Legal marketing for divorce lawyers can be very competitive and difficult in most areas of the country, but it is not impossible to succeed if you are willing to work hard and do what it takes.
If you are you looking for ways to market your family law firm and increase your divorce caseload? you came to the right place. In this article, we will share some ideas of how to market your family law practice effectively.
Define Your Business Goals & Stick With Your Budget
The first step to getting started on this journey is defining your goals. It all comes to the numbers, you need to really understand your financials in order to have a successful family law firm.
Start simple and ask yourself the following: how much money do you need to pay the bills? How much do you need to break even? How much would you like to make in 6 months, 12 months, 2 years? you get the idea.
Once you know the amount of money you need, you can now figure out the number of clients you'll need each month in order to reach your financial goals. It could be 3, 5, 10, or 50 — it all depends on the size of your firm and the goals you have set for yourself.
Alright, we know now how many clients we need each month to be profitable. It's time to determine the budget we have to spend in order to bring the necessary business into our doors.
Again, not every firm has the same budget nor the same goals, this will vary depending on your specific situation. I will trust that you know how much money you can invest in the growth and future of your firm.
Getting More Divorce Clients for Free? The DIY Method
If you really want to go after new clients then you might need to start thinking about how you can become known within your community as the best divorce lawyer.
This could include joining professional organizations, speaking at events, writing articles for legal publications, volunteering, building up an online presence through social media, etc.
Once you have set a clear objective, you will need to determine the amount of time you plan on committing to this task. You don’t necessarily need to spend all day every day working on it, but you should put some time aside to work on your own marketing.
I suggest starting small by spending 30 minutes per week just doing research on your industry and creating content related to a variety of family law issues and divorce topics.
You can also build a blog or other forms of content marketing so people can find you when they are searching online. If you are serious about growing your practice, you must take action and stop waiting around. It won't be easy and it will take time, but it is definitely doable.
Know Your Competition
A very important step to legal marketing is to find out where your competition is located and what are they doing. This may seem obvious, but many attorneys don’t realize how easy this is to accomplish. You can use Google search to locate local listings for “divorce lawyer” and then click on each listing to see their contact information.
Once you know who your competitors are, you need to determine which ones they advertise with. Many law firms will list themselves with all the major advertising companies such as Yellow Pages, Avvo, and other similar portals.
Once you know who your competitors advertise with, you should make sure to include them in your own advertising campaign. If you are using social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., you can create ads that target your specific audience based on their location.
Is PPC Effective for Lawyers?
If I only had a nickel for every attorney telling me that PPC doesn't work and it's a waste of time and money.
I always follow up with this simple question, who ran your campaign(s)?
For the most part, I get answers as
- I tried it myself but it was too complicated and I stopped or
- I hired this guy on Fiverr and it was a flop or
- My cousin "the geek" told me he knew what he was doing
- My secretary/assistant was contacted by Google I was told it was the real deal
Trust me, I have heard it all.
Paid advertising is an elaborated and complicated system that if done properly can produce unimaginable results. The biggest problem is not choosing the right person, team, or agency to do the work.
Let me ask you something, would you trust a corporate lawyer to handle a divorce case on your behalf?
Me neither, unless is Harvey Specter — good luck
Word of advice: Hire a professional digital marking agency that specializes in the legal field to handle your PPC campaigns. It doesn't have to be us (although we both know you're thinking it 😉 it can save you thousands of dollars and countless hours of tedious work.
Besides, you became an attorney to practice law, not to do marketing. Leave that to the pros and focus on what you do best.
Best Family Law Marketing Ideas
The family law field is highly competitive. Many lawyers choose to specialize in divorce, child support, or adoption because these areas tend to generate the highest income potential. If you want to build a thriving family law practice, you'll need to differentiate yourself from competitors.
The legal profession has always had a reputation for being slow moving, expensive, and inaccessible. In recent years, however, things have started to change.
More lawyers are opening their practices to new technologies and using digital marketing services to connect with potential clients.
But, how do you get clients to hire you? What marketing strategies work best for family law firms?
Here are a few ways you can promote your family law services to the potential customers who need them:
Family law firm website design
To attract more clients, your family law firm's website should do more than just describe your legal background and summarize your legal practice areas. It must instill trust, tell prospective clients what sets you apart from your competitors, and even deliver some quality content.
Every law firm wants a nice and beautiful website, but the primary purpose of your online presence is to attract potential clients and boost profits. I'm not saying you can't get both but you should focus more on the performance than the looks.
Your family law firm's site should be designed with conversions in mind. Must be mobile-friendly, load faster, and be simple to navigate. Also, there should be a clear path on every page directing clients on how to contact your law firm like "call us now for a free consultation".
Use PPC Ads to Sign up Clients Quickly
If you’re trying to get more clients, you need a way to sign them up for your services quickly and easily. It can be hard to find the right solution that will work for you, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. Let me show you how to use pay-per-click (PPC) ads to get new clients signed up in no time at all!
The first thing you need to do is set up an account with Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Yahoo Ads to mention some options. We will be focusing on Google Ads since they own over 87% of the search engine real estate.
When creating your ad copy, keep it short and sweet. Your goal is to capture people’s attention and give them something compelling enough to convert them into paying clients.
