Easy Digital Marketing Ideas for Law Firms
In today’s digital age, it is crucial for law firms to leverage digital marketing efforts to stay competitive within the legal industry. Implementing a strong digital strategy can help law firms reach new clients, establish their brand, and set themselves apart from their competitors, not to mention increase their ROI.
So, what should your law practice be doing with online marketing to reach these goals? The truth is– there is a lot that goes into a successful digital marketing strategy. We’ve created a list of the simple tasks that can improve the effects of digital marketing for lawyers (most of which are free to do).
What is Online Marketing for Law Firms?
Law firm digital marketing refers to the effort of selling legal services via the Internet.
While traditional marketing methods such as print ads and billboards still have their place, legal firms that prioritize digital marketing services are much more likely to attract potential clients and retain more clients in today’s increasingly digital world.
There are a number of law firm digital marketing strategies available to help your law firm reach more potential clients, regardless of your marketing budget.
Online marketing for lawyers might include using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve visibility on search engines, creating valuable content such as blog posts and eBooks to encourage website visitors, utilizing link-building campaigns to help establish authority, and using social media to engage with potential clients.
How Can Online Marketing Help Lawyers Get More Clients?
Legal digital marketing is a powerful tool for lawyers looking to draw in new clients.
Local law firms may significantly boost their online exposure and reach a larger audience by implementing efficient online marketing tactics, including search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and content marketing, to name a few.
These law firm digital marketing techniques can assist attorneys in establishing themselves as leaders in their respective fields, gaining the trust of prospective clients, and generating leads through targeted Internet marketing campaigns.
Law firm digital marketing also enables law firms to monitor their progress and make data-driven choices to enhance their Internet marketing strategies. Overall, lawyers may effectively promote their services, establish their reputation, and bring in attract clients by implementing a well-executed digital marketing strategy.
How To Create a Digital Marketing Strategy for Lawyers
There are a variety of tactics that can be utilized when it comes to creating a digital marketing strategy for a law firm.
At Digital Logic, we are constantly researching new and effective ways to get more quality leads and in turn, more clients for our clients, while still staying true to the strategies that have always worked.
Below are some of the strategies that we believe, as established digital marketers, are the most effective in generating quality traffic, more leads, and better ROI metrics.
Create or Update Your Law Firm’s Website To Help Your Online Strategies
If your law firm doesn’t already have a website, what are you waiting for?
Your law firm’s website plays a huge role in client acquisition because it is essentially the face of your business. As such, a poorly designed website can turn prospective clients away, while a clean-cut, professional, and content-heavy website can be just what you need to secure those potential clients.
A good website should include a striking home page with prominent calls to action, a number of relevant practice area pages, examples of previous case studies, client testimonials from past clients, an about page, several blog posts, and a contact web page.
It’s also important that you update your law firm website on a regular basis.
This means that new, up-to-date content is being added each month, as search engines, like Google, love to see fresh content.
Technology has changed rapidly over the past few years, and it’s still evolving. Think of mobile viewership first when it comes to your website. Google recently switched to a mobile-first index in 2015. So, if your site looks terrible on mobile, then it will be very difficult to find.
Website Tips for Attorneys
Some other tips for web design best practices include:
- Make sure your website is easy to find and that you’ve submitted a sitemap to Google and other search engines, so the platform knows to crawl it.
- Have a page on your website for every single practice area, and then build off those practice area pages by creating more niche subcategories. For example, a personal injury page could have subpages relating to car accidents, dog bites, product liability cases, and so much more.
- Make sure your website loads fast. Website visitors tend to leave if a website takes three or more seconds to load. To test your page’s load speed, try Google’s page speed testing tool.
Optimize Your Law Firm’s Google Business Listing to Rank Higher in The Search Results
Make sure you have a claimed Google Business listing. If you do not yet have one, all you need is a Gmail account, then head over to www.gybo.com to start the process of claiming your listing. Verification sends a postcard to your firm with a code to verify that you’re the true owner of the listing.
Additionally, you’ll need to complete the following to optimize your Google Business profile:
- Add pictures of the attorneys, as well as your law firm, to your business listing (Google likes pictures). Make sure you name all the pictures.
- Add your complete business description.
- Make sure you select the appropriate categories for your law firm.
- Add descriptions for each service you offer.
Optimize Your Law Firm Directory Profiles To Improve Your Overall Marketing Strategy
Use a service to sync your Google Business listing with a hundred or so online directories. Moz Local is a fantastic service for this.
