Regardless if you are a major law firm with several attorneys or you’re a small team of few attorneys, the key to success depends on how you market your expertise to attract new prospects. Maybe you’re one of the best attorneys in your town, but if people don’t know about you, it will be challenging to attract new clients.
With more than 1/3rd of potential clients searching for their attorneys online, you cannot rely solely on word of mouth. According to this study, 65% of law firms spend at least 50% of their marketing budget on their online marketing.
Below are 15 online marketing ideas for law firms that we promise will result in more prospects, more phone calls, and ultimately more paying clients!
1. Invest in Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is designed to put your business in front of people who are looking for information and who will need legal representation sooner or later. For example, if someone in Orange County searches for “Divorce lawyer near me”, they or someone they know is headed for divorce and will require a divorce lawyer.
If your website can show up in the search results when they are looking for the information, they may contact you for more information, or to hire you to do the work. SEO, when done well, will improve how your website shows up in organic rankings, resulting in more clients, and in a solid ROI.
In this article, we explain how to do SEO for local businesses. These are basic, but vital steps for your local business.
SEO is extremely powerful. One of our clients had to hire 2 additional staff to handle the influx, read the case study here.
2. Provide Relevant and Valuable Content
When someone lands on your webpage through a google search, they are looking for relevant answers to their burning questions.
By creating great content, you can answer those questions and help build trust with your prospects. When people consume your content, they start to develop an opinion of what kind of person you are, how much knowledge you have, and whether they mesh with your personality style. This greatly influences their decision about working with you. If your content is valuable and educational, they start to think positively about your brand.
You may be thinking that creating regular content is too much work. Why should you do it? Creating regular content takes some work, but it is highly rewarding. If you’re someone who hates writing content, here are 3 ways to produce content when your feet start dragging.
3. Have a social media presence
Social media is a great way to connect and engage with your target audience. The American Bar Association reported that 35% of lawyers who are active on social media have gained new clients through this channel.
Social media lets you showcase your expertise and become a thought leader in your industry. By sharing valuable information and helpful content, you prove your credibility and in turn, earn more trust and business from your clients.
4. Create Informative Short Videos
YouTube is the second largest search platform in the world after Google. People don’t just go to YouTube to find entertainment, they also want to find information.
You can create videos that answer the commonly asked legal questions in your industry. Then post your videos on your YouTube channel. Writing detailed descriptions of the video content you upload helps to get your video in front of your audience.
You don’t need to have any advanced studio setup to create videos. You can simply record and upload them from your phone. Be sure to also embed your videos on your website and share them on all your other social media channels.
5. Collect Reviews and Showcase Them On Your Website
We all look for reviews for whatever product or service we are considering. According to BrightLocal’s 2019 Local Consumer Review Survey, 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses.
If you offer an excellent product or service, your customers will be happy to review your business. So go ahead and ask them for a Google review. As a side benefit, the higher the number of reviews and the higher the rating you have on Google will also help to determine if you will get featured in the top 3 searches.
You can embed your positive reviews on your website so everyone knows the great job you’re doing. Reviews also work well as occasional social media posts.
6. Increase Your Reach with PPC Advertising
PPC (pay-per-click) OR Google Ads are one of the best ways to boost your law firm’s visibility online. When someone searches for “attorney near me”, the top 3 results will usually be paid ads. You can look for the tiny letters that say “ad”.
By creating PPC/Google ads, you are getting your business name and information in front of people who are actively searching for an attorney. Being at the top of the search results gives you a higher chance that the potential visitor will click on your website or call your business and do business with you.
You can also run remarketing display ads for people who visited your website recently but did not contact you. This will result in more conversions from people who didn’t take any action initially on your website.
7. Email Marketing
Email marketing can help you revive old leads, generate more appointments, and acquire more clients. To get the best results, be creative, and create content that generates curiosity to read your emails. You can create engaging content on trending topics in the law sector, write relevant facts and information, or share your personal experiences about dealing with critical cases. You can also –
- Include a newsletter
- Write articles dedicated to specific content
- Share your recently created videos
- Include snippets of free legal advice
- Notify readers of upcoming events
- Share interesting law updates
8. Increase Your Presence in Legal Directories
Being featured on legal directories such as FindLaw and Avvo can help boost your traffic and provide a citation and link for your website.
