As a contemporary law firm, relying on traditional methods like print ads and direct mail is no longer enough. Potential clients need to be attracted through other means and some audiences may be looking for your services but may not be aware of your existence.
Online marketing is the key to increasing your visibility and bolstering your reputation as a law firm, ensuring long-term growth and sustainability. But how do law firms market themselves online?
In this blog, we’ll give you a complete rundown of online marketing for law firms and how it can bring new clients to your practice.
Why digital marketing matters for law firms
Legal marketing has undergone a major shift in recent decades, as traditional methods have been displaced by digital methods like SEO, social media, email marketing, and more specialized techniques.
The shift to online legal services
To stay competitive in this industry, law firms need to market themselves so that clients can find them online, even by searching keywords that represent those services. Coordinating a strong online presence that combines a website, content marketing, SEO, social media, email marketing, and other methods is the best way to stay relevant in the legal world.
3 Steps to Market Your Law Firm Online
In this next section, we’ll discuss three actionable steps law firms can take to market their practice online: optimizing their website, taking advantage of content marketing, and making your firm more visible online.
Optimize your website for desktop and mobile
When optimizing your law firm website, it should be:
Fast
Users expect websites to load quickly. If a site takes too long to load, prospective clients may leave and look to a competitor’s website for an answer to their legal issues.
Mobile-friendly
Your firm’s website should be accessible on all mobile devices. An increasing number of people access websites through their phones.
Part of this optimization is having a responsive website that adapts to different screen sizes, has search functionality, delivers immediate answers, and has text and pictures that are the right size. It’s worth mentioning that mobile-friendly websites are also prioritized on search engines.
User-friendly
Your website must also be easy to navigate. There should be apparent Call-to-actions (CTA) on every page.
A call-to-action requests a site visitor to click or fill out something to move closer to becoming a paying client. It can be as simple as a button that says “Contact Us,” or a paid ad that links back to your website. Adding a live chat function is another great way to directly engage the possible client, as 71% of consumers believe faster response times make a better experience.
Use content marketing – blogging & FAQ’s
With content marketing, your firm can create and share valuable materials that attract and retain your audience of prospective clients. For law firms, blogs, social media, and FAQs are all effective methods to show your potential clients that you’re an authority on a given subject and that you would be able to help them.
When crafting this content, make sure that it has a clear focus and CTA, is a regular feature of your law firm and offers materials that feel substantial. The longer a prospective client looks at your blogs or email marketing, the more likely they’ll convert into a paying customer.
This regular content is equally relevant in helping with placement on places like Google. They’ll be more likely to surface your website if you offer regular blogs or FAQs covering important topics that potential clients are looking for.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing websites so they appear near the top of search results for relevant keywords. Keywords (or keyword phrases) are words or phrases that represent the topics around which you build pages or your entire website.
These keyword phrases are also the search terms prospective clients use to search on Google or other search engines to find your website. By consistently increasing your visibility, you are more likely to bring more potential clients to your website and increase the possibility of conversions.
Despite SEO’s importance, some law firms who market more traditionally may ignore it as they find it overwhelming or difficult to understand. SEO can indeed be very rewarding for your law firm’s growth, but it can also be very time-consuming to maintain and create content that will lead to lasting change.
This is why it’s smart to enlist experts who specialize in digital marketing services like SEO and content marketing.
Is content marketing useful for law firms?
As part of a coordinated online and offline effort, content marketing is very important for law firms hoping to gain online visibility. Releasing educational materials is a great way to establish yourself as an authority in both your local area and across the country if you want to one day expand.
Content marketing will also set you apart from your competition as you are the primary resource for free advice and, thus, more accessible to potential clients. When creating this content, it doesn’t need to be highly specific. Instead, it should address common questions or broad issues that clients repeatedly bring up.
These materials should answer these questions and offer clients the next step to learn more about these services.
Two examples of potential content marketing could be:
- “How much does a divorce lawyer cost?”
- “What should I do after a car accident?”
Register your Google Business Account and Yelp
By registering on places like Google Business Account, Yelp, and even local state bar listings, you’re putting your name out there and adding to the legitimacy of your practice.
And each of these websites has different benefits for your law firm. For instance, in the case of Google Business, it is a straightforward way to attract potential clients in a particular geographical area. Your business will come up when someone searches for local legal practices.
Your firm’s website will be the main source where clients can find you, but there are many other sites where you can claim your own online profiles for free, including the aforementioned review sites like Yelp. These profiles can be crucial as positive client reviews and are one more way to improve your firm’s SEO.
The other half of this is that you also need to encourage your most loyal clients to leave positive reviews that add to your credibility online. When talking to clients, make sure to create a way for them to be transparent about their experience with your law firm. And don’t be shy about asking satisfied clients to advocate for your work.
Should law firms use paid advertising for online marketing?
Paid advertising can be a valuable tool for reaching potential clients and promoting your firm’s services, but it needs to be implemented as part of a larger digital marketing strategy. Options like PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising can lead to quick results, but they need to be combined with other efforts like SEO work, blogs, email marketing, and other forms of content marketing.
Paid ads on Facebook and Google Ads are particularly useful when targeting specific demographics, geographic locations, and practice categories. With Google Ads, you can even hone in on customers who are likely to be within particular age ranges, gender identities, parental statuses, or household incomes.
Paid advertising is far more cost-effective than previous incarnations, such as full-page ads in newspapers or television spots, but it still requires the ability to create websites, implement SEO practices, learn social media algorithms, and research keywords.
Ready to start marketing your law firm online? We can help!
Digital marketing may be unfamiliar territory for you or your law firm, but it’s essential to growth in the contemporary legal landscape. Mail, radio ads, and billboards used to be the big ticket items, but search engine optimization, website optimization, and uniquely targeted content marketing are now some of the best ways for potential clients to be noticed online.
If you’re ready to start marketing your law firm online, look to the professionals at Ranq who can help your law firm stand apart from the competition.