Are you looking to grow your law firm but aren’t quite sure where to start? Law firm marketing can help you increase your presence online — and get in front of potential clients looking for legal services.
A good law firm marketing plan will utilize many different strategies to promote your brand. In this article, we’ll show you ten marketing strategies you can employ to grow your law firm.
Strategy 1: Make a Marketing Plan
Marketing can take many forms. The most common form of “marketing” for attorneys has traditionally been referrals from clients and colleagues. Increasingly, this form of marketing is not enough. More and more individuals are going online to find a lawyer.
Not surprisingly, more and more lawyers are advertising online. If you want to stand out, you’ll need to make a marketing plan. A marketing plan will also keep you on task and allow you to invest your time and resources into the strategies that are right for your firm.
Define Your Ideal Client
Before you even start your marketing plan, you need to define your ideal client. If you define your target client sufficiently, you will be able to tailor your marketing to appeal to them.
Try to create a “client persona” that mimics your ideal client’s struggles and needs. Is your target client a car accident victim with brain or spinal cord injuries? A medical malpractice victim? A person accused of driving under the influence or theft?
Drill down on your model client by defining their:
- Demographics, such as age, income, sex, family size, geographic region, etc.
- Pain points and how you can solve them. Pain points might include issues with an insurance company, increasing medical expenses and lost wages after an accident, or fear of the consequences of a criminal conviction.
- Goals. What are your client’s goals? Is it to recover maximum compensation after an accident? Exit a marriage with financial security? Beat a criminal accusation?
You can even think of friends, family members, or past clients that closely match your ideal client to help you create your client persona.
Set Goals and Expectations
In reality, your goals and expectations will drive your marketing plan. Therefore, you need to define them carefully.
You can ask yourself the following questions to help identify your goals.
- Do you have specific revenue targets?
- Do you want a few high-value cases or quick hitters that you can resolve quickly and efficiently?
- How many clients will you need to generate your target revenue?
- Will you need additional attorneys and staff to meet your goals?
The more detailed your goals, the better. Your goals will help set your expectations for your marketing plan.
Analyze What Your Competitors Are Doing
One of the most helpful things you can do for your marketing plan is to analyze what your competitors are doing. This can help you understand what other firms are doing to attract your target client — and what methods they are employing to reach them.
You can get a wealth of information on your competitor’s marketing strategies simply by visiting their websites, examining the keywords they are trying to rank for, and reviewing other marketing and sales techniques they are using.
Create a Marketing Budget
To achieve your marketing goals, you have to have a sufficient marketing budget.
You’ll need to factor in your revenue goals and how many cases you need to meet the goal. You’ll also need to evaluate how aggressive your marketing will need to be given the age and reputation of your firm and the competitiveness of your geographic region.
Your marketing budget will also need to include any marketing technology and services you intend to use, such as HubSpot, CallRail, etc.
Strategy 2: Create a Compelling Brand
Your brand is the vehicle by which you appeal to your ideal client. It tells a client why you do what you do. A good brand will help you stand out from your competition and stick in a potential client’s mind when it comes time to hire a lawyer.
Use Your Unique Value Proposition to Develop Your Brand
You can use your unique value or selling proposition (UVP) as a starting point for your brand. Your UVP is a trait or characteristic that sets your firm apart from other law firms. It could be the amount of compensation you’ve recovered for clients, the number of years you’ve been in business, the way you approach a case, or a specific professional recognition you’ve received, among other things.
For example, Winters & Yonker, P.A. out of Tampa, Florida, has identified its aggressive representation or injury clients as its UVP.
For Suhre & Associates in Cincinnati, OH, the inclusion of former prosecutors and police officers on its legal team serves as its UVP.
Identifying your unique value proposition is just the starting point for your brand.
What Goes into a Brand?
Your brand is more than just your reputation. It represents your visual identity in the eyes of clients. Your brand identity includes:
- Your law firm’s name. Now that lawyers can use trade names in professional practice, your very name can communicate your values and vision. For example, take Mission Personal Injury Lawyers in San Diego, California. The word “Mission” connects with the local heritage of the area, evoking images of the Spanish Missions in Southern California. The phrase “personal injury lawyers” tells potential clients what they do and whom they serve.
