Grund & Leavitt
Modernizing a respected family law firm's digital presence through local search optimization, content strategy, and staff training across three Illinois locations.
When it comes to marketing digital and online technologies, law firms are conservative and intentionally behind the times. There are legal concerns and privacy requirements to consider; but when it comes to online visibility, those are hurdles, not roadblocks.
Lawyers already use technology in many forms like form automation, email marketing, blogging and website development. Grund & Leavitt felt the need to notch up their online presence, so they tapped Birk Creative to lead them to innovate.
“What we did with them was very real, fundamental work, like tuning up a car,” says Birk Creative founder and President, JinJa Birkenbeuel. “They’re now way ahead of their competition when it comes to location-based marketing. When your busy with clients and new business and work, it’s a grind to keep up with technological change. So in order to evolve, you first have to recognize unique and unconventional opportunities and then have the courage to move forward and try new things.”
The Challenge
The Assignment
Birk Creative’s relationship with Grund & Leavitt, a highly respected private, family law firm with three locations in Illinois, began when the firm asked for management consulting help to educate and train them on change as well as update their website, a task that Birk Creative agency has extremely high competency.
“This assignment centered around improving Grund & Leavitt’s digital mindset, provide change management process for their staff to improve content workflow and online presence by optimizing their digital properties for search. Getting to their “why” as well as their website up to date would be critical for online visibility which makes it better for client and talent acquisition,” says Birkenbeuel.
The Solution
The team at Birk Creative conducted a multi-angled digital audit of the firm’s online presence. This work included a social media analysis and strategy, even making the firm’s social media channels were secured.
“Having your company’s social media channels claimed and owned is like maintaining a piece of real estate: You buy it, take care of it and you take control of how your property looks to the public,” says Birkenbeuel. “You can now find Grund & Leavitt everywhere online. They are searchable from each location now have full access and control over their online listings. Photos of the lawyers, hours, locations, holiday hours are all listed publicly. This creates high credibility and trust when potential clients are looking for legal representation.”
Birk Creative’s senior writers also conducted a thoughtful content and structural analysis on the website, identifying opportunities to enhance each partner’s story and making it consistent across multiple channels. Birk Creative provided online training to in-house staff so they could maintain all facets of the online experience.
“We’ve given them a road map and showed them how to make it work, a process that we deploy for all of our clients,” says Birkenbeuel. “We prefer that our happy clients have freedom and control over their own intellectual property.”
Birk Creative relies on smart tools like Google Analytics to improve SEO and understand traffic patterns on a website. An opportunity was discovered to make all of the firms’ locations highly searchable and visible across the Internet. Grund & Leavitt’s new online listings were created with high quality photos, proper addresses and relevant content aligned with firm strategy and goals.
“We maximized their Google My Business pages,” says Birkenbeuel. “We created the full suite of their listings. People searching for them can get driving directions, office hours, contact information and check out the partners who work there. This information didn’t exist for the firm before.”
The Result
Birk Creative delivered a full management strategy and implementation deck, along with a solidified location and search marketing strategy. Grund & Leavitt is now perfectly positioned to use their online listing for more extensive marketing opportunities like this.