Create listings on the major lawyer/attorney directories, including Justia, Avvo, Findlaw, MartinDale, Lawyers.com. When creating these listings, use the exact same info you used on Google Business. This includes your business name, address, phone number, and website.
Justia Link Building Opportunity for Attorneys
On certain directories, namely Justia, you are able to link to up to 5 websites and between 5 to 20 blog posts from your site.
You’ll want to take advantage of this feature, as this is a great opportunity to build backlinks from a website with a high domain rating.
Add your main home page and up to 4 main practice area pages as websites, and depending on how many blogs Justia allows for your profile, either 5 or 20 relevant blog posts. Make sure you name each of these pages/blogs with the appropriate anchor text.
For example, for a link to a criminal defense page, the best anchor text would be the city name + criminal defense attorney.
If your law practice has multiple attorneys, make sure each attorney creates a profile and utilizes this feature.
Get More Quality Leads With Legal Content Marketing Services
You need to be publishing new content on your website several times a month as part of your ongoing law firm digital marketing campaign.
Once again, Google loves fresh content, and they want to see that you’re an active business. So, it’s important that your law firm writes content that’s actually helpful for your potential clients. Otherwise, your website traffic will immediately leave your website when they realize the information you provided wasn’t helpful.
Google’s algorithm quickly determines which web pages its searchers find valuable. From here, it incentivizes good and helpful content by ranking that content higher in the search results. In contrast, it pushes the old or ‘less helpful’ content down the rankings.
Ideally, your content should be informative while also being packed full of keywords and phrases that will help boost the SEO value and attract more website viewers. You’ll find more success than publishing stale, useless, or strictly promotional content.
Why Attorneys Fail at Content Marketing Strategies
Adding blogs to most websites is easy, but it becomes a bit more tricky when it comes to writing them with high SEO value. We’ve seen several firms that want to avoid paying for organic digital marketing services, so they write their own legal content–only the content doesn’t produce any results. Those attorneys then determine that search engine optimization and content marketing efforts are worthless. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The vast majority of digital marketing experts (and investing lawyers, for that matter) agree that SEO and content marketing services produce the best results, specifically in terms of digital marketing for lawyers. If you’d rather have a third party handle the organic side of your law firm digital marketing campaign for you, then you can take a look at our attorney SEO services.Create a Better Social Media Strategy With Professional Social Media Management
Social media management can play a critical role in law firm digital marketing strategies, as it allows them to reach a wider audience and engage with prospective clients in a more personal and interactive way.
Make sure you’ve created business profiles on all the major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) and invest in publishing content there. Once you have profiles, publish your website and blog content to these profiles. This helps Google’s algorithm know that it’s really you and also provides an additional route for traffic to follow to your site.
It is also helpful to create unique social media posts that reflect your unique legal services or otherwise have a call to action. Testimonials are also great for converting into social posts.
Get More Targeted Traffic With Law Firm PPC Management Services
You want to get in front of as many potential clients as possible. Consider it this way, while they may not always reach their target audience, the lawyers with the billboards are trying to get as much name recognition as possible. When a potential client needs legal counsel, they might do a Google search for the lawyer’s brand name they have on the top of their mind. (While billboards can be a useful marketing tool, most market research suggests that the results they bring usually don’t justify the cost.)
Back to the topic–PPC works in similar ways. You are paying to put your face on a platform in order to get in front of prospective clients. Instead of relying on word of mouth, you’re relying on the Internet.
The major difference between the two is when your law firm uses paid digital marketing services from a reputable digital marketing agency, you are able to select and utilize relevant keywords that appear before your target audience and hopefully convert that into website traffic and a qualified lead.
Because you are in control of the keywords you choose, you have a say in the people it reaches (unlike billboards which simply reach anyone who happens to be driving by). You also have the ability to pay only for the leads that click on your ad.
Getting Started With PPC Advertising for Lawyers
To get started with PPC for attorneys, you will need to buy keyword traffic on Google and in some cases, Bing, as well. This is because you want your website to show up when someone is searching for your practice areas. It’s also important to know how to use negative keywords, match types, landing pages, and conversion tracking as part of this specific law firm digital marketing strategy. There are many different campaign settings to help you focus your efforts. Don’t burn through your whole budget on keywords that don’t convert. If you’re not sure how to go about this, the best practice is to hire an expert to manage your search engine advertising. A new form of advertising on Google has also recently been made available to you called Google Local Service ads. We will provide more information on this below.Importance of Brand Advertising for Lawyers
Brand advertising for attorneys on the internet isn’t for the people who are searching with general search terms like “Lawyers in New Orleans” or “Personal Injury Lawyer in Birmingham.” With brand advertising efforts, you want to run more awareness campaigns on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Google Ads.