- Your logo and colors. Along with your name, your logo and colors set the tone of your branding. They help you evoke a certain sensation or feeling in prospective clients. They reflect your ethos. Battle Born Injury Lawyers in Las Vegas chose black, yellow, and silver to connote a feeling of battle readiness. Their ram logo suggests that they are hard-hitting and ready to fight.
- Slogans, statements, and calls-to-action. You will want to use marketing copy and calls to action on your website that match the tone of your brand. If you are a personal injury lawyer, you might focus on holding an insurer or at-fault party responsible for a client’s accident. If you are a criminal defense lawyer, you might emphasize a client’s rights, reputation, and freedom. Take a look at this example from Blair Defense Criminal Lawyers in California.
- Website graphics and images. Your website images and photos can also help you establish and promote your brand.
Once you’ve used these tools to develop your brand, you’ll want to ensure that your brand is consistent across all platforms and marketing channels.
Make Your Brand Consistent Across All Marketing Channels and Platforms
Whatever direction you decide to go with your marketing, you should be consistent. You shouldn’t be serious and professional on your website, only to be goofy and irreverent on your social media pages. This will make for an inconsistent brand experience and may fail to convey your desired tone or feeling to potential clients.
Also, it’s easier to be consistent when your branding is authentic. If your branding is playful and funny, but you’re not, potential clients will see right through it. Let your branding flow from who you are, and consistency and authenticity will be easy.
Strategy 3: Design a User-Friendly Website
As mentioned previously, word-of-mouth advertising is just not enough anymore. Nowadays, the internet is the most common way people find a lawyer. Therefore, law firm marketing starts and ends with your website.
But just having a website will not be sufficient. Research suggests that most people spend less than 60 seconds on a webpage. Accordingly, you will need a user-friendly, attention-grabbing website.
Your Website Should Be Visually Appealing
If you want your website to grab the attention of potential clients, it needs to have a visually appealing design. A clean, attractive design encourages users to stay on your website. The longer a user spends on your website, the more likely they are to contact you for help with their case.
A visually appealing design incorporates the following elements:
- A minimalistic design without clutter
- Headers to break up sections
- Short sentences and paragraphs to keep information readable
- Easy-to-read fonts and colors
- Dynamic images and graphics optimized for speed
- Important information highlighted in bold colors
- Icons to make information more interesting
A good design will keep website visitors engaged with the content on your site. However, visual elements are not the only part of a good design. Navigability is an equally critical design component. After all, you want users to be able to engage with all your content, not just some of it.
Your Website Should Be Well-Organized and Easy-To-Navigate
Your website structure should be intuitive. We recommend organizing all of your content around your Homepage (HP). Your homepage should be the hub for supporting content. It should feature links to internal pages and drop-down menus to help visitors get where they want to go.
Nothing will frustrate a visitor more than a poorly organized website. Great content means nothing if users can’t access it. It won’t take long for a frustrated visitor to leave your website and go looking for information somewhere else — presumably from one of your competitors.
Mobile-Friendliness
Your website should also be compatible for mobile and smart devices. Research has shown that as much as 60% of online traffic comes from mobile devices. Accordingly, your web pages should display well for desktop and mobile users — if you want to appeal to all of your visitors.
You can test your website’s mobile responsiveness using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Just type in your URL and press “Test URL” to see if your page is usable on mobile.
Your Website Should Be Fast.
Have you ever left a web page because it took too long to load? We all have. Over half of all users will leave a website and return to the search results if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. That’s why your website must also be fast.
Check the speed of your website with PageSpeed Insights. You can see how your speed fares on mobile and desktop.
Strategy 4: Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
A great visual design is the first step to making your website great. The second step is to optimize it for search engines. You want clients to be able to find you online, right? Search engines like Google offer the quickest way for them to do that.
Ninety-six percent of consumers use a search engine when looking for legal services. Ninety percent of online searches occur on Google. Do the math. If you want to generate significant website traffic and client leads, your website needs to be visible on Google.
