As Alternative Business Structures and changes to regulation for solicitors take hold, the importance of branding to the success of law firms and legal websites has never been higher.
During the course of your online marketing campaigns and your law firm website’s internet presence, threats to the reputation and legitimacy of your brand must be identified and handled swiftly to protect one of the most important assets you have – you and your solicitors’ status in the eyes of your potential clients.
“Unauthorised association” is becoming an increasingly common problem for online brands. Using a combination of Google AdWords pay per click campaigns and website design, unscrupulous marketers are finding that, if they can replicate the look and feel of a website while appearing the top of a Google ranking page for that website’s name via paid advertisements, they can steal website traffic and future clients from that unsuspecting website for themselves.
With respect to brand reputation management for law firms, unauthorised association can have the following effects;
- The client is deceived into visiting a website that they do not want to visit
- The original website is deprived of traffic and clients who they may have reasonably expected to gain
- The law firm’s reputation may be damaged when the offending website is of poor quality
As you can see, the dangers of unauthorised association are real and can be very damaging to legal websites and the brands they represent. This is also an issue that we at Quinn Wilson Associates have personal experience in, as the repeated attempts of a company called Solicitors Online Marketing to associate themselves with our brand prove, using the same techniques described above.
Luckily there are steps you can take and if your law firm website has been the victim of unauthorised association, we strongly advise you to contact one of our online reputation experts on 020 8956 2242 so that the necessary steps toward safeguarding your law firm’s reputation are taken. Alternatively, please feel free to take a free brand management review if you are unsure about whether your law firm’s brand is secure or not, or read more about our solicitors online marketing services here.
