Legal marketing today looks wildly different from a few years ago, and yet somehow fundamentally the same. AI has restructured how your clients find you via search. Marketing channels have evolved. What worked reliably in 2022 looks very different today. Blink, and you miss even more change. According to HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report, nearly 30% of marketers are already reporting decreased search traffic as a direct result of AI-generated answers. And 40% are actively updating their strategies in response. Legal marketing is absolutely no exception.
There is more noise to cut through on LinkedIn and a constantly evolving algorithm to contend with. There are more marketing tools to evaluate and the legal events landscape has become more saturated than ever. Your offering that resonated with clients two years ago may no longer reflect what they need now.
All in all, there are more decisions to make about where to focus your limited time and budget. And yet the fundamentals of good legal marketing strategy have not changed: you need to make decisions based on data: what is working, what’s not and why.
In practice, data-driven marketing means regular and honest evaluation of your channels, your offers, and your positioning – then taking strategic and purposeful action.
In this blog, I am talking you through a review of what’s working and what isn’t, how I approach this at Saltmarsh Marketing and what my own marketing strategy looks like as a result, at the mid-point of 2026.
Stop, evaluate and listen… to what your marketing data is telling you
You most likely have more data at your disposal than you know what to do with. But a meaningful data review does not need to be complex. Because then you won’t actually do it. Here’s the questions I ask myself and get my clients to answer:
- Which channels are generating enquiries?
- Where is your content performing well in search, and where has it dropped off?
- What questions are your clients asking you in initial consultations and enquiries, that your content is not yet answering?
- Are your offers still meeting the needs of your clients?
Do your offers still meet the market?
One of the most valuable things a regular marketing review can do is help you establish whether your services are still aligned with what your clients need. The legal market has changed and effective marketing starts with listening. A product or service that was a great fit for you and your clients last year may not serve either of you today. Your clients’ priorities may have changed or even your own business goals or ideal ways of working may look very different today.
That’s why I advocate for regular research, reflection and constant conversations with peers and clients. Keeping a finger on the pulse of your industry’s trending topics, biggest challenges and most exciting changes means making sure your offerings are relevant, timely and needed.
Try asking yourself:
- What problems are my clients talking about most often – to me, with each other, on social media?
- Which of my offers get the quickest yes and feel the easiest to sell?
- What projects drain my time or no longer feel aligned with my business goals?
What I have seen is that clients are more budget-conscious and are doing more preliminary research before they engage. They are often more informed about their options, and have likely been ‘lurking’ on your content for much longer.
That means the way you position and price your services matters just as much as the quality of those services. A regular review of your offer – what it includes, who it is for, how it is priced, and how it is communicated – should be part of any meaningful marketing strategy review.
What’s working in legal marketing right now?
Strategy days and focused time out
I’ve noticed that one of the clearest shifts in what legal founders and marketers are investing in is the demand for structured, focused time away from the day-to-day to think about their marketing. There is so much noise, distraction and relentless pressure, and carving out proper time for strategy has become one of the things my clients have valued the most in 2026.
The service that has grown most consistently in the last twelve months is Direction in a Day. It’s one focused day out of the office, sitting down together with a fresh pair of eyes on your business and marketing. The busier and more overwhelming the world has become, the more valuable this focused strategy time has become.
When legal founders are constantly pulled in many different directions, it makes sense to offer a service that gives focus, clarity and direction in one day. What’s more, there is value in turning that strategy into a documented marketing strategy.
So the question is: what do your clients need right now and do you have a service offering that aligns with that need?
LinkedIn: still the channel for legal professionals
LinkedIn remains the highest-value organic channel for business lawyers and legal businesses. This means treating it as the business-critical tool it is, with a clear strategy for your personal brand, your content and your outreach.
LinkedIn newsletters in particular are performing well right now as a format – I do a best-of round-up on my email marketing and it consistently reaches an engaged audience through the feed, and through notifications.
LinkedIn training and lawyers for law firms used to be a harder conversation to have. In 2026, they are now actively sought after. Senior leaders are starting to finally see that LinkedIn is a commercial opportunity, and they are investing in it.
So the lesson here is: sometimes your expertise and services need time because the market also has to be ready for it. In 2017, it wasn’t. No matter how ahead of the curve I was in my thinking. I have been talking about LinkedIn and offering LinkedIn training for years now, because I had a clear vision. Patience and consistency of message is now starting to pay off because I also tested the market, listened to it and adapted where necessary.
Events: you need a strategy now more than ever
The legal events landscape has become saturated. There are so many conferences, roundtables, and networking evenings competing for the same audience that it can be hard to know where to spend your time and your budget. The key is to be more selective and to make each event work harder.
