Many law firms had to change how they provide legal assistance and do businesses over the last two years. One-on-one meetings with clients became impossible, and hearings were delayed for months, causing immense stress and anger for clients and the legal fraternity alike.
And as the world emerges from the ravages of a raging pandemic, it’s evident that the law firms will never be the same again.
That’s why, like other industries, the legal sector has had to find and implement innovative ways to promote its services and grow legal practices in 2024 and beyond.
Marketing efforts for law firms have become a necessity in this technology-driven world. Therefore, it is paramount to have active social media profiles, a well-maintained website, and effective online advertising to appeal to potential and existing clients.
To help you improve your law firm’s digital marketing efforts and ROI, here are some practical tactics you can execute in 2024.
Focus On Your Digital Marketing Goals
Despite the changing digital landscape, many law firms still use “conventional marketing” such as print, radio, billboards, local service advertising, etc., to bring in new clients and keep regular patrons interested.
Unfortunately, these legacy tactics don’t work as well as digital marketing does. It allows you to segment your budget to reach different audiences and communicate separate messages to each group, increasing the overall effectiveness of your marketing plan.
Your attorneys might want to participate in this process to connect fieldwork with their digital presence. Don’t discourage this because it can lead to effective and value-driven results for your practice. When your staff willingly participates in the creation and implementation of a digital strategy, it adds to the authenticity of your claims. Additionally, it builds a reputation for your legal practice that you can monetize in many ways.
When you spend some of your ad budgets on online video advertising via Facebook and YouTube, along with some tools for remarketing to get back the visitors to your site, you can earn more targeted views than “traditional” techniques. A refined digital marketing strategy can take these views into leads and customers in no time at all.
Moreover, in traditional marketing, you run your radio or TV ad and hope that the right people see it. But with digital marketing, you can define appropriate audiences and ensure that your money is put to work only by showing them the ad. Next, all you need to do is track critical metrics and modify your tactics accordingly to grow your legal practice.
Evaluate And Optimize Web Pages For All Practice Areas
When looking for a lawyer, 37% of consumers start online.
So if you don’t have a website or have one that isn’t optimized to appear on search results pages, you are missing out on a big chunk of possible clients.
That’s because a quality website makes your law firm accessible to a larger public. Make it easy to use and informative, and don’t forget to place CTA in all the right places, and your website can also be a steady source of leads for your business.
But just any old website won’t do. It has to be optimized to provide a stellar user experience while also giving search engines all they need to let you rank higher in search results.
For instance, page loading speed is an essential indicator for a robust website, making it vital to ensure that your site serves fixed pages. Talk to your webmaster about leveraging a CDN to help minimize the load times for the visitors.
Additionally, ensure that your site has relevant information that potential clients might need to feel like you answered their questions and concerns. Cover all the services and specializations your attorneys work with, and make it easier for the visitors to find this info.
Moreover, it is crucial to make sure that all web pages include valuable information about the provided services and are SEO-friendly to drive the right traffic. Leveraging location-specific and long-tail keywords makes it easy to rank higher for those particular terms.
List Your Law Firm on Legal Directories
Legal directories are an excellent digital marketing asset for any law firm. Getting listed on them can provide advantages to your law firm, and it’s quite easy to do. But make sure you only work with credible legal directories that make it easy for your prospective clients to find your law firm.
Moreover, directories also offer a few SEO-related benefits that can boost your overall digital marketing efforts. Additionally, search engines can make your law firm appear to people looking for attorneys in your locale or city. Also, local listings are helpful in this regard.
Listing your law firm and website in one of these legal directories also helps link-building, a crucial part of SEO. These listings guarantee that you get backlinks from sites that have good authority and credibility.
Produce And Publish Legal Content That Shows Your Expertise
It is imperative to leverage your website to connect with your audience and make it easy for them to choose your services.
This usually means putting a blog section on your website and populating it with opinion pieces, informative content, and essential info you want your prospects to know. It’s also a good idea to use this space to address issues that your clients commonly present, so you have somewhere to guide them instead of answering the same questions over and over again.
Then, make sure you update the blog frequently so that your website visitors and the search engine engage and interact with it more.
When a website delivers real value to the visitors, search engines instantly take it as a sign and elevate the website over the other digital law-focused companies that aren’t doing that well in their content strategy.
In fact, content marketing efforts cost 62% less than conventional marketing while generating about 3x as many quality leads.
By emphasizing quality and relevant content, you can help your prospective clients find about your services, dive deeper within your legal practice area’s niche, and become the vital authority in specific law areas you desire to practice.
