15 Basic Steps in Marketing Your Law Firm
The goal of any law firm is to get potential clients. Its not only a smart business goal but a crucial one to guaranteeing your law firms survival. But, how do you get there? We examine the steps it takes to dominate the market in your practice areas.
A good legal marketing strategy can go a long way to:
- Improving online presence
- Converting your target audience
- Increasing the law firm SEO
- Improving online marketing
The Key to Digital Marketing Campaigns
Steps to Market Your Law Firm:
- Create an outline of the goals you want to achieve with your marketing and assign staff where it is necessary in order to complete each goal.
- Assign a stagey for those who are assigned their tasks. Make sure they understand what it is they’re trying to do before beginning.
- Create a marketing strategy. Your law firm’s marketing is only as good as the ideas it can come up with, which means you need to be willing and able to put in time into this process.
- Develop referral marketing campaigns . It’s important to have people who are outside of the law firm referring you as their lawyer.
- Create a content marketing strategy. This can be done in many ways, but it all boils down to coming up with something that your target audience will find valuable and want to share with their friends on social media or through word of mouth.
- Develop a marketing timeline. This will ensure that your law firm is moving forward in the proper direction and accomplishing what it needs to on time.
- Use analytics tools like Google Analytics for insights into where you are succeeding, or not so much as the case may be with certain campaigns .
- Track progress of all goals through analytics .
- Track the progress of individual marketing campaigns through analytics.
- Get feedback from your key audiences and survey them on what they think about specific content or ideas you’ve come up with to see if it is, in fact, something that will be valuable to them.
- Monitor for social media engagement by checking out your law firms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media pages.
- Monitor competitors to see what they are doing in marketing that you should be aware of or not doing at all. Monitoring can also give you ideas for new campaigns your law firm could initiate on its own that would garner a lot of attention from those who have seen it take off elsewhere.
- Hire professionals who are experts at what they do when it comes to legal marketing strategies so that your focus remains on getting more clients.
- Utilize basic tools for law firm marketing, such as a website, listings in legal directories and news aggregation websites, social media campaigns and an inbound digital marketing strategy to achieve your goals.
- Review your marketing campaigns: Some things work, and some don’t. You should monitor which campaigns work and which go against your ROI. We have found that display ads in legal marketing, are horrible on your return on investment. Just because someone in law firm marketing recommends something, doesn’t mean it fits your legal practice.
The Basic Tools of Any Law Firm
Law firm marketing strategies always encompass a variety of tools and assets needed to achieve its goals, some of these will include:
- Business Cards
- Law Firm Website
- Listings in Legal Directories
- Google My Business Listing(s)
- Directory Listings for Local Signals (Google)
- Listings in Legal News Aggregation Websites
- Social Media Marketing
- An Inbound Marketing Strategy
- A Referral Marketing Campaign
Law Firms Website
When it comes to a law firms website, this is your first handshake with your client. It needs to be professional, fast, and secure. It also needs to promote your legal verticals correctly. As an example, a personal injury attorneys will want to target every conceivable way in which an individual can get hurt, all of the injuries that occur in car accidents, and you will want to concentrate on your law firm’s organic SERP’s – Search Engine Results Pages in correlation with your practice area locally.
Law Firm SEO Tips
You will need to do some reading. At the very least you will need to identify keyword targets, the minimal specifications for search engine optimization, and most likely, how to achieve that in WordPress and general HTML. Law firms target clients more effectively if they understand the basics.
The Key to a successful campaign is the ability to gain potential clients by marketing your law firm. The metric used to define this is visibility and in internet marketing it comes down to your legal services.
Example: In a personal injury law firm, the key to success is that potential clients are being able to find your practice locally, and the keywords can be car accident attorney, slip and fall, and savvy law firms use a keyword list and create a page for each secondary vertical, notably in criminal law the keywords maybe DUI / DWI, or Defense Attorneys.
Listings in Legal Directories
When it comes to law firm marketing, listings in legal directories can be your best friend. These are important for a variety of reasons. For one, they can help increase web traffic, and when someone clicks on the link it takes them directly to your website or contact page so you have their attention from step one.
Some of the best legal directories in the United States are:
You should be listed in at least 3-4 of the above to gain the most benefit.
Set Realistic Law Firm Marketing Goals for Yourself
The first and most important step to marketing your law firm is setting realistic and achievable goals. Without these, you will be lost in a sea of other lawyers trying to do the same thing. Create an outline of those goals and stick to them. Assigning staff where it is necessary to achieve each goal. Make sure you assign with a stagey in mind and then check in with those you assigned those goals “weekly”, to examine their efforts.
Your staff, may have need to read, train, and watch videos to understand what they are going to try and do. Not everyone has experience in creating content, graphic design, web site management, or social media. Which means you need to allow them an amount of time to learn.
The Basics You will Need to Succeed at a Law Firm Marketing Strategy
The first step, is the one that most law firms miss, and that is to come up with law firm marketing ideas. A law firm’s marketing strategy is only as good as the ideas it can come up with.
