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Three client growth strategies for boutique law firms

In the perennial search for business growth, law firms cannot afford to ignore highly personalised digital marketing strategies that can help a firm stand out from the crowd, writes Trevor Withane.

In short

  • Client growth strategies will typically include a mix of traditional and digital techniques.
  • Hyper-personalised marketing through LinkedIn Ads presents an opportunity to better engage with clients and convert business leads.
  • Search-engine optimisation (SEO) strategies are critical to ensuring your firm is visible to prospective clients.

‘Growth’ is not a tactical business decision; rather, it is a cultural mindset to which leaders of boutique law firms must give credence.

Boutique law firms require effective and targeted client growth strategies to not simply survive, but thrive. Yet ‘growth’ is an elusive term that is multifaceted and deceptively intricate. Growth, in the context of legal services, could mean an uptick in headcount, expansion of practice areas, or an increase in the firm’s partners, to name just a few elements.  

This article will focus on client growth strategies that have and will drive Ironbridge Legal over the near and long term – and which may also be informative for other law firms.

Decoding client growth strategies

Client growth strategies simply refer to traditional and digital techniques – for instance, attending networking events, and conducting digital marketing – which enable law firms to grow their client base within a set time.

Successful strategies will consider:

  • the firm’s current ability to meet client demands
  • its sources of business
  • the pain points of its target audiences
  • the tangible and proven solutions the firm can offer prospective clients.

That said, a client growth strategy is doomed to fail if the firm’s leaders take the view that, ‘We’re good, business will come to us’. Applying this logic, each firm that is best in class, as recognised by Legal 500, Chambers and Partners etc, would possess a 100% market share for each segment in which it operates, and only a handful of law firms would exist in Australia.

This is far from the present market reality and such an attitude will ultimately see boutique firms stall, if not regress, in terms of headcount and matters handled per year.

Client growth strategy 1: Direct hyper-personalised marketing on LinkedIn
Direct hyper-personalised marketing is the future of business-to-business (B2B) marketing, particularly for boutique firms that position themselves as premium-elite boutiques. This technique involves designing a messaging pipeline, gathering the intended audience from LinkedIn, crafting messaging that is unique to each recipient, and then deploying the messaging, via LinkedIn, at scale.

Ironbridge Legal has used this technique with much success to generate inquiries from prospective clients and partners in our key overseas markets. For instance, we ran a campaign that had 600 people with whom we wished to speak, and 32.3% of those people accepted our invitation to connect, and 13.9% replied to one of the messages in our sequence.

The benefits of this strategy illustrate why it is effective. Most importantly, this technique allows firms to build stronger rapport with prospective clients as message recipients are not receiving painfully apparent hard-sales messages. Additionally, due to the sophisticated level of personalisation employed, each message comes across as bespoke and not automated. As such, a firm’s reputation and its audience’s perception of the quality of services that the firm delivers are preserved.

Furthermore, this technique provides a far greater return on investment than cold-email outreach (data from Bardeen AI reveals LinkedIn messages have a 5%-20% reply rate, while emails average between 1%-10%).

Client growth strategy 2 – Harnessing the power of LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads are a drastically under-utilised digital marketing tool that boutique firms should be leveraging to drive quantifiable client growth in 2025. Given that, according to Forbes, 15 million of the 16 million business professionals and tertiary students in Australia are on LinkedIn, it is imperative boutique firms utilise the full spectrum of marketing solutions LinkedIn offers.

At a high-level, LinkedIn Ads appear in four formats: sponsored content, sponsored messaging, dynamic ads and text ads. From a cost perspective, LinkedIn Ads operate on an objective-based pricing model, similar to Google Ads. The rationale for our positive outlook on LinkedIn Ads is two-fold.

First, an overwhelming majority of B2B marketers in a recent survey concur it produces leads for them. Second, LinkedIn Ads’ cost-per-lead is 28% lower than Google Ads, meaning it costs less to generate new business from LinkedIn than Google.

From our perspective, we see the most value in sponsored content and sponsored messaging ads. Specifically, we favour single-image, thought-leader and click-to-message ads which are forms of sponsored content ads; and conversation ads which are a form of sponsored messaging ads.

These ad types, while more sales-orientated, grow the firm’s presence without compromising its standing and reputation and reflect a client-centric marketing philosophy that aims to preserve prospective customers’ agency and empower them to engage with our firm in a manner that is of their choosing.

As to the broader benefits of LinkedIn Ads, compared with Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads provide the user with a far superior ability to target their audience, leading to a substantially improved ROI. By using ‘thought-leader’ ads, the firm can promote the thoughts of its key figures, enhancing their capability to bring in business.

This ad type also provides more extensive performance insights, as opposed to merely boosting the key figure’s posts via the firm’s company LinkedIn page. More broadly, like with Google Ads, LinkedIn ads have extensive performance-tracking capabilities, so a firm is readily able to determine how much new business it is generating from each advertising dollar spent.

Client growth strategy 3: Invest in SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO), a subset of search engine marketing, is a bedrock digital marketing strategy that any boutique firm can utilise to grow its client base.

SEO principally involves making targeted changes to a firm’s website and conducting key activities to increase the value of its website, from the perspective of Google’s search algorithm, to rank higher in search results. Today, a law firm that has a website that is not SEO-optimised is akin to having business cards with no company name or contact information. The result is likely to be the same – its prospective customers will not be able to find the firm.

The business case for investing in SEO has never been clearer. Data from Google Trends, a leading source of information for internet users’ demand for goods and services, highlighted that between January to mid-December 2024, the number of searches in Australia for ‘legal services’ increased by about 70%. This insight demonstrates that the demand for legal services in Australia increased during 2024.

That said, for boutique firms to benefit from this increase in demand, investment in SEO is critical as search users rarely look beyond the first page of search results.

A firm that invests in SEO can expect to see an increase in the amount of website traffic its website receives, and more lead inquiries. More broadly, SEO is crucial to enhancing a firm’s brand visibility. While an SEO strategy is costly and involves a longer process compared with paid ads, perhaps the better way for firms to view the value of SEO is to consider how much business the firm is losing by not optimising its website.  

Final remarks

Any client growth strategy is only as good as its plan. Boutique firms that rush in without considering their business plan, company values or conducting an audit into their firm’s market standing and performance are more likely to develop strategies that are ill-suited to the firm.

For instance, if the firm’s values include partners having significant involvement on each matter, a strategy which is predicated upon partners conducting business development activities will clash with the firm’s values. Crucially, firm leaders must also consider what objective(s) underpin the client growth strategies they have designed. These objectives should reflect the SMART philosophy – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-orientated.

As a concluding note, I would comment that it may be appropriate for your firm to seek assistance from external vendors to assist with your marketing and business development activities. That said, we are fortunate to have Matthew Gadd, our Business Development and Marketing Manager, lead our business development and marketing activities. I thank Matt for his input on this article.


Trevor Withane is the founder and principal of Ironbridge Legal and is a specialist commercial litigator and insolvency lawyer with deep experience in his areas of practice. Prior to founding Ironbridge Legal, Trevor was a partner of a successful Sydney-based boutique law firm.

www. ironbridgelegal.com.au