While content marketing efforts take time, the outcomes are multifaceted and very real. When the search engines begin to approve your website’s relevancy for the keywords you are targeting, your company will start to see actual results.
And when attorneys from your firm can share recent results with social media followers and website visitors, it may entice the potential clients to reach out to that particular lawyer to get help with similar circumstances. And there are various topics that you can discuss.
Use Visual Aids Wherever Possible
You’ve got to admit, law-related information and news about legal processes aren’t exactly the most interesting. It’s easy to bore people and put them off your website, even though you’re just trying to help them.
So, make it easier on them by offering your content in a variety of different formats. For example, use videos, infographics, podcasts, and more to inform and entertain your website’s visitors. Interview your attorney, explain legal processes, address specific questions about your services, take your audiences on a virtual tour of your offices; you can do all that with videos alone.
Imagine the possibilities.
By developing and using unique visual aids and customized web designs, you provide your target audience with something valuable and helpful to share with others in their circles via social media.
60% of companies are incorporating video content in their marketing strategy. So if you aren’t, it’s time to start.
Allow your staff and attorneys at your firm to build your brand image on digital platforms, as they have the most information about the clients, and the client interacts with them first hand. This way, you can genuinely and accurately deliver a better experience while ensuring clients’ satisfaction and ultimately reap the benefits of your marketing efforts.
Appealing and exciting visual content provides real value to the visitors. In addition, it helps you with your law firm’s brand awareness and reputation, encouraging audiences to connect and interact with you via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
Leverage Email Marketing
Do you know that effective email marketing delivers the highest return on investment amongst other digital marketing tactics?
While this isn’t a standard for law firms to leverage this common strategy, the results can be remarkable if you can connect with your audience creatively and pitch your current client base.
Since most people use this communication channel, it is vital to make sure that your email copy is compelling and valuable to the reader.
By coming up with helpful sharing advice and relevant blogs posts with potential or existing clients via email marketing, you can guarantee that your articles have more views when you publish them and provide value to the clients both after and before their case. You might also consider asking followers from your digital platforms to connect via email subscription to increase your connected readership.
Digital and content marketing can significantly enhance and improve your efforts, so make sure that the content you publish is viewed and shared by a maximum number of people.
Get Online Reviews And Testimonials
Your visitors check your site out to see what you can offer them and see customers’ reviews. The latest study found that 98%Â of people consider reviews essential when researching for dependable law firms.
This is social proof for your prospective clients that you’ve got what it takes to represent them successfully as you’ve done for so many other people.
So, client reviews also go a long way in establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients. In fact, request your existing clients to provide you with video testimonials, so you have some quality content and stellar testimonials, killing two birds with one stone.
When you directly source your testimonials from the customers, you are able to demonstrate your expertise confidently to new leads. You see, they come to your website to see if your legal practice can handle their critical cases, and you’ve got many people telling them that the answer’s a resounding yes.
And don’t forget to get their consent to display their reviews and testimonials in emails, on social media, and your website. Also, you can put these links up on legal directory listings, such as Avvo and FindLaw, to ensure the trustworthiness of your law firm on these platforms.
Every attorney should bring in positive testimonials to your legal practice, so ensure that you inform them of the best practices and strategies to collect the reviews and get them posted to your site.
The most effective place to collect and display reviews is on the Google Business listing of your law firm because it can help your website show and rank high in the map listings when your potential clients are searching for it.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile Viewers
In addition to developing an SEO-optimized website that is easy to find for your prospective clients, it is also essential to optimize for mobile users.
With 6.37 Billion users of smartphones around the world today, it is evident that people use their devices to look for local information all the time. Therefore, it’s crucial that when visitors find your website, they can access all the relevant data efficiently and quickly. So make sure your website looks just as good on smartphone screens as it does on a laptop.
You can also use click-to-call buttons, develop a site that resizes for all mobile devices automatically, and ensure page loading speed.
Wrapping Up
The bottom line is it is crucial to show your current and potential clients that you have the required expertise, experience, and team to handle their cases with precision. And to do so, it is imperative to publish high-quality content on your blog, web pages, and social media accounts.
This helps you boost your brand’s online visibility and the clients’ interest in connecting with your law firm.
The tactics mentioned above can help you substantiate your accomplishments in front of your audience with the specific practice areas you deal in, allowing you to grow your legal practice seamlessly.
An effective law firm marketing plan requires various components to work in tandem. Accurately doing it can help you build credibility by delivering the right message.
