Digital marketing for law firms is about connecting with new clients using online channels such as search engines, paid ads and social media.
By understanding who your ideal clients are, where they spend their time online and who you are competing with, you can invest in the right areas of marketing and get tonnes of relevant enquiries.
Before we take a look at the digital marketing channels that are most effective for law firms, there are three vital steps that you need to take.
Finding your ideal clients in the legal sector
How can you find high quality clients who need your services? You should have a good understanding already of who your ideal clients are. For example if you work with civil litigation then there may be certain types of accidents and injury claim that aren't profitable for you.
You need to understand what problems your ideal clients are trying to overcome. If you don't know, simply go to Google, enter a search term that is relevant to your law firm and and look at the "People also ask" section. It's like a goldmine!
Understand the competition
An important part of any law firm marketing strategy is understanding the competition. If you are unaware of who your competitors are, you can do a search in Google and take a look at your local competitors competitors.
What do they say on their websites what are they proposing to customers why would clients choose them ahead of you. What can you do better?
There are various SEO tools we can use to see which search terms / keywords your competitors are ranking for in Google. We could even make estimates on how much they spend on ads.
Facebook also very kindly provides details of the types of ads that other law firms are running. All great data and if nothing else inspiration for what you might need to do in your law firm digital marketing.
Polish your value proposition
Once you know more who the ideal clients are for your law firm are and what your competitors are doing, you can create a strong value proposition.
This doesn't need to be big PDFs and PowerPoint presentations, but it's a very simple reason why a client should choose you ahead of your competitors.
What does your law firm do that's different and what can you offer that's going to entice potential clients to get in touch?
Some common ideas include; no win no fee, free consultations or a percentage back from the consultation fee further down the line.
SEO - (Search engine optimization)
SEO for solicitors can be the most profitable long-term strategy for law firms looking to attract free website enquiries.
By optimising your website for Google, creating quality, valuable content for website visitors and ensuring your site has lots of high-quality links to it from other websites, you can start to rank the search terms that your target clients are entering into Google. This can dramatically improve your search engine visibility.
To create an effective law firm SEO strategy you'll need to understand what Google is looking for in order to rank your site as high as possible in search results:
- What your potential clients are searching for in search engines.
- How you can create content that answers the problems that people search for.
- How you can get quality backlinks from other websites to show Google that your website is worth ranking higher in search engine results.
Visibility and clicks from search engines are all well and good, but your bottom line is more enquiries. To find out how SEO services increased this law firm's enquiries to over 120 per month (from 0) check out our law firm SEO case study.
Local SEO
Local SEO is vital for small to medium sized law firms and businesses. People are looking for legal services near them and so if you don't appear for local searches in Google, for example "solicitors near me", then you're missing a trick.
A Google my business account (or a Bing for business account) is a great way to appear in local searches.
This will tell people where you are based, give them your contact details, some of your specialisms and also allow them to contact you directly from the page.
Paid ads on Google, Microsoft and Social Media
Paid ads (ppc) can help law firms get almost instant visibility with your target consumers across Google search, display, YouTube and even email accounts. You can also use social media ads that target specific demographics on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn with your advertisement.
With PPC you can set a daily budget and you only pay every time somebody clicks, views one of your video ads or you can pay per-thousand people who see your ad. Either way you have full control over campaigns and can make edits based on the data that you have.
Results for PPC ads can be measured in calls and enquiries either directly from the ad itself or after someone has landed on your website.
Your Website
A “fit for purpose” website is the engine room of marketing for law firms.
Your website experience needs to go beyond just looking nice. It needs to provide visitors with exactly what they're looking for in less than 8 seconds and it needs to load fast to tell Google that it is is trustworthy.
By creating a well-structured website you can allow users to easily find information, as well as giving Google all that needs to rank your key pages highly.
If your website is well-designed you can also create compelling content that gives visitors real value and gauges them and helps them to make an enquiry with you.
And don't neglect the mobile experience!
Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is one of the most important strategies for law firms. It helps define your brand and create narratives across all of your digital marketing channels.
You're going to need better content than your competitors if you want to be a market leader.
Whether it is a website landing page or copy in a Google ad, you need to make sure that you stand out from the crowd and that your consumers are aware why they should choose you ahead of the competition.
Creating quality content that demonstrates your expertise can have long-term value when it comes to SEO, as pages can rank for months if not years in the top spots in Google if they are crafted in the correct way.
It's also important to understand why you are creating content.
A big mistake a lot of law firms make is investing lots of time creating posts for social media engagement when the reality is that most people don't really want to engage with a law firm on social media profiles.
It's the same with website content. You might create a blog that you thing visitors will find useful, but without having the data to support it, you could be wasting your time.
Your content marketing should have real purpose.
Email Marketing
Use of email for law firms is an interesting one as it is rarely the most important online marketing channel to help your business, however, you can use high quality email in clever ways to help other channels.
It's unlikely that you're going to build an email list of thousands and thousands of willing participants.
But you can keep clients engaged at the point they interact with you.
The benefit of doing this is that they can give you reviews. Reviews are really important Factor and helping other potential clients make a decision.
Simply send a follow up email to anyone who you know has had a good experience and ask them to review you on your Google my business page, your Facebook profile or paid for services like Trust Pilot.
Data and Analytics
If you've made it this far, you probably want to see a pie chart...
One of my favourite things about digital marketing is that is all measurable. You'll know how many enquiries you have had through your website via either the phone or website forms.
You'll know no where your website traffic came from what they did when they landed there and what you can do to improve.
Using tools like Google Analytics or Google search console, you can create some really cool looking reports.
Digital Marketing Team
You may choose to employ a team of people who can cover manage each of the above marketing channels, including planning and delivery of the overall digital marketing strategy.
For some law firms it can be more cost-effective and less risk to use a marketing agency for law firms.
A law firm marketing agency gives you you flexibility of a monthly retainer that can be cancelled anytime. They'll also have a good grasp on how to manage and get the best out of digital marketing channels.
For the cost of employing experts for every digital marketing channel, you may find that employing a marketing agency is slightly more cost-effective as they can specialise in everything from social media and website design to SEO and content marketing.
Planning & Cost Analysis
Do you know how much it cost to currently to acquire a new client?
With digital marketing strategies, you'll be able to tell exactly that.
Having an ideal cost per acquisition of a new client in mind can help you determine how much you should invest in your digital marketing.
For example it may cost you £100 to get one 1 civil litigation client, but that client could then go on to be worth thousands of pounds in revenue.
Where as a client acquisition for making a basic will may be slightly cheaper because the the end service for that may not be as profitable for you.
To get started with your digital marketing contact us here.