Prime Real Estate – The First Page of Google
Google’s first page has three main sections, including:
- Paid Ads: Paid Ads appear at the top of search results. You will see an “Ad” box next to listings.
- Local Pack: The local map pack displays for searches with a local intent (e.g., “Houston personal injury lawyer”).
- Organic Results: These are the pages that Google has recognized as matching the user’s search query most closely.
Only 2-3% of searchers will visit the second page of Google. That means you need to appear on the first page — in the highest spots — if you want to drive maximum traffic to your website. How do you get there? SEO.
On-site Optimization
You will make your site recognizable to search engines through a process called “onsite optimization.” This process involves optimizing your site’s content, H-tags, and architecture.
You can take the following steps to optimize your website:
- Use title tags (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc.) for your headings
- Incorporate keywords into your headings
- Utilize images, graphics, and videos
- Add keywords to the alternate text in your images
- Create relevant long-form content
These strategies will help your content speak to potential clients and search engines. It will help your website be more organized, compelling, and user-friendly.
Obtain Backlinks
Whereas optimization helps your website become recognizable to search engines, backlinks help you to become more authoritative. Link building involves increasing the number of inbound links to your website.
Suppose another website links to your site in its content. That link tells Google’s algorithm that other parties recognize your content as useful and relevant. As a bonus, it gives users another way to find you online.
Links are one of the top ranking factors for Google. If you obtain enough valuable backlinks, it will increase your authority in the eyes of Google. Research shows a strong connection between backlinks and organic traffic. A page with numerous backlinks will generally have higher traffic than those with minimal backlinks.
Link building will help your web pages rank better. The top-ranking web pages on Google typically have nearly four times as many backlinks as the lower-ranking pages. Therefore, you should invest time and resources into obtaining backlinks if you hope to appear in Google’s organic rankings.
Local SEO
Local SEO can help you target clients in your specific geographic region. Suppose you are a criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. Local SEO can help you show up in the search results when a user types “personal injury lawyer near me” or “Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer.” More importantly, it can help you appear in the local map pack.
As you can see, the local pack appears above organic search results. It also displays your law firm’s name, address, phone number, and Google My Business profile. By clicking on your GMB profile, users can access your reviews, posts, contact information, and website.
Websites in the local pack get about 45% of clicks in user searches. One study found that businesses that appear in the local pack can experience as much as 400% in views and a 115% increase in clicks.
Investing resources into your local SEO campaign is another great way to generate website traffic and leads.
Strategy 5: Utilize Content Marketing
In one sense, this fifth strategy encompasses all the others. After all, without content, what is there to market? However, there’s a clear difference between high-quality and poor-quality content; the same applies to unoptimized versus optimized content. That’s where content marketing comes into play.
With the right strategies, you’ll be able to elevate your content such that it effectively and efficiently helps you achieve your marketing objectives. This section will go over some specific techniques for implementing content marketing for your law firm.
Perform Topic and Keyword Research
This technique ensures your content starts off on the right foot. Before creating high-quality, optimized content, you’ll need to have the right topics. You’ll also need to consider keywords related to those topics so that users can find your content intentionally and from multiple directions.
Keywords refer to search engine queries, and topics are the subjects of your content. A keyword can sometimes be a topic if it is sufficiently broad and pertinent. These topics and keywords should be tailored to your target audience. It can help to put yourself in a potential client’s shoes when thinking of the best topics and keywords.
For example, let’s say you’re a personal injury attorney working in Los Angeles, and one of your primary practice areas is car accidents. Your potential client is someone who was recently involved in a car accident in the area and who now needs a lawyer. What sort of search would you perform on Google if you were in their shoes?
One possibility is “Los Angeles car accident attorney.” This is a high-traffic keyword. It is also a topic idea for your content — many of your law firm marketing topics will be based on your law firm’s practice areas.
Of course, not every potential client will perform that exact search. Instead, they might search for “Los Angeles car crash lawyer” or “Do I need a lawyer in Los Angeles after a car accident in LA?” These keywords all relate to the same topic: finding a car accident lawyer in Los Angeles.
