In 2009, the legal field officially became oversaturated. Ten years later, most law firms are still feeling this trend. This trend has hurt partners in two ways: The talent competition is getting fiercer.
You know this because I have always maintained the same dialogue with the law firm’s partners and senior lawyers. It looks like this:
“My law firm cannot find enough good clients/new talents.”
It is easy to understand why most legal practices are looking for better ways to attract more clients and attract the best talent. Guess what? You can use the right lawyer marketing strategy (mostly digital marketing) to accomplish these two tasks.
What is “Lawyer Marketing”? When successfully marketing a law firm online, you will accomplish two tasks: put yourself at the center of potential new clients and potentially new talents, and lead them to contact you and hire them through the buyer’s channel. The only thing to note is that competing law firms are also catching up with the needs of digital marketing, so you not only need to attract clients and applicants, but you also need to outperform and outperform competitors.
If you find yourself asking, “How can I win new clients for my law firm?” or “How can I get better legal talent?” I’m here to save the world.
How to Market a Law Firm
The marketing of law firms used to be simple. In addition to referrals, most lawyers’ marketing strategies include print ads, billboards, and TV commercials, which always seem to follow the same script (“Are you unfairly injured and need compensation?”).
The game has gotten changed.
Now, your target audience spends at least 8 hours online every day, and when they need a lawyer, 97% of them will go to Google instead of Yellow Pages. More than 70% of people prefer to answer questions and learn about your law firm through online articles rather than advertisements, and they often conduct surveys on mobile devices.
When you start putting all these together, these marketing strategies can help you find potential clients and new talents while surpassing competing law firms. They are:
- Manage your reputation and use your online image as a recruitment tool
- Turn your law firm’s website into a 24/7 sales representative
- Invest in content marketing and SEO for lawyers
- Track, measure, and analyze everything
- Extend your online footprint beyond the website through video marketing, PPC, social media, and local SEO
Each type of lawyer’s marketing strategies will get detailed, and the various strategies that can get used to utilizing it. By the end of this article, you should provide a useful checklist for the law firm’s marketing plan, which lists what you need to do and what you should not do.
Notes on Purchasing Lawyer Contracts
Do you like playing Russian Roulette? Because this is how you buy leads for lawyers. The reasons are as follows:
- You don’t know how the ad gets made, which means you can attach your name to bad practices.
- Unreliable number of leads
- You can’t control the quality of the leads you get
The Ethical issues: You know the Model Rule 7.2 and its fifth comment more clearly than I do, which prohibits (1) recommending the services of a lawyer to anyone; (2) sharing costs with non-lawyers; and (3) misleading the public.
The New Jersey Attorney’s Advertising Committee recently (2018) issued an opinion stating that every lead advertising pay for lawyers is not inherently unethical but needs to meet professional standards. One million-dollar question: Do you want to trust a random company of prospective clients with the reputation and credibility of your practice?
The following guide delves into the best legal marketing strategies.
The essential marketing strategy for lawyers in 2019:
Set the law firm’s website as a 24/7 sales representative
Law firm marketing strategy tips: Go online-97% of consumers go online to find legal services. Where will people go when they need it? It used to be a yellow page, but now 93% of consumers go online to find local businesses. That means that your law firm’s website can be said to be your first marketing asset. Everything should start and end with your website.
If you ignore all other content in this article, please note the following: You need a professional website. The design, functionality, and user experience of your website must be on par with the best websites your potential customers have visited, or if your website is not a “WOW” user, it may not exist.
For you to do this, your website needs to do the following five things:
- Fast
- Mobile device compatible
- Easy to find
- Appeal
- Authoritative
Your website should be fast
Half of the online population (47% to be precise) expect a website to load in 3 seconds or less. If not, the user will click the “Back” button.
You cannot bear this error. The legal field is an “I need it now” field, and we all know that there is no shortage of lawyers, so you need to take all measures to keep the traffic.
Your website needs to be mobile-friendly
The marketing strategy of the best law firm is to have a mobile-friendly website design
What is a crucial aspect of a successful lawyer website? It is mobile-friendly, which means it has gotten optimized for smartphones. Why? Take a look at the picture above. More than 63% of searches in the United States get conducted through desktop smartphones or tablets. Now, think back to the time when you visited a bad mobile website. The buttons are too small to click; the text is too hard to read, or what is happening in the design. You may have clicked the “Back” button. I will. I still do it every time.
