You may have the best law firm in the world, but if clients don't know you exist, you won't attract business. Marketing your law firm is extremely essential because you need to broadcast your legal services constantly. You want to establish your law firm as the go-to law firm in the legal industry. Even by leveraging new marketing strategies for law firms, you'll outpace most of your competitors.
However, most attorneys and small law firms aren't taking an intentional marketing approach and rather engage in random marketing efforts. According to the American Bar Association, most small law firms lack a strategic marketing plan. This is self-sabotaging because it's critical for law firms to stay relevant in the legal industry and establish their marketing plan and brand voice.
Typically, lawyers have many marketing opportunities to network and expand their brand in a world that has gone virtual. To grow your legal practice, you must experiment with new marketing strategies and channels. After all, if you don't market your legal services, how would potential clients know your services are available? In this article, we'll cover some of the proven best ways of advertising your law firm.
How Do I Market My Law Firm?
Law firm marketing has gone through substantial changes in the last decade. Besides television, radio, and billboards, internet marketing has become a crucial part of the buyer’s journey of legal clients.
Whether through traditional media or digital advertising, marketing for law firms is the key to transforming your legal practice. However, it's imperative to note that there's no one-size-fits-all in law firm marketing strategy. You must consider how clients find legal representation when hiring an attorney in a given area of law. For instance, a couple going through a divorce or a child custody battle may turn to Google when looking for a family law lawyer or divorce lawyer, and they're likely to find legal representation by searching for a “family law lawyer near me.” Thus, to attract more clients, you must market your legal services online.
You just need to tailor your law firm’s marketing strategy to the clients you serve and the realities of the market you're competing in. Here are 11 law firm internet advertising strategies that can drive traffic to your law firm's website, generate business and grow your legal practice.
1. Position Yourself as an Industry Leader
To position yourself as an industry leader and attract more clients, you must focus on internal and external SEO and inbound marketing. Further, your content marketing strategy should be guided by the needs of your ideal or target clients. Whether you're posting videos on your site or sending our monthly newsletters, your content must be tailored to your target audience's needs. Thus, setting yourself as a subject expert through creating high-quality content and experiences tailored to your clients is the most cost-effective way to market your law firm and attract more clients.
You can gain more traction by creating timely and educational blog articles about issues related to your legal practice. To broaden your social network, post these articles on law firm websites and social media sites, such as LinkedIn.
2. Focus on Getting More Referrals
Most law firms rely on referrals to attract new business; however, getting referrals is a daunting task. In recent years, law firm referral marketing is becoming increasingly challenging, especially with the challenges and rapid legal industry transformations brought about by the pandemic. Connecting with prospective clients, building relationships, and asking for referrals is more challenging than ever—but it’s possible.
For a referral-based legal practice, it's essential that your firm's website be clean, modern, and it should work on both desktop and mobile devices. To get more referrals, do a lot of cross-referrals and have a strong referral network. Blogging, speaking at symposiums, teaching, and being a regular guest on talk radio can help you secure more referrals.
Lawyer referral marketing requires a ton of effort, but referrals are one of the most effective, affordable, and sustainable ways to drive more potential clients to your law firm.
3. Don’t Underrate the Power of Word-Of-Mouth
Word-of-mouth is one of the best traditional marketing strategies for lawyers because past clients are the best source of securing new clients. In every industry, word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertisement and the biggest compliment. In the middle of working and managing cases, going to trial, managing staff, and the many other hats that law firm managers and owners wear, you may not have time to focus on client relationships to encourage referrals by word of mouth.
However, if your clients are happy and satisfied with the services you offer, they'll most probably refer your legal services to their family, friends, and colleagues. Thus, it's essential to think about a client relationship management strategy that can help you build loyalty and improve your law firm’s reputation. This is the first step in creating a solid word-of-mouth marketing strategy and attracting new clients.
4. Don't Forget Online Reviews
The internet is a crucial tool for consumers. In fact, 91% of consumers aged 18-34 trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from friends, family, or colleagues. What will potential clients find when they search your law firm on Google? This may have a significant impact on whether they'll consider doing business with you.
By claiming your Avvo profile or Yelp profile, for instance, you can post important information about your legal practice, including your law firm's name, address, phone number, and even rates. Plus, you can monitor your lawyer reviews and overall online rating. Further, focus on the SEO of your website and make sure all the most important directories out there have accurate listings for your firm.