My own approach is to identify a small number of annual non-negotiable events and build my year around them. Courageous Leaders, for example, is a smaller event of around 100 people where the value lies in the quality of conversation with fellow leaders. Legal Geek in October each year is where I can guarantee seeing over 70% of my network in two days. Two very different events, attended for very different reasons, but both come with very specific merits and business objectives.
In 2026, there has been an ever-growing appetite for in person events as we seek more human connection as an antidote to a noisy, overwhelming online space. So if you are going to invest in events as part of your legal marketing strategy, the return on that investment is dependent on what you do before, during and after the event.
That means:
- Creating content before the event that highlights your involvement and creates engagement around the event
- Using the event itself to generate material; insights, takeaways, connections – these can keep the conversation going
- Repurposing your post-event LinkedIn content into newsletter content and follow-up conversations, where relevant
Done well, a single event can fuel plenty of credible, relevant content. Done without focus and intention? A day out of the office, a handful of conversations and a few pages of notes that go nowhere.
For a full breakdown of how to build a legal event strategy that uses time and budget best – including how to prepare, how to show up on the day, and how to keep the momentum going afterwards – get stuck into this in depth blog: Events and networking: Crucial for your legal marketing but a strategy is key.
Pricing for value in a cost-conscious market
This year, I’ve experienced more individuals backing themselves and investing in their own development and visibility because law firms are not prioritising it for them.
I price for the value I deliver; I am senior, with decades of experience and I give a lot in every engagement. But I am also honest about the commercial reality my clients are operating in. I introduced payment plans so that clients can pay over time. Removing this barrier to investment is a win-win for both.
So the question to ask yourself is: what are the main reasons your clients hesitate or take longer than you’d like to work with you?
Building a data-driven legal marketing strategy
Review your channels against real outcomes
The key for any data-driven legal marketing review is about focusing in on what is producing enquiries, conversations, and clients. You do not need to be everywhere. You need to be where your clients are, using the time, skills and resources available to you.
My core marketing channels are LinkedIn, events and email marketing. I wish I’d embraced email marketing sooner than mid-2024. Whichever way you look at it, social media is rented land.
For each channel you are currently using, ask yourself:
- Is this generating enquiries or just activity?
- Is the time and resource investment proportionate to the return?
- Has this channel changed in the last twelve months and what do I need to change?
Audit your positioning and messaging
Positioning is one of the most overlooked elements of a marketing strategy review. It defines your reputation in your industry, the quality and quantity of the referrals you receive, and relevance for your clients. The good and bad news is that this work is never really finished! Because as business owners and brand owners, we should always be evolving.
It is easy to keep communicating what you have always communicated without checking whether it still resonates with the clients you most want to work with.
A positioning audit does not need to be a major undertaking. It means asking yourself honestly:
- What do I want to be known for and referred for now?
- How is what I offer unique?
- Do my marketing messages reflect that?
- Have my business goals or audience needs evolved?
- How do I need to evolve my offers, pricing or marketing?
Here’s a specific example from my own Saltmarsh Marketing strategy. As 2025 developed, I reflected on the kind of work that I wanted to do and that my decades of legal marketing experience was best positioned for. The answer? Strategic, not executional marketing. Brand-building and shaping with a seasoned lens of creativity. My time and my fees are no longer best-served doing the ‘doing’. They are best served collaborating with you as your marketing partner.
And in line with my own evolved positioning as a marketing strategist , I had to reposition who I was speaking to: the legal world’s doers, thinkers and change makers – the ones transforming the industry from within. And importantly, those who are serious about being seen and serious about growth.
Understand how AI is changing your clients’ search behaviour
Any data-driven legal marketing strategy today needs to account for the shift in how clients find information. AI search tools are now part of how your potential clients do preliminary research. They are asking research and intent-based questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google. AI Overviews and language models are providing more information than ever to your ideal clients, before they even visit any website.
That means your content strategy needs to work for AI search as well as traditional search. The content that performs well in AI results is authoritative, specific, well-structured, and written in plain English. It answers questions directly. It demonstrates expertise through substance rather than assertion.
In need of a detailed guide on how AI search works and how to structure your content for best results? Get stuck into this: AI driven search in legal marketing: How to stay visible in the age of AI search This covers Google’s AI Overviews, FAQs, content structure, and the specific content types that perform best in AI-generated answers.
The questions your legal marketing strategy review should answer
A useful annual or biannual marketing strategy review for a legal business should be able to answer the following:
- Which channels generated the most valuable enquiries in the last twelve months?