That is about the website. You don’t just order one from Amazon, open the box, and put in the battery. It is constructed layer after layer of code and has a large number of moving parts. Optimizing a mobile device website is not as easy as a toggle switch, so I suggest you call the webmaster today to start the migration.
To-do: Test your website on your phone. Does the touch button work? Is the photo size correct? Is the text large enough to read? Check it carefully, as you think the customer will. If this is not the most beautiful and straightforward content you have ever seen, please let your web team solve it.
Your website should get optimized for user experience (UX).
The best small law firm website design is fascinating-people judge companies based on the 2018 law firm web design
People are judgmental. You know you work in law. After the website loads, users will form their opinions on it within 0.5 seconds. 75% of people believe that a law firm’s website is the primary factor in determining corporate reputation.
Not only should it appeal to the visitor’s subconscious mind, but your website also needs to consider essential user experience (UX). User experience includes the entire interaction between someone and the website. That includes available content, colors, layout, and how users interact with the company. People should leave your website to feel 100% satisfied.
To-do list: Ask family members or friends to view your website on their mobile phones. See if they can browse by themselves without your prompt. If they can’t, then other consumers may not be able to. Also, please pay attention to their level of interest. That is very obvious when someone is bored. If they get bored after viewing your website for two seconds, they may need to redesign.
A search engine like GOOGLE should be able to find your website easily.
When formulating the marketing plan of a law firm, I considered two basic assumptions:
- Most law firms are local (not domestic)
- Most lawyers provide needs-based services
That means that the best option that takes us to the second strategy is that when new clients need you, they will attract them through search engine optimization (SEO) from lawyers.
Invest in content marketing and lawyer SEO
Search engine optimization is the practice of making your website higher in search engines such as Google and Bing when people search for your service. Nowadays, when people need something, they pull out a smartphone or tablet and type it into a Google search or use voice commands to open a local list. Your law firm must be on the first page of Google. Otherwise, it may not get listed at all-55% of all clicks to one of the top three organic search results.
We covered the issues of making your website fast and mobile-friendly, which is half of the search engine optimization (SEO) for lawyers. The next step is to focus on other aspects of SEO, including:
- Add lawyer mode (mode = additional website code to help search engines understand the content of your web page)
- Optimize landing pages for specific keywords related to the operation, such as “legal advice for retirees” or “company litigation practices.”
- Add relevant tags and keywords in the title, image, and title tags
- Optimize images and add keyword-rich descriptions
- Off-site local SEO, we will discuss it later
- Content marketing, we will discuss it later
To-do: Open an incognito tab in the web browser. Search for your legal services + your city. Do this for the first five key phrases you want to find. If your law firm does not appear in every popular search phrase on the homepage, you need to contact someone about professional SEO services-this is not a DIY thing.
Invest in content marketing to acquire legal firms, not just SEO
The best personal injury lawyer marketing strategy includes blogging. What your website says literally and visually determines whether you want to contact you.
When was the last time you visited the company website? What is the overall message? Is it easy to read? Can you navigate? Do you have a blog? Your website is an online salesperson, so it needs to encourage potential customers and recruit channels from awareness to action.
To-do: Build content on your website. Start with the leading service, and then start from there. After setting up the homepage, create a blog. For the topic, just answer some of the main questions encountered by new customers. By setting up a blog, you can show your authority in the industry and improve your website’s SEO.
Enhance your lawyer’s marketing strategy through local SEO, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media, email marketing, etc.
Unfortunately, not all battles get played at home.
You need to declare all online real estate ownership, which means that your online space is OWN (Google My Business Information, Facebook Page), not rent (Avvo). You also need to take advantage of paid search advertising (PPC) and generate many reviews.
Use local SEO regulations to declare your online real estate
Local portfolio search results for legal marketing
Local SEO is the practice of placing your company at the top of the search results for the local service area. It is different from ordinary SEO because it emphasizes local packages. The local package is the Google Map result box on the search results page, below the paid ads and above the organic search results.