So, the first step is to identify the topics that will drive traffic to your site. Those topics are usually related to your law firm’s primary practice areas. Once you’ve identified those topics, you’ll want to consider keywords that refer back to them.
Create High-Quality Blogs and Articles
Once you’ve found the best topics and keywords, you’ll need to create related content.
Let’s return to the keyword discussed previously, “Los Angeles car accident attorney.” As mentioned, this is a great topic because it relates to your practice and speaks to your target clients. Therefore, it provides fodder for a practice area page.
You might write an in-depth practice area page that discusses your law firm, how you’ll be able to assist a client with their car accident claim, and factors that might affect the value of their case.
Within the text of the article, you’ll want to include various keywords. First, you’ll include the main keyword throughout the text (e.g., Los Angeles car accident lawyer). You can include other keywords that relate to the main keyword/title of the article, such as “car accident lawyer in Los Angeles.” You should also include terms and phrases that you would expect to find in an article with that title, such as “attorney-client relationship” and “legal advice.”
These types of articles can make up a significant portion of your law firm’s content marketing, but they shouldn’t be the only place you spend your time. Your main keywords/practice areas can serve as silos for related articles and sub-topics that would be helpful for your readers. (see the “Related Links” portion of the screenshot above).
A blog is another great way to address topics and questions related to your practice area. This blog should contain shorter-length, topical pieces that focus on a specific question or area of interest for your readers.
These blog posts should provide a library of helpful content to readers and help establish you as the go-to authority for legal information in your geographic area.
Create a Resource Center
So far, we’ve discussed two types of content that you can create based on the topics and keywords you’ve identified. The first is practice area pages that explain a client’s rights and options after an accident and how you can help. The second is a topical blog featuring shorter articles on topics related to those practice areas.
You might also create a resource center on your website that features a third type of content. These pieces will be longer than your blog posts but less involved than your long-form practice area articles. They might focus on legal topics that potential clients should know, such as “negligence,” or they might be on more practical topics, like “how to obtain a car accident report in Los Angeles.”
While your blog can contain articles on virtually any topic related to your practice areas, your resource center should be more direct and address questions and topics in more depth. Resource pages provide you with an opportunity to
One benefit of creating a resource center is that it can help with internal linking. As the name suggests, internal linking simply means adding links to your website that take users to other pages on your website. For example, your “Los Angeles car accident attorney” article might contain a link to your “negligence” article within your resource center. This Wikipedia-style linking can encourage users to spend more time on your site — which increases the likelihood that they’ll contact you for help with their legal issues.
With a library of articles, resource pieces, and blog posts for potential clients to read and review, you’ll be well on your way to having an effective law firm marketing strategy. The final step in this area is to make sure that your content is optimized to convert potential clients into actual clients.
Optimize Content To Convert Visitors Into Leads
Driving traffic to your website should be a key component of your law firm’s marketing strategy. To do this, you’ll need to optimize your content to encourage readers to reach out to you for help.
Ensure that every piece of content you publish on your website contains a call to action (CTA), i.e., lets the reader know how to contact you. It doesn’t hurt to have multiple CTAs in a single article.
Now that you’re familiar with the importance of content marketing, we’ll cover how you can utilize social media to enhance your law firm marketing even further.
Strategy 6: Take Advantage of Social Media
Social media marketing benefits almost every type of business, and law firms are no exception. When it comes to social media for your legal practice, there are a few key concepts to keep in mind.
Have a Consistent Presence on Multiple Social Media Platforms
There are dozens of social media platforms, some more popular than others. As a law firm, you should spend your time and resources on a select few.
Facebook has just under 3 billion active users per month. Some of your potential clients are bound to be on the platform.
To make the most of your marketing, you should create and maintain your own Facebook profile.
You can also use Facebook advertisements to draw eyes to your page/website, become involved in Facebook groups related to your practice areas, and solicit reviews from former clients. While Facebook reviews may not be as visible as Google reviews, they can still appear in local search results. And you can be people who visit your page will search for your ratings.