- Has our positioning shifted, and does our messaging still reflect it accurately?
- Are our offers still aligned with what our clients need and what the market will support?
- How has AI changed the way our clients find us, and are we visible in those places?
- Are we using AI tools effectively in our own marketing, and is that producing better results?
- What content has performed best, and what does that tell us about what to produce next?
- Are there channels we are investing in that are not generating a return?
- What does our pipeline data tell us about where clients are coming from and why they chose us?
Legal marketing strategy review: your checklist
- Review your top three channels by enquiry, over the last six to twelve months
- Dig into the data; check your Google Analytics and LinkedIn content analytics, and analyse your best performing emails by clicks and opens
- Assess whether your own website and LinkedIn profile still reflects your positioning and messaging
- Decide whether your current offers still meet the needs and budget of your target clients, and whether you still want to deliver them
- Ask your AI tool what questions it is most frequently asked in your area of law
- Identify content that can be repurposed across LinkedIn, email, and your website
- Review your events calendar: are your chosen events still in line with your marketing strategy and objectives?
- Audit your pricing: does it reflect the value you deliver, and are there structural barriers to yes? If so, can you re-package your offers to make them more financially accessible?
- Set a date for your next strategy review!
Final thought
What’s working in legal marketing right now might not be what’s working in 6-12 months. Things are changing quickly in legal, marketing and tech; going behind the scenes and digging into the data on a regular basis will keep your business sustainable.
You don’t need a big budget to do this strategy and analysis work and you certainly don’t need fancy tools. All you need is a commitment to doing the boring, un-sexy things like consistency, repetition and rigour. This is what will help you win in a world of AI content and generic marketing.
And if you want structured, focused time and space to do exactly that, my Direction in a Day gives you a focused, documented strategy review with me as your senior marketing partner. You leave with a clear picture of what is working, what needs to change, and where to focus your efforts next.
Key takeaways
- The pace of change in AI, platforms, and client behaviour means your legal marketing strategy needs need to be reviewed regularly
- Data-driven decisions start with an honest evaluation of which of your channels are generating meaningful results (and which aren’t)
- AI search has changed how clients find legal help; your content strategy needs to account for this
- LinkedIn remains the highest-value organic channel for legal professionals and should be treated as a business-critical tool
- Events are worth investing in only when you have a plan to make them work before, during, and after the day itself
- Pricing for your value and offering payment flexibility is a valuable response to a budget-conscious market
- Repurposing existing content is one of the most effective ways to extend reach without producing more from scratch
- A regular strategy review should include an honest audit of whether your offers, positioning, and messaging still reflect what your clients need
FAQs
What does data-driven legal marketing actually mean?
It means making marketing decisions based on evidence rather than habits or assumptions. That includes tracking which channels generate enquiries, understanding where your content performs in search, knowing which offers resonate with clients, and reviewing that picture regularly enough to act on it.
How often should a legal business review its marketing strategy?
At minimum, twice a year but in a landscape moving as quickly as this one, a lighter quarterly check-in makes sense alongside a deeper bi-annual review.
Which marketing channels work best for legal businesses in 2026?
LinkedIn remains the strongest organic channel for legal professionals, particularly for building visibility and authority with business clients. Email marketing gives you full control over your contacts as unlike social media, it’s not ‘rented land’. AI search is an increasingly important discovery channel that requires content to be structured and written differently from traditional SEO. Events can be valuable but only when they are selective and supported by a content plan that extends their reach. The right channel mix depends on your practice area, your clients, and where your data shows results are actually coming from.
How do I know if my legal marketing strategy needs updating?
Start by asking whether you can answer the basic questions: where are my enquiries coming from, what content is performing, and are my offers still aligned with what clients need? If you cannot answer those questions confidently, or if your strategy was built on assumptions that are more than twelve months old, it likely needs a review.
How does AI fit into a legal marketing strategy?
AI affects legal marketing strategy in two ways. First, it has changed how clients find information: AI search tools are now part of the preliminary research process, which means your content needs to be structured and written for AI visibility as well as traditional search. AI tools can also make your marketing more efficient and consistent when used well but only if you invest in training and configuring them properly rather than treating them as plug-and-play.
About Saltmarsh Marketing
Saltmarsh Marketing was set up to give legal founders, leaders and in-house marketing teams access to serious marketing support without the agency overheads.
We build marketing strategies that are commercially grounded, clearly positioned, and built to drive growth.
We specialise in helping legal professionals get purposefully visible, not by being louder but by building trust, earning a reputation and reaching the right people.
Find out more at saltmarsh.marketing or book a call with Helen to talk through what we could do together.