Digital Marketing For Law Firms – Tips, Strategies & Best Practices
Traditionally, all you needed when marketing your law firm was to put up a sign and some billboards, drop off your business cards, and wait for clients to knock on your door or call your phone. While these marketing methods have their place in marketing even today, you cannot depend on them entirely. The best option is to use these options to complement your digital marketing strategies, which are the main source of leads in the digital age.
Succeeding in digital marketing takes skill. But if you are a novice, worry not, as this guide can help you make the first steps to getting the best out of it.
Start With Having a Digital Presence
Before you can market your law firm digitally, you have to have a digital presence which means setting up your website. Traditionally businesses survived on a static website with pretty little information. If this is what you have, it may not help much, so you may need to invest in a quality website.
However, you must avoid free website offers you see on the internet or a DIY website design unless you have experience building one. Your website should reflect what you want your audience to associate with.
So invest in a professionally made website to reflect the quality your clients can expect from you. Also, it must allow your visitors easy access to the information they need about you.
Leverage the Power of Content Marketing
The internet is the first place most people go when faced with a legal issue. Having up-to-date content on the internet means there is a chance that the person will come across your content.
While they gather information about their legal problem from your content, you build an impression of expertise in your field, increasing the chances of the audience wanting to work with you.
Creating relevant and informative content can be time-consuming. But you do not have to do it yourself. You can find countless content creation agencies that can help you create content that converts.
Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
There are thousands of law firms on the internet. There could also be hundreds of them in your city. Having a website and content does not mean you will have clients knocking on your door. You will need to optimize your site to ensure it beats the others in the search results.
The target should be to make it on the first page of the search results. Local search engine optimization (SEO) is the most important for startups. Optimizing your site for local SEO involves using local target keywords, proper site categorization, page optimization, and link building, among others.
SEO is best left to the marketing experts with experience in marketing a law firm if you want the best results. But even then, the results may not be automatic, so patience is required.
PPC Marketing
Having a website and optimizing it for SEO is great, but the results can be more of a trickle rather than a flow. The best way of increasing the flow of traffic to your site is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
The cost of running a PPC campaign can be significantly high, especially if the leads you get through your campaign do not convert into paying clients. PPC advertisers charge per every click, so you will also need to ensure that only the most qualified leads click on your ads.
If you don’t have any experience using PPC to market a law firm, you will want to seek professional help from a law firm marketing agency. Handling PPC without the help of an experienced digital marketing expert or agency is not advisable to avoid running into losses.
Leverage the Power of Social Media
Two decades ago, nobody would have thought social media would evolve to become the huge marketing platform it is. With more and more people getting on social media over the years, businesses had no choice but to follow their audience there.
You do not have to be on every platform. Your target audience should dictate your choice of platform. For example, if you are a personal injury or criminal defense lawyer, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube can be great places to be. If you are a corporate lawyer, LinkedIn may be the ideal platform.
The different social media platforms will also have different approaches, and what works for one platform may not work for another.
Hiring a social media marketing expert can help you get the most out of it. Besides the organic content you post on your social media, you should also consider sponsoring ads to reach a bigger audience.
Track Your Metrics
The only way of knowing if your strategies are paying off is by tracking your progress. The best place to start is before you start and then compare your results with the results post implementing a strategy.
This way, you can know where you are doing well and where you could be losing money. Based on your metrics, you can create strategies to improve your results, including dropping strategies that are not performing as well and allocating more resources to the area with a better return on investment.
