As of 2022, there are around 446,887 law firm businesses alone in the US. You may be a pioneer in your legal field, but to thrive in today’s digital world, you’ll need the help of online marketing, which is a completely different discipline. It is not enough to create a website for your law firm. To succeed against your competitors utilizing internet marketing to its greatest potential, you must employ the best marketing strategies available.
The finest legal company websites are topped by ASA Law Group, an Illinois worker’s compensation defense firm. Their well-established website highlights their customer-centric practices, which increase their user engagement.
In this blog, we will help you to create the best marketing strategy for your law firm. So the journey towards your success begins.
What Are The Best Practices in Law Firm Marketing?
65 percent of law firms spend the majority of their marketing expenditure on online marketing. Every credible brand strategy agency for law firms will create a detailed marketing roadmap before starting their marketing efforts. Therefore, it is crucial to understand everything that will happen between the process to stay on track and achieve your agency goals.
The best practices for your law firm marketing strategies are as follows:
Create A Structure Of Your Marketing Strategy
A well-planned structure can help you and your team stay on the same page on every step. In addition, it helps you to monitor your efforts easily and analyze your marketing results.
Make sure your marketing plan includes the following steps:
Define your goals
This point will answer only one question, and that is, “what does your legal marketing agency want to achieve?” you can only measure your marketing success when you have a set and quantifiable goal for your business. Your marketing goals need to be SMART. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
For example, Your law firm’s set goal can be to attain a specific number of clients at the end of the year.
How will you achieve your goals?
Try to keep your marketing plan concise to avoid any confusion. Your marketing plan must include the following sections:
- Outline your plan
Always have an overview of your marketing plan that includes the following:
- Reasons for marketing your law firm.
- SMART goals of your firm.
- Financial budget
In this process, you must include all the investments you will make in your law firm’s marketing strategy.
- Marketing tools
Mention all the tools you will use in your marketing strategy. For example, you will achieve your marketing goal with the power of social media. Then your marketing tools will include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.
Proper Execution Of Your Marketing Plan
Now, the step without which all your marketing plan and efforts will be in vain is the proper execution of the plan. This step involves the points like,
- When will you start the whole process of law firm marketing?
- What are the departments?
- Who is responsible for what?
- Make sure to make a project manager for a smooth execution process.
How To Capture And Keep Clients: Marketing Strategies For Lawyers
Build a professional law firm website
In 2018, around 77% of the law firms had websites. A well-designed law firm website is the first and the most crucial step in law firm digital marketing. Your website is where you will attain the maximum clients for your business. It’s something that makes your firm look professional and sets you apart from your competitors. The success of all your marketing efforts largely depends on your online presence. Your website is a credible source for your clients to know more about your law firm. Make sure to check the following components in your website:
- Mobile and computer responsiveness
- Engaging and value-driven content
- Easy navigation
- One page for every professional
- Section for blogs and news
- Call to Action and Contact information
- HTTP
Beacon Law is a law firm offering legal services to individuals with low- income in Houston, Texas. This agency has offered its clients an easy-to-use online experience that helps them attain their services quickly and smoothly.
Make use of social media
In 2018, 76% of the law firms reported maintaining an online presence through social networking sites. Some lawyers might think that social media is not a credible tool for law firms. That is not at all true. Nowadays, every attorney marketing strategy involves social media marketing since its increasing dominance in the online world. Sharing news and success stories on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn puts your firm on your follower’s radar, and you build a loyal connection with them.
Greenberg Traurig, LLP is the best example of a law firm that is making the most use of social media platforms like LinkedIn. Their LinkedIn page includes every description about their company, which they update regularly.
SEO for lawyers offer results
Above 33% of clients look for a lawyer online. SEO for lawyers is the process of increasing your online visibility on all the search engines like Google. Through SEO content on your law firm website, you can drive long-lasting results for your business, making it a significant step in digital marketing strategy for law firms.
There are two crucial searches for all the law firms. The first is local SEO that will rank you on the top of SERFs when someone searches for the “best injury lawyer.” As per Google’s Algorithms, it prioritizes the law firms that are in the same area as the user. The second is information-based searches, which primarily focus on important problems to your target audience. Finally, SEO involves optimizing your website content, blogs, and other articles with “long-tail keywords that are related to a user query about legal processes. For example, for the month of February, Swartzlaw.com experienced a 5.87% increase in their website traffic with the help of search engine optimization in their law firm marketing strategy.
Run a strategic email marketing campaign
There are more than 4 billion email users daily, with an average CTR of about 2.13%. That is why email marketing is still considered an effective marketing tool that you must leverage in your internet marketing strategies for lawyers.
This method involves sending emails to your current, potential and even past clients to keep them connected with your business. Make sure you mention every detail about your services and appointments in those emails for them to interact with you. Your email marketing campaign for law firms must involve the following steps:
- Personalize your email content that meets your client’s needs to build a strong subscriber relationship with them.
