I recently saw a billboard advertisement that read “The beer you’d want to have a beer with” next to a photo of a Miller Lite can. Without saying much– or even being logical– I was able to associate drinking a Miller Lite with feelings of familiarity, ease, and fun.
This billboard is a great lesson in the power of brand personality. How can your website quickly evoke positive emotions and turn potential clients into paying clients? Read on for why brand personality is important to the functionality of your firm’s website, how to create a brand personality, what website design elements matter, and common mistakes to avoid.
Why do lawyers need a brand personality?
A brand personality is the set of characteristics you attribute to that brand. For a typical business, this is curated to give a humanistic quality to the brand that will help the consumer connect with it emotionally. For lawyers, the goal of a brand personality is to communicate who you are and who you serve.
On your firm’s website, your brand personality should connect potential clients with your practice emotionally and quickly foster the trust and confidence that is necessary to convert them into a paying client. Without a strong brand personality, your website will have to work harder to evoke these same emotions for your potential clients and might be less consistent in targeting your ideal client.
How to create a brand personality
When considering a brand personality for yourself, it’s helpful to recall why you became a lawyer. Why did you choose your practice area, or what are your goals for your clients? Outlining your values when building your brand personality will help to understand what your ideal client values and foster cohesive messaging.
Considering your ideal client’s preferences, behaviors, and expectations are all important to developing your client persona and making branding decisions that resonate with your potential clients. The more you understand your ideal client, the easier it will be to solidify your brand personality and apply this to your marketing.
Website design elements that contribute to your brand personality
The goal of your firm’s website is to immediately convey the tone and purpose of your practice. A strong brand personality aids potential clients in understanding who you are and how you can help them with their legal issue.
Website design elements such as colors, font, layout, and images all contribute to your brand personality. For example, personal injury lawyers tend to make design decisions that are bold and strong to center their messaging around how they are aggressive when fighting for their clients. This may include a more traditional, bold color scheme such as blue and white or red and black that will evoke emotions of power and competency.
In addition, a family law attorney may want to associate their brand personality with different emotions such as security and trustworthiness. To achieve this, they may use more inviting colors such as greens and blues or display specific images that best represent their goals for their clients.
Design assets such as your website or logo are the physical elements that determine how potential clients will perceive your brand. An effective logo doesn’t just look good but also makes sense to your brand personality and who you’re targeting with your marketing. LawLytics members can choose from a variety of unique, customizable, and legal-specific logo options for their practice to jumpstart their website’s brand personality.
Common mistakes when building your brand personality
It’s easy to get distracted by attorneys that inspire you or the competition that is performing well when making decisions about your brand personality. You want to consistently target your ideal client, and it’s hard to not look to those around you for design cues. However, it will not serve your firm long term to make design decisions based on trends rather than truth.
Avoid design decisions that don’t fit with your industry or practice area. An employment law attorney likely won’t benefit from having a cursive font on their website and an immigration lawyer doesn’t need images of car wrecks.
Nailing a brand personality that feels true to yourself and your firm is the best use of your time in the long term. In all future marketing decisions or website design refreshes, you will be able to easily revisit your brand plan to help guide your choices. This also helps you to deliver consistent messaging to potential clients across multiple touch points that quickly builds the trust and confidence they need to make their decision to hire you.
LawLytics makes website design choices and changes easy
With the LawLytics platform, it is easy to modify your website to ensure it aligns with your brand personality. You’re in control to quickly switch fonts, colors, and even request a design refresh for your website at any time.
If you’re not yet a member, you can go from having no logo or brand story to a new, legal-specific website that converts in as little as two weeks. We build the site for you, and provide expert support each step of the way to ensure your brand personality is authentic to your firm. To see it in action, request an interactive demo.
