Question: How do I market my law firm in the UK?
Answer: Follow these proven marketing strategies for law firms.
I'm going to share with you 16 cost effective ways to market your law firm in the UK. These are proven strategies that have worked with a number of law firms that we’ve worked with and will continue to do so in 2021 and beyond.
By understanding where your audience is and how you can engage and then convert them into enquiries, you can start to generate a steady stream of inbound enquiries from relevant clients looking for your services.
1. Have a strategy for your law firm marketing
There’s a reason why marketers bang on about strategy all the time.
While law firm marketing can often seem like it's about following the same set of processes, every law firm and solicitor is slightly different, with different selling points and different audiences.
Your law firm's marketing strategy is about your marketing objective.
Which is generally about getting more enquiries.
The strategy details the steps you'll need to take to get there, including the channels you use, the people you work with, your pricing and competitive environments amongst a few other variables.
Your strategy helps you decide where to invest time and money in order to see a return on that investment. The return is paying clients and revenue.
2. Attract local customers
Clients who don't know you will often start their journey to find a service via Google and in some cases even Bing.
Many of these searches are “solicitors near me” or geography specific searches such as “law firms in essex”.
By creating and optimising your Google my business page for local searches, you stand a good chance of getting your phone number, website and office address in front of relevant, local people.
3. Understand competition
Whether you're an established law firm or you're just starting out, you should be aware of who your local and national competitors are.
Which other law firms do you see advertised and who ranks highly in Google for local searches?
Whose offices have you passed and thought “We could do better than that?”
Your competitors are doing some things well and some things that you can do better. Take a look at their websites and see:
- There selling points
- Offers and discounts
- Services they provide
- Layout of their website pages
- Ways they interact with customers e.g. call centres, online chats
I bet there are loads of things you can do better?
4. Get Reviews
Reviews from previous clients can help potential clients to make a decision about using your services.
Once you set up and optimise your Google my business page you can start directing clients to review you.
This means that whenever people are searching for a solicitor or law firm locally when your profile can not only appear in the results, but will show a star rating.
I'm assuming that you're going to be providing a good service, so getting good reviews shouldn't be a problem!
You can work into your customer service workflow, a process of asking for a review.
For example if a case is about to come to an end and you know a client is likely to be happy with the outcome, then it might be a great time to email them the link to your Google my business profile where they can leave their feedback for the public to see.
Reviews can also be an important part of your website.
A paragraph or two from an existing customer can go a long way to helping other people make a decision.
5. Optimise your website for speed
By optimising your website, I don't just mean make it look nice.
Design is of course very important and it needs to reflect your brand, particularly on mobile (where most of your visits will come from).
Fundamentally, your legal website is there to sell.
It should be designed to generate enquiries from relevant, potential clients.
Your law firm’s website should be mobile optimised, conversion focused and give visitors real value.
It should also be something that you have full access and control over so you can add content and update the content as and when you need to.
6. Optimise your website for SEO
Your SEO strategy will depend on how technically sound your website setup is.
You need to make it easy for search engines to find, crawl and index your website content. Including;
- Fast, reliable hosting
- A great domain name
- A content management system that is reliable, easy-to-use and SEO friendly
- No scripts and code that slows the website down
7. Get links from other websites
This is great for SEO as every link acts as a vote of authority particularly if it comes from another high authority website. Links are also great for driving traffic to your website from other high traffic websites.
Find out more about link building for law firms.
8. Create great content
The importance of content marketing in the mix of marketing for law firms is still very high.
Content marketing is the cornerstone of any SEO strategy.
Without content you have nothing for other websites to link to and very little for Google and other search engines to crawl.
So what do you create content about?
Luckily you're an expert in certain areas of the law. You can share your experiences, give your views on the news and create how-to content that guides your potential clients through the legal minefield and builds trust for you and your firm.
9. Paid ads
Paid ads across Google, YouTube and social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram can have a real impact on your brand awareness and consequently the number of enquiries you get from your marketing efforts.
You can set a budget and only pay when people click on your ad. This means that if your targeting is relevant, you should only be paying for clicks from people who have an intent of using your services.
There are of course a number of variables which help determine how successful any paid ad campaign you run online will be;
- audience size
- level of competition
- device you are bidding on
- keyword you are bidding on
- type of audience you are targeting
- and how competitive the platform you are using is
10. Video marketing
Video marketing is another medium that is not going away anytime soon.
Any blog that you create can also be made into a video and posted onto YouTube to give you more visibility for your content and also help engage people who prefer video formats.
If you're comfortable getting in front of the camera you could say a few words about a particular news story or service you provide.
It's also straightforward to use stock imagery or videos and apply some text over-the-top to help support your message.
Videos are a vital part of any paid ad campaign that you create.
Your videos can be repurposed across YouTube Instagram and Facebook particularly as well as LinkedIn to help generate more awareness of your services.
11. Social media marketing
Everyone is on Facebook and Instagram therefore it must be straightforward to create a successful social media campaign for law firms right?
Unfortunately without an audience to post to, law firms can often a waste a great deal of time creating content or worse outsourcing the creation of content for social media, only for it to be posted to an audience of a handful of people.
Your social media strategy should revolve around building an audience of people to market your services to via great content.
12. Brochures and leaflets
There are still great merits in more traditional forms of marketing particularly things such as brochures, leaflets and if the budget will allow radio and TV advertising.
I've seen leaflet drops be very effective for clients who are dealing in a local market for services like family law property and personal injury.
Just try and get a handle on what your return on investment is for each marketing channel that you decide to use.
13. Podcasts
You'll be surprised just how many people listen to podcasts. Particularly useful for marketing your services nationally, if there are any law specific or industry-specific podcasts that you could go on as a guest.
You would also see the advantages from having a website link from podcasts’ website.
Podcasts can also be a great place to advertise your services to a local audience.
14. Networking
Another old-school marketing method is networking.
Particularly useful if you're a commercial solicitor but there's always value in getting along to networking events for your industry.
This could also help you to get referral work from other law firms who have an overflow, but it's another great way of getting your personal brand out there.
If you have the time, you can also start your own event with a few guest speakers.
15. Email Marketing
Email Marketing allows you to communicate regularly with existing, previous and potential clients by offering them email content and a reason to join your list.
While it's always tricky to email people sensitive content around family law or even things related to health by way of personal injury news, they're always ways of creating content around the industry you are in, for example conveyancing solicitors could send details about home decor trends.
Having email Marketing software in place allows you to automate the process of getting reviews from clients as well as keeping people up to date with their cases.
16. Analytics and measuring
You want to know what the return on investment is for your marketing.
The beauty of digital marketing for law firms is that everything is measurable.
If you employ somebody and pay them 2 grand a month plus the budgets for any paid advertising, what is the total return investment for that marketing spend? How many enquiries did you get and then what percentage of those enquiries went on to become paying clients?
Facebook likes and website visitors are all well and good but if they aren't contributing to the wider strategy of getting your law firm more enquiries then you need to re-evaluate.