- You can even offer free guides on different but relevant topics to your subscribers. The best example for this point is the attorney Gina Smith who offers her guide, “0 steps to get started with your estate planning” “on her IInstagram’sbio.
- Informative blog posts with sign-up forms can help you increase your website visitors.
- Another step is to delight your customers with law-related and informative content that helps them in future cases.
Search advertising campaign
SEO is an organic way to divert traffic towards your law firm’s website. In contrast, search advertising like PPC and Google advertising is another best marketing strategy for law firms to take your legal business to the next level. There are two types of paid search advertising explained below:
- Pay- per- click(PPC): Every brand strategy agency in law firms considers PPC lawyers an excellent way to target people looking for any particular legal services. PPC lawyers require you to pay a small amount of money every time someone clicks on your advertisement. You must link your PPC ads to your target landing page that offers immediate value to your customers.
- Google Ads: Google ads also come under a PPC advertising campaign that allows you to popularize your product on the most used search engine that is Google itself. It is a great way to bring highly qualified leads to your law firm’s website. The concept is simple: when your ad appears on Google, and the visitor clicks on it, you will be charged some amount, but this method will more likely land you a solid lead that is desperately looking for your legal services.
Link building
Another crucial step in your online marketing strategies for lawyers involves driving maximum traffic towards your website through link building. The blue and underlined text that you see online are the links that help you attain your potential customers. The term backlinking might sound a little intimidating but is nothing but the process of bringing high-authority links to your law firm website.
For example, suppose Forbes mentioned your law firm’s name in their articles with your website link. That will be a backlink to you.
Include video marketing strategy
87% of the marketers believe video has helped them increase their website traffic. In addition, consumers prefer to watch videos over reading words or looking at any infographics. The technique is straightforward: to get the most out of video marketing, you must first develop an outstanding video about your legal services, which you must then make available on every web platform.
Different types of videos that will work for your law firms are:
- Branding video of your agency.
- Video in which your attorney will answer the most frequently asked questions.
- Testimonials of your happy and satisfied clients.
“Legal Bites’ video of Bracewell on LinkedIn in which their organization’s attorney shares their perspective on the updates and the current trends is the best example of a video marketing campaign.
Place strategy
Place strategy, sometimes referred to as distribution strategy, is how a business outlines where and how a company sells their services to gain its market share. This tactic can be very useful for legal services too. Including an effective place strategy in your law firm plan helps you increase your revenue by reaching your most potential customers. In addition, it is an effective technique to use your budgeting goals to set a production schedule for your legal business.
What Is The Importance Of A Law Firm’s Marketing Strategy?
The legal business is a busy field. As a result, there are times when you might overlook some important details about your job. That is why you need to have a law firm marketing strategy to ensure that your efforts remain consistent and new leads and clients keep knocking on your door. Let us explain to you all the important aspects of law firm marketing strategy:
Target your potential clients
A well-established marketing plan helps your law firm increase its ROI by targeting the clients looking for the services you provide. This step involves surveying certain demographic data.
If you’re a personal injury lawyer, for example, you wouldn’t want to waste your time and marketing efforts on someone seeking for an immigration lawyer. Instead, you should devote a significant portion of your time and resources to helping those who are looking for a personal injury lawyer. That edge is provided by a marketing strategy.
Set well-defined goals for your business
Having a marketing plan helps you identify SMART goals for your business that helps you push closer to the heights of success. Measurable and attainable goals help you monitor your marketing progress. Your goals should be reasonably achievable and must be measured by data.
Assign defined roles and responsibilities
A proper law firm marketing strategy helps you set roles for every team member. This way, your team members feel motivated and are clear about their responsibilities, and you ensure a consistent application of your marketing strategy.
If you use social media in your marketing, for example, you’ll need someone to oversee that department. So accordingly, you can plan and assign the role to the selected person.
Effective resource management
There are two resources that every law firm business has to manage to run a successful legal business: financial and time resources.
With the help of a marketing plan, you better understand the budgeting associated with your business. Hence, you can make your decisions accordingly by keeping that in mind. As a result, you cut down all the unnecessary expenses and put that budget to better use.
What Are The Marketing Kpis To Use In Your Law Firm’s Marketing Strategy?
KPIs are quantifiable metrics that help you monitor and analyze your marketing efforts. These indicators are measurable and help you understand what is working for your business.
You can use the following KPIs in your law firm marketing strategy:
Feedback form
A feedback form in which you ask your clients a series of questions, like where did you get to know about our firm? It is the strategy that will allow you to maximize the value of your efforts.
Website traffic analytics
Other KPIs are the bounce rates and the website traffic that can help you improve your lead conversion faster.
Final Words
Law firm marketing strategies involve creating a customer-centric website that offers all the information about your legal business. To increase client interaction, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. In addition, make extensive use of social media to reach out to audiences worldwide. Another important technique is SEO, which can help you rank your website at the top of all SERFs. Not just that. It’s a great approach to target potential consumers who will think of you whenever they have a problem that you can address.