Once you have the ideas, its time to put them into action and that takes a lot of work which is why most law firms hire marketing professionals like a website design company or SEO specialists who can take care of these tasks for your firm without any effort on your part. You should be focusing all your efforts on getting more clients, not on performing marketing tasks you have little to no expertise in.
Create A Marketing Plan For Your Law Firm
It can be difficult for attorneys who are new in the industry or those that have been practicing many years because there is always something new to keep up with and it takes a lot of time; but, if you create a plan then you will know what steps need to happen before you take other actions.
Create A Social Media Strategy for Your Law Firm
Some attorneys choose not to use social media because they feel it is too time consuming or difficult; however, with a strategy in place you can find the best way for success and what will work best for the goals you have set as well as what type of content you want to share.
Set up Social Media Profiles
Social Media has become one of the most popular ways for people to get news about companies or products they like or need. This is not only because of the never-ending news feed, but because people are allowed to post their thoughts and opinions.
You want your law firm to have a strong social media presence so that you can reach out to clients in any way they feel comfortable with. Make sure you set up profiles for all of the popular sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
You can use social media to share content that you create or curate, as well as news and articles from your industry. You want these profiles to be professional but not overly formal so clients feel like they are interacting with a friend rather than an authority figure.
Plus it is important for the staff of your law firm understand what kind of content you want them to share. This helps people not waste time on things that will not benefit the company and instead focus their energies where they are needed most.
Create a blog post strategy for your legal practice
A blog is an excellent way for your law firm to connect with clients, potentials, or anyone in the industry who may be interested in what you have to say. It is also a way for you to share your thoughts and opinions on various topics.
Your blog should be professional, informative, and interesting. You may have articles that are strictly about one topic or general ones with tips. The goal of the blog post is to help educate readers who are looking for information related to law in their area or it may offer advice.
You can also use the blog post to share what you are doing in your firm, such as: recent projects or updates that may be of interest to other people in the industry and related topics.
Educate Yourself About Local Marketing Techniques
There are many different ways for attorneys to market themselves locally; however, they all have different marketing goals. For instance, maybe the goal is to increase their practice areas or get more clients for a certain case type. Whatever it may be, make sure you are using all of your resources available and not just one way as this will help with consistency in marketing efforts.
Inbound Marketing
With so many types of marketing available, it can be difficult to know which one will work best for your law firm; but inbound marketing is a great option if you are new or starting fresh. Inbound marketing is when clients find you through online search engines and other sources that have found information about the legal services they need on their own.
Outbound Marketing
Sometimes this is also referred to as traditional marketing and it is when you find the client first. This could be through referrals, word of mouth advertising or other ways that have nothing to do with online search engines.
Both inbound and outbound are important parts of your legal strategy; however, both require different techniques so make sure you know what works best for each.
Educate Yourself About Local Marketing Techniques
There are many different ways for attorneys to market themselves locally; however, they all have different marketing goals. For instance, maybe the goal is to increase their practice areas or get more clients for a certain case type. Whatever it may be, make sure you are using all of your resources available and not just one way as this will help with consistency in marketing efforts.
Know Your Competition And What They Are Doing To Market Themselves
This is a crucial step in marketing your law firm because you will be able to learn what strategies they are using. This can help create new ideas for campaigns or social media content that may work better than others; but, always make sure it aligns with the goals you have set and professional standards before implementing anything.
Know The Keywords That Are Important To Your Industry
It is important to know what words are relevant to your industry so you can better tailor content for them. This also helps with SEO rankings and the search engines will rank you higher if they think it has relevance in their area of expertise.
Find Out Who Are Your Client’s Favorite Bloggers And Read Their Posts Regularly
Readers may be subscribed to a blog and there are many different ways for you to find the ones that they read. You can use widgets, social media accounts, or even just visit their website on your own time.
Target Topics And Keywords In Your Blog Posts
It is important when blogging about law topics that it aligns with what you are trying to convey. You want your posts not only be entertaining, but also informative and that way readers will know it is related to their interests in the industry.
Consider The Length Of Your Posts And Try To Spread Them Out More Than Once A Day
This may depend on how many followers you have or what type of content you post; however, it is important to use these tools. Some may want more frequent posts and others will appreciate the ones that are less frequently published such as once a week or twice a month.
Share Interesting Articles Or News Stories That You Find
Helping your followers keep up-to-date on what’s going on in their industry can help create connections and also drive more traffic to your social media accounts.
Overview: Review the competition. Many competing law firms and many law firm websites have already had successful marketing campaigns and there is nothing wrong with law firm marketers surveying the competition and replicating successful law firms. Whether you have a a wide audience or a very defined target audience, existing, and potential customers should be targeted and re-targeted in your marketing channels.
Using Google Adwords marketing campaigns, leverage social media marketing, should be the goal of any progressive law firm. Some law firms find challenging the idea of targeting a law firm passively through their law firm website. If this is you then reach out us for professional services to help you get a marketing strategy together that targets law firm practice areas.