Twitter has hundreds of millions of active users. It can actually be easier to maintain a Twitter profile than a Facebook profile, considering the length of posts and the small number of features available on the platform.
Twitter gives you an opportunity to post links to recent articles on your website, share tips/insights on legal topics, and help you engage with the younger audience commonly on Twitter.
Combined with Facebook and other platforms, Twitter can be an extremely useful marketing tool.
Instagram has more users than Twitter but fewer than Facebook. It is especially popular with a younger audience (ages 18 to 34), so it could be a focus of your social media strategy if your law firm caters to that age group.
Because Instagram posts are primarily pictures as opposed to text, the platform allows you to use a different medium to connect with your audience.
LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity for law firm marketing. While the other platforms focus on potential clients, with LinkedIn, you can also appeal to potential professional referrals to your firm. Linkedin helps you make professional connections as well as connections with potential clients.
In addition, LinkedIn can give your law firm more authority and credibility as you garner endorsements on the platform. These qualities can increase your brand awareness online.
Now that you’re familiar with some of the best social media platforms for law firms, we’ll cover how to interact with your audience.
Have Meaningful Interactions With Your Audience
If a person asks you a question on social media or otherwise engages with your profile, you should be ready to respond. And you should make sure to respond in the right way.
What makes an interaction meaningful? You should focus on posting prompt, informative, and thoughtful replies to questions and comments from users. A potential client should walk away from an interaction believing that you made a genuine effort to engage with them and that you took their inquiry seriously.
You should be careful not to pressure the potential client into hiring you. Instead, through your interactions, you can show them that you are responsive and courteous — and will give them the care and attention they need during their case.
Make Sure To Follow Ethics Rules
Lawyers are permitted to promote their law firms on social media, but they must follow certain ethics rules. These rules often vary slightly from state to state. However, most states’ ethics rules mimic the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
Be sure to keep the following ethics rules in mind when using social media:
- You cannot post about your clients without their permission.
- You cannot make misleading posts that exaggerate your accomplishments or that incorrectly describe the nature of your fees.
- You cannot state that you are an expert in your field of law unless you have been certified by a relevant authority.
These are just a few ethical considerations to remember. It is also best to review this section of the ABA’s model rules that cover the solicitation of clients.
Overall, social media allows you to expand your online presence, which in turn will draw more business to your law firm. If you thoughtfully engage with those who come across your profiles and remain active on a variety of platforms, you’ll be well on your way to seeing fruitful results.
Strategy 7: Obtain and Manage Online Reviews and Ratings
Another aspect of any successful law firm marketing program is obtaining online ratings and reviews. Many potential clients will look at your reviews and rating before making a decision to hire you. Numerous positive reviews may encourage a client to hire you. Multiple negative reviews may do the opposite.
Why Are Client Reviews Important?
Think about how often you research a product or service before you select it. How do you know that you’re making the right choice? One way to gain insight into the answer is to look at reviews from people who have already taken the plunge.
Client feedback can give your law firm an additional selling point, especially if you’ve amassed a large sample of high ratings or reviews. It can also increase your credibility in the eyes of potential clients and search engines like Google alike.
If your law firm has a high number of 5-star reviews, it can only serve to improve your online reputation. Client reviews also have the potential to create a positive feedback loop regarding your law firm’s success.
Where Should You Get Reviews From?
You should aim to get reviews from any platform or legal directory that features them. The more positive reviews and ratings you have, the better. However, if your resources are limited, you should focus your efforts on Google and Facebook.
Google is king when it comes to online searches, and potential clients are likely to come across your law firm’s Google reviews when they search for an attorney in your area. Positive reviews are a method for you to stand out from your competitors.
Facebook is still the most popular social media platform, and reviews on it still matter as well. Your reviews on Facebook will be more contextual, as they will not have a number of stars or a number rating attached to them. So while your Facebook reviews might not have the same immediate impact that your Google reviews can, they could provide the potential client with more insight into your legal services.
Set Up Profiles on Multiple Legal Directory Platforms To Increase Your Digital Presence
Legal directories are also excellent places to pursue client reviews and ratings. These platforms include Avvo, Justia, and Martindale-Hubbell, to name three of the most prominent.