(Insert screenshot of Findlaw website)
Citations are mentions of your law firm on third-party sites and they help improve your website SEO.
Including your law firm in these directories is an easy and affordable way to promote your law firm. Some of the listing websites allow you to add your details for free, some websites have paid listings, and some of these sites charge monthly or annual fees for extra exposure.
9. Add a Live Chat Feature to your Law Firm Website
You might be tempted to think that live chat means working odd hours, answering questions from people, and giving free advice. It is not quite like that. There are many benefits of adding a live chat feature on your website such as:
- Turning general inquiries into leads
- You don’t have to personally answer any of the questions – you can have an experienced staff member or hire an agent to answer these queries
- Real-time interaction with real people who are looking for help
- It can make your website look like you’re open for business 24/7
- It makes your website look more progressive and modern (in an industry that is often known for the opposite!)
10. Configure A CRM
How many hours do you spend each week trying to keep count of your sales leads, prospects, and clients? This unbillable time does not add anything to your profits and can result in the loss of potential new clients.
A CRM solution can help you:
- Automates a large part of the lead conversion and nurturing process
- Make your client signup easy
- Simplify referral management
- Integrate with your case management software
- Monitor text messaging, email marketing and phone call tracking
11. Optimize Your Google My Business Profile
With a well-optimized Google My Business profile, you can drive more traffic and more phone calls. It is free and easy to set up a Google My Business listing. Simply visit Google My Business, the process is self-explanatory and easy to navigate.
Keep in mind that you should fill in all of the information that is requested, even if it isn’t marked as essential. Here’s what you should include:
- A relevant, specific category
- Quality, high-resolution images.
- Information such as address and phone number (make sure it’s consistent with the information on your website.)
- A local number.
- Your business hours.
If your Google My Business profile is not optimized, you’re losing money.
12. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
If your website is not optimized for mobile, you’re losing out on a lot of potential business.
Most internet searches take place on a mobile device, so it’s imperative that your website is optimized for mobile. In fact, in 2019 Google officially launched the mobile-only index, meaning you will rank differently on mobile searches than on desktop searches. This means you need a website that looks and responds as good or even better on a mobile device as it does for desktop.
13. Use Webinars to Build Authority
Your Brand authority is your most important business asset. If you can help your prospective customers to believe you are the expert they are looking for, not only will they want to do business with you, but they won’t mind paying you more for your services.
Webinars on relevant and helpful topics enable you to establish yourself, not just as an expert, but as an authority. A webinar is simply an online seminar where you talk about something that interests your audience. Here’s how webinars can help you to stand out from the crowd:
- They bring visitors from your webinar to your website
- You interact with potential clients in real-time
- They help you build your email & prospect lists
- You can demonstrate how your brand is different from the others
- They enable potential clients to make better decisions about doing business with you
14. Use Facebook Ads
Although there are over 50 million active small business pages on Facebook, only 2.5 million of those are “active advertisers”. That means about 95% of small businesses do not use Facebook ads.
This opens up huge potential for your law firm’s marketing voice to stand out online and generate huge returns on your investment, as compared to trying to be heard at the saturating local TV stations at a great expense.
15. Using LinkedIn to Generate New Inquiries
There are two important things you should do on LinkedIn. One is to make sure you have an updated personal LinkedIn profile. Every LinkedIn profile should highlight your strengths, personality, knowledge, and achievements around your specialized area of law.
Second, is to have a company page for your Law Firm. Create an enticing page for your law firm which promotes your practice areas. Use an on-brand profile image and banner. Write a captivating About section and include case studies where you got amazing results for your clients. Be sure to also include relevant keywords. Then keep your page interesting and engaging with relevant posts and comments.
These 15 marketing ideas for law firms can seem overwhelming to implement all at once. We recommend you start by evaluating where you are at and what you are already doing well. Then create a plan to add additional marketing avenues one at a time as you are able.
If you are ready to dive in and reap the financial rewards of a full cross platform Law Firm Marketing Plan, schedule a free consultation now with our CEO, Maggie Benson. She’ll help answer your questions and create a marketing plan for your success.