The local package information gets extracted from your Google My Business account, which is why your GMB account needs to be claimed and optimized for local SEO.
Your Google My Business profile is not the only profile that needs to get optimized for this local data package. Part of a local SEO lawyer is to find relevant online directories and declare your listing. The highest legal citation source is:
- FindLaw website
- Noro
- com
- Superlawyer
- Avvo
- Justia
- Best lawyer
- Master of Law
- Legal information
- Lawyer U.S. Law
To-do: Find and claim your “Google My Business” account. Then update the following:
- telephone number
- address
- Business hours
- Comment
Paid Search Advertising (PPC)
What is pay-per-click advertising?
If you want to expand your brand and strengthen your SEO efforts, we recommend that lawyers use PPC. Paid search ads or pay per click (PPC) sound a lot like: they are ads that you pay for when you click.
The reason you should use them is that PPC ads occupy an essential place in search results. When someone goes to Google to search for products, the top 3 to 4 business listings are usually Google AdWords ads. Take a look-I’m in Washington, DC, and search for “personal injury lawyer.”
These predominantly paid ads occupy the upper half of my entire screen. On average, 41% of clicks go to the top 3 paid ads on the search results page.
Using PPC remarketing, you can solve this problem to some extent, where you can show ads to people who have already visited your website or have already established contact with you.
To-do: search for your legal services + your city. Which paid ads appeared? Are they your competitors? Then search for your specific law firm. One of your competitors will most likely bid on your name and show ads when someone searches for your company directly.
Yes, legal companies need to appear on social media
Does my law firm need a Facebook page?
Yes. Yes, it does. Why? Because 95% of millennials expect brands to have a Facebook image. Not only millennials, 87% of Gen X believe that brands should have a Facebook page. Having a window that can make you human and provide people with a window into the situation behind the scenes. As far as people know, you and the other members of your law firm are opinionated and only care about money (again, family lawyers, so I can say that). Prove that they are wrong by increasing the company’s position and doing things in charity activities.
Which social media platform should you be on? It depends on the type of law you practice. For example, suppose you are a divorce lawyer. Because it is a B2C service, Facebook is a better choice than LinkedIn.
However, suppose your law firm provides legal counsel to small businesses. Because it is B2B, LinkedIn will be better than Facebook.
In addition to humanizing the company and connecting with potential customers, having a social networking site can also improve SEO. Although social media signals will not affect search rankings, they can affect your SEO in these ways:
- Improve online visibility and website visits
- Higher authority and brand awareness
- Content distribution is more expansive, and content life is longer
- Improve local SEO
However, if you want to be successful in social media, you must spend some money on paid social media advertising. Otherwise, no one will know your existence.
Keep brainstorming, marketing lawyers via email
As far as I know, no one has died without using legal services at least twice. That means that when you interact with each client, you have the opportunity to build brand loyalty and become their lawyer (and their sister’s lawyer, their brother’s lawyer, etc.) for life. The easiest and cheapest way? And email marketing.
Lawyers’ email marketing has an average return on investment (ROI) of 4,400%, making it an efficient way to generate and close more leads.
Choosing to participate in email marketing is one of the best ways to stay in front of potential and existing customers-92% of American adults use email. An average of 70% has used the offers in marketing emails in the past seven days for vouchers or discounts. And the best part? That is currently one of the most cost-effective legal forms of advertising.
Attract viewers to watch video marketing
So you have a website optimized for SEO and have started to expand your online footprint to social media and email. What is left? If you are still looking for advertising ideas for law firms, don’t miss video marketing.
How do you differentiate from other law firms in your area? People increasingly want to choose lawyers and law firms that can lag. You can’t fall behind someone you don’t know, so how do you make people know you? Simple. With video marketing and video PPC (and social) advertising.
Since humans can process video content much faster than written text, this is an easy and fast way to relay information. The human brain processes image 60,000 times faster than word processing. That means you can convey the same message in a 30-second video like a 30-page e-book-which group of people do you think is more likely to attract distracted potential customers?
Another wise choice is paid video advertising. Appx. 45% of people watch Facebook or YouTube videos for more than one hour every week. That means that you have ample opportunity to target them through pre- or interstitial PPC video ads.