Make sure you tell prospects exactly what you offer, why you provide better service than others and highlight any special features or benefits of working with you.
Next, add keywords relevant to your practice area and location. You want these to stand out so your ad gets seen by as many people as possible. In addition to these keywords, you also want to include negative keywords. These are words that are related to the type of services you provide but aren’t searched for frequently.
For example, if you specialize in divorce cases, you wouldn’t want to bid on terms like "child support" or "child custody" because most people searching for those types of family matters are looking for different services. This could lead to multiple issues like; lowering the quality of your ad and exhausting your budget on clicks that most likely won't get you the clients you're seeking.
Full disclosure... investing in PPC "does not guarantee" your campaigns will be successful.
It all starts with a good foundation, you need to know what keywords to target. Not only that, which keywords will produce the most clicks, the cost per click, what is the average CTR (Click Through Rate), weeding out all negative keywords, and monitoring your campaigns on a daily basis to make sure you don't end up like 90% of people that didn't get the results they were hoping.
The landing page, we cannot forget about the landing page. Where we will be sending people to learn about you and your services?
This is a very crucial part of the equation. If you don't have a solid landing page optimized for conversions you may as well start lighting your money on fire.
Make it easy for the user to contact you. When users land on your site make sure to implement opt-in forms and call-to-action buttons to encourage user interaction. Use testimonials from satisfied customers in order to build trust and credibility.
Local SEO for family lawyers
With family law, every practice area needs a focused and customized local SEO strategy. For instance, most clients that hire a family law lawyer want an attorney in their local area. Thus, keywords, such as “divorce attorney” may be crucial, but they're more relevant when combined with a county, city, state, or some other geographical identifier, such as “DuPage County divorce attorney” or “Cook County divorce lawyer.”
Maximize your local SEO efforts, including many of these local identifiers in your web content. Also, you must create and optimize lawyer directories and directory listings, especially your Google My Business listing profile, so that you rank in Google Maps searches.
Strategic content marketing
People going through different family matters are desperate for credible information. You can establish yourself as an authority in the family legal area and show off your personality through a robust content marketing campaign.
Start by creating engaging Area of Practice pages that describe your legal services. Further, schedule regular blog content that focuses on particular topics, such as customer questions, which will interest prospective clients and drive traffic with long-tail keywords.
Engaging video marketing
As a family lawyer, you can build a solid and lasting connection with your potential clients. In this practice area, your and your law firm's personality must shine through in your digital marketing efforts.
Video marketing is one of the best ways to highlight your law firm's personality and culture.
Adding videos on your blog, website, and social media channels can help potential customers get a feel of who you are, how you approach family law cases, and the way you'll treat them as clients.
Also, creating a robust video library can give prospective clients an avenue to educate themselves about their situation. This will save you time because clients will walk into your law office with some basic knowledge.
Social media marketing
Your potential clients are desperate for credible information. Social media is one platform you can leverage to deliver guidance, but you must approach it the right way.
The client journey is much longer for family law clients who weigh their legal options before contacting a law firm for practical advice.
Your social media accounts should give prospective clients the legal advice they need to make educated decisions and contact you when they're ready.
Even after a legal matter is resolved, clients may continue to follow you on social media to get information on things that could affect them in the future. Also, this keeps your law firm's name on top of their mind for potential referrals.
Search Engine Optimization for Divorce Attorneys
With search engine optimization for divorce attorneys, you must address both off-site and on-site optimization. The key aspects of these legal practice areas are On-Site optimization for family law marketing. Some of the key on-site SEO components that you must address include:
- Page title: You must optimize your page title using your primary keyword and head keywords. If you already have a strong brand presence, consider adding your brand to your page title.
- Meta description: Create a meta description that entices your target client to click on your website.
- H1 title: Optimize H1 titles with your primary keyword.
- H2 and other titles: Create subtitles that describe the content your target audience wants to read.
Must read: The importance of SEO for Lawyers
Calls to action and alt tags are also essential elements of on-site optimization. There are more on-site optimization parameters that you should address to succeed with your SEO efforts.
This includes creating a website that's easy to navigate and one that loads faster. Also, you must use HTTPS on your website, and internal linking.
Off-Site Optimization for family lawyers
Off-page SEO is also a crucial marketing strategy in family law marketing. This includes the content marketing strategy that we have discussed above.
Further, it also includes influencer outreach, link-building, social media marketing, and forum content creation. Essentially, off-page SEO optimization helps search engines, such as Google, understand what potential customers think about your legal practice. When you have quality links from authoritative websites pointing at your site, this boosts your website's search engine rankings. Some of the popular off-site SEO strategies include:
- Bookmarking and social networking;
- Forums and commenting;
- Brand mentions;
- Guest posts;
- Link building;
- Content marketing;
- Newsletters;
- Influencer outreach; and
- Questions & answers
Final Thoughts
We covered some of the most effective ways to market your law firm. It is now up to you to make the first move and apply our suggestions as your own.
Remember that your success depends on how well you execute your marketing plan. So, start today!
Have a question or need assistance? our experienced marketing experts help attorneys like yourself build a strong online presence that drives quality leads.
From beautiful websites that convert to SEO services to generate high-quality traffic to your business, we got you covered. For more information schedule a free strategy call with us — You'll know if we are a good fit in less than 30 minutes.