of tools to advertise, it is crucial to have cohesive branding to increase recognition and trust in your firm. There are many ways to merge your online and in-person branding to benefit your firm.

The Importance of Cohesive Branding

At first thought, branding might simply seem like designing an eye-catching logo. However, effective branding goes far beyond a company’s logo. Building a cohesive and recognizable brand requires you to have consistent color schemes, fonts, and voice throughout the platforms where you are advertising. Cohesive branding across all platforms your firm is using can lead to many benefits, including:

• Reduced client confusion. Inconsistent branding is confusing to customers. Consider a potential client who picks up your firm’s brochure and wants to learn more by finding your website. They search your firm’s name and find a website that looks completely different from the brochure, and now they’re unsure if they’ve found the correct page. Even if they ultimately determine it is your firm, their sense of trust could be reduced due to the uncertainty and confusion they were initially feeling. Having a cohesive brand helps your firm make a good first impression on potential clients.
• Save time and effort. Once you’ve created a cohesive branding plan and accompanying graphics, you can save time when creating marketing materials. No need to spend hours choosing a font or color scheme every time you create a mailer — these decisions become automatic when your branding is clear and cohesive.
• Increased brand recognition. An effective branding strategy makes your firm visually recognizable even if your logo or business name isn’t present. Consider Disney or Coca-Cola, for example. Their iconic fonts would be recognizable to most people, even if they didn’t spell out their company names. As a law firm, you could use consistent image formats on social media posts or find a unique but easily readable font to use in your marketing.

Making Changes to Branding

Just as cohesive branding is important, so is regular assessment of your brand. Assessing your brand ensures everything is up to date and gives the correct impression to clients. There is nothing wrong with making necessary adjustments to your brand to reflect updates to your firm, as long as the updates are made across all forms of your branding. With the use of social media, emails, blogs, print advertisements, and in-person messaging to reach potential clients, making brand changes can be a cumbersome task. Marketing professionals can help determine which changes need to be made and can execute those changes on your firm’s behalf.

Ways to Combine Offline and Online Marketing

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket — use a mix of offline and online branding strategies to help your firm reach a wider audience. Better yet, combine online and offline marketing tactics to increase brand awareness and engagement and get people talking about your firm. There are many ways your firm could combine offline and online branding:

• Give people a reason to visit you online. Use your print campaigns to drive traffic to your website by including a call to action or a teaser that leaves people wanting more information. Calls to action could include entering a contest or signing up for a weekly newsletter with helpful legal tips, both of which will allow you to collect contact information.

  A teaser could be an impressive statistic specific to your firm, such as, “Do you know how many DUI defense cases we lost last year?” Then a QR code can take the reader to a landing page that says “ZERO” at the top. The page can provide information about what to do if you are arrested for a DUI.

• Let followers decide. Many people love giving their opinions and being involved in decisions. If you have a following on social media, post polls to let followers decide between two different options for your next billboard design or which updated logo to choose.
• Social media campaigns. If your firm is sponsoring an event or promoting at a festival, pass out affordable but functional promotional items that include your logo and a brand hashtag and encourage people to share on social media. Promotional items such as sunglasses, beverage holders, and fanny packs could all make their way into a photo easily without the poster even realizing they’re spreading awareness for your brand.
• Include digital contact information on print marketing. Include your website and social media handles on any print advertisements. This ensures clients will be able to find you online quickly rather than using a search engine to find your website or Facebook page.
• Combine offline and online marketing by hosting a giveaway where people enter on your website or by liking and sharing a social media post with their friends and followers. Put your firm’s logo on the prize and make sure it is something people will want to win and share. Popular giveaway items that can be branded include hard-shell coolers, bikes, or folding lawn chair sets.

Regardless of which tactic you choose to combine offline and online marketing, remember that also merging your offline and online branding is essential. A successful combination marketing campaign leads to increased brand recognition, which requires you to have cohesive branding across all your platforms.

Contact RizeUp Media Today

Ensuring your branding is consistent across platforms is crucial, but the process of creating that consistency can be difficult for already busy business owners. Merging online and offline branding is important for increasing trust, building brand recognition, and saving time. Once you’ve mastered cohesive branding, you can more easily develop marketing campaigns that will get people talking about your business.

At RizeUp Media, we are experts when it comes to building cohesive branding for law firms. For more information on how we can help you build a cohesive online and offline branding strategy, contact us today.