Online reviews can help prospective clients get to know your law firm and the legal services you offer, but reviews have to be done right. Knowing attorney advertising rules keeps your clients safe, expands your audience reach, and grows your law firm.
A solid online reputation is crucial for long-term growth. For more help with online reviews for your law firm, contact GoEngine Marketing. From law firm SEO to internet marketing strategies and technology updates, we can help your law firm meet the needs of your current clients.
5. Build a High-Quality Website that Convinces Visitors to Hire You
Your firm's website is the foundation of all your legal marketing activities. At one point, a potential client or an attorney referral will visit your website and your website will be the first impression the visitor has about your law firm.
The impression your site leaves is only one part of the equation because the messaging is essentially the most crucial aspect of your firm’s website. The website's aesthetics play a crucial role in delivering this message; however, “a beautiful website” isn't the goal—sending a clear message about your law firm is the goal.
As the cost of building a website for a law firm continues to go down, it has never been so easy to get a high-quality website without having to spend a fortune.
However, don't make visitors dig around to determine what areas of law you practice. If possible, visitors should be able to figure out what you do and who you represent without scrolling or hovering over navigation items.
It's essential to cover all of your bases. Further, make sure that each area of legal practice has its dedicated page on your website. The page should be accessible via the navigation and boxes on the home page. Also, make sure that your developer creates a sticky header and the navigation shouldn’t disappear when leads scroll down the page. This will make sure that visitors can get to your areas of practice pages easily.
Further, it's imperative to note that it's not enough to just say “I’m a workers’ compensation lawyer.” Explain to the potential clients why they should hire you. Are you the more experienced in your legal practice area? Do you have a track record of recovering large settlements? Essentially, explain what makes you unique and what differentiates you from other attorneys.
Your website shouldn't be shy about convincing your target audience that you're the attorney they need to contact. Also, your website should have clear call-to-action buttons. For instance, if you're a personal injury lawyer, your personal injury law firm site must have the "contact us now" buttons and contact forms all over the site and a phone number in the header.
6. Invest in Law Firm SEO
It’s no secret that clients are turning to Google more to search for attorneys. Search engine optimization (SEO) can increase the chances of being the law firm these clients find when they’re researching their specific legal issues or when they explicitly look for a lawyer.
For digital marketing, there are two fundamental principles: Have a valuable website and high-quality valuable content. If you can show your value instead of describing it, prospective clients will flock to your law firm.
Thus, you should in SEO taking steps to build your internal SEO and external SEO. You should have videos on your website introducing who you are and offering free information to prospective clients. Investing in freemium services is one of the most essential things you can do to offer value to your target audience and attract more clients. By offering valuable information to potential clients for free through form contracts, legal research, and instructional videos, you’ll realize that this not only increases your search engine marketing but also attracts a lot of clients.
However, it's essential to note that simply writing lots of blog articles won't help your SEO, contrary to what most believe. The goal of writing blog content for your site is to have content relevant to the problems and questions potential clients have, show that you have the expertise to help them, and get in front of them early in searching for a solution to their legal problems.
7. Display Advertisements for Law Firms
Banner ads or display ads are the oldest types of online advertising. However, these ads don’t perform particularly well when delivered to cold traffic but are extremely effective when used for retargeting.
Retargeting involves delivering display ads and video ads to people that have previously visited your website or engaged with your ads.
Retargeting visitors who have engaged with your website in the past can help consider contacting your firm if they haven’t done so already. People don’t fill out contact forms or call because of many reasons and your retargeting ads may remind them they need to take action.
For instance, you can run a Google Ad campaign for your surrounding counties—any time a potential client performs a Google search for personal injury lawyers in your county, they see your website. This can help you produce a surge in new client intakes.
8. Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Lawyers
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) on the Google Ads platform will get your phone ringing faster than any advertising channel out there. Unlike traditional advertising, which takes a long time to build a brand, and SEO can take weeks or even years to bring in clients, PPC works instantly.
For an effective PPC strategy, work with a high-quality PPC management service.
With PPC, also referred to as paid search, you bid on search terms and pay only when people click on those keywords.
Attorneys have realized that PPC works like a charm—thus they bid up the costs of clicks often. This has made some areas of law very costly.
However, it's essential to note that your colleagues are working with marketing agencies that know what they’re doing. If a click costs $100, it’s certainly yielding a return on ad spend, making it a worthwhile investment.