If a person comes across your profile on these platforms, you can be assured that they’re actively looking for a lawyer. Managing profiles on each of the top legal directory platforms benefits your law firm’s marketing in several ways.
For one, they offer yet another opportunity to create backlinks to your website, a critical component of link building. They allow you to expand your online presence, credibility, and authority, which will help you rise in the Google rankings and increase your reputation with potential clients. In addition, they open the door for you to obtain peer reviews and ratings.
How To Handle Negative Client Reviews
It might be tempting to evoke the old adage, “out of sight, out of mind,” when it comes to handling negative client reviews. Unfortunately, that is not the appropriate way to deal with a poor review.
It is a good practice to respond to every single review you receive, whether positive or negative, as it shows potential clients you care about what people have to say about you. It can also demonstrate the quality of your legal services.
You should always strive to post a professional, courteous response to a negative review. An aggressive or terse reply may give potential clients the wrong idea about your law firm — and could violate your state’s ethics rules.
Here are three tips that can help you create an appropriate response:
- Put yourself in the reviewer’s shoes as best you can. Empathy is one of the most important skills when it comes to customer service. If you can, think about a time when you had a disappointing experience with a product or service and how you felt at the time. People experience bouts of anger regularly, and sometimes that anger is let out in the form of a negative review. It doesn’t mean the person is irrational or that they’ll always feel that way. But considering their side of the story can lead to a more reasonable response.
- Address the content of the review. You should briefly address the information submitted in the review. Consider inviting the user to contact you to discuss the situation.
- Have one or more peers or staff members review your reply before you submit it. Another set of eyes could improve the quality of your response. Multiple perspectives and opinions regarding your reply can help to ensure it fits your desired intent.
Sometimes, you might receive a review or rating that was made fraudulently or inappropriately. Certain platforms, such as Google or Facebook, have policies in place for how to go about removing those reviews. You should also not be afraid to tell the user (and others reading the review) that your law firm does not have any record of representing the user.
In the end, online reviews and ratings help give potential clients piece of mind that you’ll be able to represent them successfully if they hire you. If you have a significant sample size of positive reviews, other similarly situated people could be more likely to select your law firm on the basis of reviews from people like them.
Strategy 8: Use Paid Ads To Get Your Name Out There
Paid ads can complement your other digital marketing strategies and are a good short-term option, especially if you’re just beginning the SEO process. Below we discuss the benefits of paid ads and different platforms you can look into for your law firm.
The Benefits of Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is a great way to heighten your law firm’s brand by making it more visible to your target audience: prospective clients looking for your legal services in your geographic area. It helps your law firm stand out from the competition, which is crucial considering the plethora of attorney websites circulating the internet.
Paid ads appear at the top of the search results before organic searches and are useful due to the following:
- Intentional targeting: The ads reach your desired audience
- Immediacy: Using paid ads will yield results quicker than your SEO campaign, making it a great tool if you’re in the early phase
- Measurability: You can measure and track web traffic, click rates, and conversions to determine if your efforts are paying off (and adjust them if necessary)
However, it’s important to note that paid advertising should not replace your SEO strategies; it should work in tandem with them.
Why?
For one, once you stop paying for ads, your visibility vanishes. However, if you’re using effective SEO techniques, your website should be in the top organic search results, which can yield results for years.
Another consideration is that many people scroll past paid ads to the organic search results, thinking they’re more authoritative. Therefore, you should ensure that your website is optimized.
An SEO-optimized website is also beneficial for people searching for information and answers in the early stages of their legal journey. They may not be ready to hire an attorney but want to research relevant topics before contacting one.
For example, someone may be wondering what to do after an arrest in Louisville, KY.
In this example, Google only produced organic search results and didn’t include paid advertisements. The user wasn’t necessarily looking for a criminal defense attorney, but the law firm’s website is SEO-optimized to answer their inquiry. You’ll miss out on these potential leads if you’re only relying on paid ads.