There is no doubt that YouTube is the second most popular search platform globally, and users consume more videos on the video platform every day than YouTube. If your law firm does not participate, then your competitors are.
Manage the reputation of the law firm and use your online status as a recruitment tool
Comments from past legal clients
Comments are your best friend and one of your essential assets. Before buying anything, I will read reviews first, whether a new TV or new slacks.
Take a look at these statistics:
- 88% of consumers believe that there are as many online reviews as personal recommendations
- The conversion rate of product page visitors who read reviews increased by 58%
- 10% of the value of website visits gets attributed to online reviews
- 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business
- 90% of consumers say online reviews influence their purchases
- 72% of consumers said that positive reviews made them trust local businesses more
To-do: Check how many comments you have. If there are not many, please start a plan to collect them. You can send a customized comment link or directly ask previous customers if they are willing to share their experience.
Use your online status to recruit new lawyers and legal talent
If the client doesn’t like your lawyer, there is no way to keep them. Customer experience is an incredibly important factor in the legal field because the risk is high, so hiring the right talent is essential.
However, you have other obstacles. In 2007, there were 1,143,358 lawyers. There were 1,335,963 people in 2017, an increase of 16.8%. Coupled with the fact that the legal profession has reduced by about 55,000 lawyers compared with 2017, it is evident that this is an essential task for employers in hiring top talent. The trouble is that you and your competitors are competing for the same talent, and if their online business is better than you, you are out of luck.
That’s because your new talents are in the form of millennials, and (excluding broad generalizations), a vital aspect of this demographic is that to find them and help them find you, you need to be in their territory with They meet:
- You need to attract their attention, and they spend most of their time online: social media
- You need to provide them with an online experience to encourage them to apply to your company
How to use social media as a recruitment tool for new talent
Any marketing programs for lawyers need to utilize social media as a tool for recruitment because an ideal candidate is going to get found online. Specifically, they are on social media. If you want to attract the best, brightest, or most attractive candidates from your competitors, you need to stay active on the following platforms:
Glassdoor and indeed: Many business owners don’t know they need to use these platforms. That is why places like Glassdoor are so popular in the job search. The Pew Research Center also found that companies’ online reviews are the number one resource for job seekers to find information about the company in the search.
LinkedIn: Professionals play here. If you want to be a serious online competitor, you need to use LinkedIn. Use it to socialize, recruit, and share your law firm’s views on the profession.
Facebook/Instagram: They got grouped because Facebook owns Instagram, and they share the same advertising platform. That is critical because Facebook and Instagram have paid games. Here, you should share your company culture and emphasize why someone wants to work for you. In law, this also includes shared meetings, landmark court cases, and prestigious lawyers.
To-do list: Inventory your social channels and social audience from the perspective of recruits. What are they talking about collectively? Do you want to work there? Do you accurately represent the feeling of your practical work?
Without proper tracking, reporting, and analysis functions, lawyer marketing will not work
Lawyers have no time to waste on ineffective advertising strategies. Therefore, you need to accurately measure and track each campaign (I mean each campaign) to determine which lawyer’s marketing strategies are useful and which should be changed or canceled. Hey, if you still make the same mistake, then you will have nowhere to go.
However, many business owners will shoot because they should look at key performance indicators (KPIs) when looking at indicators.
The following are the KPIs that are relevant to the law firm’s digital marketing strategy:
- Total number of new customers
- Potential customers
- income
- Market return on investment (ROMI)
- Lead to sales conversion rate
- Reservation rate (by phone)
- Cost per lead(CPL)
Analyze the online competition of your law firm
After reading this book, the first thing I suggest you do is complete a digital competitive analysis. When we acquire new customers, the first thing we need to do is perform this unique analysis to draw customer benchmarks in terms of digitization compared to competitors.
The secret to the best lawyer marketing strategy? Law firm marketing company that knows what they are doing
Like us, the truth is that you can execute your marketing plan perfectly, but if your competitors do not perform as well as you, everything is in vain. At Blue Corona, we strive to get customers to speak for us. Take a look at the internet marketing reviews of our current and former clients, and hear directly from them why we are the best small law firm marketing company you need. Everything we do is from a business owner’s perspective, and we treat your business like our own business.