9. Facebook Advertising for Lawyers
Although Facebook ads are extremely effective in converting leads that match their targeting abilities, they can't target people who are currently looking for your legal presentation.
Thus, Facebook ads are like display ads because they're best leveraged to retarget visitors and those that have already interacted with your site or landing pages.
For example, a lead may have come to a specific page on your law firm's site through a paid ad or an organic search, but they didn't contact you. Through retargeting marketing campaigns, you can go back in front of these leads and convince them to take some action. Facebook has many useful options that can you can leverage while retargeting.
For example, Facebook Messenger ads allow Facebook users to chat with someone from your law office, ask questions they have, and even schedule a consultation.
Also, Facebook ads allow you to share lead forms using paid advertisements. This makes collecting information from potential leads easy because everything will be pre-filled using Facebook’s information.
If you leverage Facebook targeting calls effectively and get creative with your ad targeting, you can get in front of potential clients if you practice specific areas of law. For instance, you can target people going through a divorce who could an attractive audience for a family law attorney.
Further, it's essential to note that social media marketing is the future for law firms' marketing because many people perform research on their mobile devices. If you leverage social media marketing properly, you may get significant clients from paid social media marketing efforts on Facebook, all while spending minimal money on marketing.
10. Leverage Offline/Outdoor Advertising
Advertising your law firm doesn't need to be done only online. However, offline marketing differs from digital marketing because it's primarily focused on brand building and not direct response.
Thus, an attorney who puts up billboards throughout a city may create an awareness of his or her legal practice and an association between his or her name and a specific area of law. What may not happen is that this attorney will put up a billboard and many potential clients see the billboard for the first time and immediately call.
With mass media advertising, typically it takes months, if not years, to see a return on your offline advertising spend. This differs from PPC advertising, which can drive leads almost immediately.
However, this doesn't mean that offline advertising won't work. If you're marketing to the public, offline marketing can work if done right.
The difference is that offline advertising takes time, and it's essential that you get your positioning and messaging right. Also, you must approach outdoor advertising as a long-term marketing strategy and not a short-term marketing solution.
11. Leverage Email Marketing
When marketing your law firm you’ll be engaging in PPC, SEO, social media marketing, and other types of marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site. However, not everyone who visits your law firm's website will hire you that day. For example, your blog post on “Common slip and falls in Chicago” may have shown up in a search and caught the eye of a prospective client… but they may not be ready to pick up the phone and call a personal injury attorney (yet).
You must have another way to collect their information and remain on top of their mind until they’re ready to hire a personal injury lawyer. The best way to achieve that is through email marketing.
Typically, an email marketing strategy includes:
- A means through which you can collect contact information and email addresses, and
- A system and routine where you communicate regularly with your increasing audience
To create a solid email marketing strategy, you need a thoughtful process. You should have an email list that has the email addresses of everyone that reaches out to your law firm. The email list collection should be built into your initial intake process.
You should start by writing and sending regular newsletters to your database of contacts. You can send these newsletters monthly, bi-monthly, or even weekly, and they should educational. Your newsletters should include:
- Excerpts of or links to your most recent blog posts and articles
- What’s new with your law firm or “In the News” items and links to press releases
- Commentary on a recent court ruling or decision
- Frequently asked questions by your current clients.
Further, the layout and style of your newsletter should match the look and feel and branding of your website.
Get Help From The Experts
As an attorney, first, you must determine what you and your firm stand for. Create a solid brand identity that helps you leverage traditional marketing strategies. Write your internet marketing plan and know-how impactful you can be in your industry, which directly influences your firm's branding. After this is done and solidified, experiment with trusted traditional marketing strategies, such as billboards, postcards, email, radio, and virtual networking sessions, and you find that advertising your business was a worthy investment.
Also, it's essential to understand what each marketing platform excels at and crafting a marketing strategy accordingly. With that knowledge, you can meet a law firm marketing company that can help execute your complete marketing strategy.
At GoEngine Marketing, we’ve helped thousands of law firms create and execute effective law firm internet marketing strategies. We know what works and what doesn’t. We’ve seen success in law firms with digital marketing campaigns ranging from simple to sophisticated… and everything in between. To schedule a free initial consultation, contact our law firm marketing agency today at (864) 300-0344, or chat with us online to learn how we can help.