On the other hand, someone may be ready to hire an attorney and search for specific legal services in their local area, such as “Baltimore personal injury lawyer.” This is where paid advertisements are advantageous.
When your law firm appears in the top search results – above all other organic search results – a potential client may be more likely to visit your website and call your law office for help – especially if your firm shows up multiple times on the first page.
The Different Types of Ads You Can Use on Google
With over 92% of the global search engine market share, Google is the best place to begin your paid advertising campaign. Here are some of the best options for law firms and attorneys:
Google Local Services Ads (LSAs)
Local Services Ads (LSAs) are paid advertisements appearing at the top of the search engine results page. They only show up when someone searches for specific services in their area, such as “contractors in Las Vegas” or “Clearwater medical malpractice attorneys.”
They’re the first thing you see, emerging before paid Google ads, local search ads in the Google Maps bundle, and organic search results:
LSAs for lawyers typically include a headshot, client ratings, years of experience, areas served, and the law firm’s operating hours. You don’t have control over how LSAs appear or your target keywords, but they’re still helpful because they quickly provide users with key information regarding your law firm.
Additionally, LSAs implement a pay-per-lead model (versus a pay-per-click ad). Instead of paying for every click, you only pay for every lead generated from the ad, such as if someone clicks on the LSA and subsequently contacts your law firm.
LSA-generated leads have a high conversion rate, making LSAs a valuable resource if you’re looking to pay for online legal advertising.
Google Ads
Google Ads appear below the LSAs (if LSAs appear).
Unlike LSAs, Google Ads offer a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning you must pay every time someone clicks through to your website or landing page – even if it doesn’t generate a lead.
However, you have more control over what appears in Google Ads than in LSAs.
For example, you can (and should) decide which target keywords you want to include in the advertisement to draw in your intended audience. You can also create headlines and descriptions and add extensions, such as a link to your “Contact Us” page.
Google Local Search Ads
Local search ads are different from local services ads. They appear in the Google Maps area below the LSAs and Google Ads:
Local search ads are useful because your law firm could pop up if someone searches for “personal injury lawyers near me” or is looking at law firms on Google Maps.
They include key information about your practice and a map indicating your law office’s location. Local search ads can be competitive, especially for law firms in large cities.
If you have a local search ad, you should be responsive to inquiries to ensure that Google continues featuring your business in the top results.
Other Places Where You Can Take Advantage of Paid Ads
Some law firms find other platforms to be useful for paid ads, including the following:
- Paid Facebook Ads: You can opt to pay for PPC Facebook ads to gain access to certain features, such as boosting your posts to gain more visibility and target your intended demographic. However, you should learn more about who visits your page by initially using the platform’s free advertising tools. You should also optimize your page before paying for Facebook legal marketing tools.
- Paid Avvo profiles: You can pay for Avvo Advanced to enhance your profile or Avvo Elite to target your advertising. However, like Facebook, you should claim your free Avvo profile first.
- Paid Martindale-Hubbell profiles: You can use a PPC campaign to increase your visibility on Martindale-Hubbell and target client leads in your geographic location.
Many other social media platforms and attorney directories offer paid advertising. The important thing to remember is to take advantage of their free options before signing up for paid ads.
Strategy 9: Network To Get Work
In this ever-increasing digital world, many lawyers forget that networking is still a valuable marketing tool. Networking can include attending legal conferences and CLE events, taking a colleague to dinner, or meeting a potential client for coffee.
We discuss the benefits of networking for attorneys below.
The Importance of Attorney Networking
If you work at a law firm, you’re likely expected to bring in business. One way to do this is via networking.
Attorney networking builds professional relationships and garners referrals. If you’ve met someone in person (or seen them face-to-face) and had a conversation with them, they’re more likely to remember you. That means they’ll likely recommend you if the need for an attorney in your practice area comes up.
Your reputation is everything in the legal field, whether amongst colleagues, competitors, clients, or your community. When you compose yourself professionally and respectfully and create a good impression, you’ll continue to build your referral network, bringing in more revenue for your law firm. Likewise, when you provide excellent legal services, your clients will be more likely to refer you to others in their social circles.
Strategy 10: Track Your Marketing Efforts
Once you’ve implemented a digital marketing strategy tailored to your law firm’s objectives, you need to track your efforts. We explain why below.
Why It’s Important To Track Your ROI
Your return on investment (ROI) is a metric that measures the performance of your marketing strategies. When you’re creating a marketing plan at the beginning of your SEO journey, you set specific objectives, such as revenue targets.
Once you’ve executed your SEO and advertising campaigns, you need to measure their success and see if they’re meeting your expectations. Otherwise, how will you know what’s working? How will you know if you’re reaching your goals?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to legal SEO, so just because something is working for one law firm doesn’t mean it’ll work for yours. Tracking your ROI allows you to determine which tactics are beneficial for your business and which ones need to be adjusted.
How To Track Your ROI
So, how do you evaluate what’s working?
Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to measure the success of your marketing efforts:
- Has your organic web traffic increased?
- Are your desired keywords accruing high Google rankings and click volume?
- Has your website received an increase in conversions from organic search results?
- Has your local SEO presence improved?
- Are your offsite SEO strategies increasing your referral traffic?
Analyzing these KPIs will allow you to assess the value of your efforts. You can also identify weaknesses and stop investing in strategies that don’t work for your legal practice.
Also, it’s important to monitor your results continuously. SEO is variable. Things are constantly changing, and law firm SEO is a competitive market. You may be exceeding your goals one month and then underperforming the next.
Think of your digital marketing campaign as something you must continue to foster. You add fresh content to nurture it and modify things that aren’t working to set it back on course. You track your ROI to monitor its progress and see that it continues to grow and succeed.
Tools To Track Your ROI
Now that you know the KPIs to examine, we’ll discuss tools you can use to track your ROI.
Google Analytics is a free tool that will help you evaluate the following:
- The referring domain (i.e., the website a user visited before yours)
- How users found your website (e.g., by an organic web search, advertisement, attorney directory, etc.)
- Organic web traffic
- How a visitor interacted with your site (e.g., how long they stayed)
- Conversions from organic searches
- Referral traffic
Google Search Console (free) and Pro Rank Tracker (paid) allow you to analyze your content optimization by measuring:
- Keyword rankings (i.e., which keywords are bringing people to your website, and how are you ranking for each keyword?)
- Click volume
These tools also allow you to measure your keyword ranking performance over time so that you can continuously adjust your keywords to appeal to your target audience.
Local Falcon helps you measure your local SEO efforts. You can set a radius around your law office and search relevant keywords, and Local Falcon will provide GMB rankings for businesses in your radius. This will allow you to see how your competitors are performing.
CallRail also helps you monitor local rankings by creating tracking numbers that are used with your GMBs. These tracking numbers will allow access to the caller’s name and number, the source of the call, and the call length. This tool gives insight into your call volume and how people find out about your law firm.
Manage Your Expectations
There’s one final note on tracking your marketing efforts. Many people believe that once they’ve done all the “right” things in terms of digital marketing, they’ll see results immediately and don’t have to do anything else. That’s simply not true.
Good SEO marketing takes time. Be patient in the process. By remaining diligent in tracking your efforts and making adjustments as needed, you’ll eventually see measurable improvements and reach your goals.
Bonus Strategy: Partner With a Lawyer SEO Firm
You’re not alone if you feel overwhelmed by this guide. As an attorney, you likely already have a heavy caseload and a busy schedule filled with meetings, phone calls, networking events, and court hearings.
And as we’ve demonstrated, law firm marketing takes work, time, and patience. Just because you add some keywords to your website or create an appealing web design doesn’t mean you’ll instantly see increased client engagement.
That’s where it’s helpful to enlist the help of an experienced legal marketing agency.
LawRank can create a marketing plan tailored to your firm’s needs and maximize your ROI. We’ll continue to monitor the success of our efforts, providing top-notch customer service and guaranteeing complete transparency throughout the process.
We work exclusively with law firms and attorneys, and our cofounder is a UCLA School of Law graduate. Contact LawRank to learn how to get your legal website on the first page of Google and grow your business.