Generally, over 50% of traffic to an attorney’s website is for a brand-related search. The more brand advertising that you’re dealing with, the more recall people will have. Then, more people will search for your business name when they need help.
Maintain Your Online Reputation With More Online Reviews
People trust other people’s experiences when it comes to purchasing goods and services. Ask for reviews from previous legal clients on your Google Business listing.
This will help your organic SEO rankings on your website, which will affect your placement in search engine results pages on Google. You can also use the reviews you receive on Google on your actual website to boost credibility. People like looking at reviews before deciding to buy, especially when buying locally.
Which Digital Marketing Strategies Work Best for Law Firms?
Here at Digital Logic, we specialize in law firm internet marketing, which means we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to digital marketing for lawyers.
The strategies we find work best for law firms include SEO, PPC, LSAs, and law firm social media marketing. We know that’s a lot of acronyms for one sentence, but don’t worry. We’ll cover each of these strategies in more detail below.
Law Firm Search Engine Optimization Services
Law firm SEO is about more than just creating a website and hoping it finds its way to the top of the search engines. There is a lot of work that goes into making a website appear at the top of a SERP (search engine results page) organically. There are also a lot of variables to consider, especially since Google’s algorithm for ranking is constantly changing. However, with the right SEO strategy, this method of law firm digital marketing can outperform all other channels that lawyers may use to grow their business (and for a fraction of the cost).
A good SEO strategy requires consistent research for keywords, content, new techniques, website optimization, Google Business optimization, a strong link-building strategy, and so much more.
Local SEO for Small Law Firms
Law is a competitive field, and larger firms tend to garner more leads than smaller firms. This is especially true for practices with multiple locations spanning across a state or even the country.
However, small law firms can still have a leg in the race with the implementation of local SEO strategies. Local SEO is the process of optimizing a website or online presence to increase its visibility for local search queries, specifically those with geographic qualifiers such as a city name.
Local SEO for law firms aims to improve a website’s rankings in local search results, making it easier for local clients to find the business online and ultimately drive more foot traffic to a physical location.
Digital Advertising for Law Firms
We are all aware that in today’s day and age, people turn to the internet for information and to locate goods and services.
In most cases, however, they don’t tend to look very much further than the first few results they see. That’s why being at the forefront of the search results page is so valuable to businesses.
While SEO works organically and long-term to secure those high-ranking positions, PPC is more of an immediate solution.
PPC advertising offers several advantages to advertisers. It is an effective approach to reach prospective customers who are actively searching for products or services relevant to their business, resulting in lead generation and sales through targeted online advertising.
With PPC, advertisers have complete control over their ad spend, can monitor their campaigns’ performance, and tweak their ad campaigns based on the results data from Google Analytics to enhance digital marketing outcomes over time.
Local Service Ads for Law Firms
To expand your law firm’s reach, Google Local Service Ads for lawyers is a great choice. Local Service Ads, also known as LSAs, are ads that appear at the top of Google’s search results, surpassing organic search and sponsored Google Ads – the paid positions at the search engine’s top.
By investing in Local Service Ads management, your law firm can become the initial result searchers see when searching for local services corresponding to your practice areas. For most law firms, these local services ads for lawyers can significantly enhance online visibility, leading to an increase in business income.
Unlike pay-per-click ads, law firms using Google Local Services Ads don’t pay for each click. Instead, they pay for each lead generated through Google search. This means that the number of clicks doesn’t impact the service rate when you create Local Service Ads; rather, it applies to the number of valid contacts it generates for your legal practice.
Additionally, with Google’s Local Service Ads, you have the ability to dispute any calls that were not directly related to one of your service areas (or a specific service area for which you were not running campaigns).
Social Media Marketing for Law Firms
Social media marketing offers several benefits for a law firm.
For one, social media allows lawyers to connect with potential clients while increasing their brand awareness and reputation. It also offers a cost-effective way to advertise legal services while targeting specific demographics and interests.
Some firms may choose to showcase their credentials on social media, which can help build trust and credibility while maintaining that ever-important online presence. Client reviews and case studies are also great for generating trust and authority.
Additionally, marketing on social media platforms allows law firms to monitor and manage their online reputation, respond to reviews, and address the concerns of existing clients promptly. It can also provide valuable insights into client preferences, allowing them to tailor their services and better understand their target audience.
Can Lawyers Do Their Own Law Firm Digital Marketing?
Lawyers can certainly do their own law firm digital marketing, but it can be extremely challenging to achieve the desired results without having plenty of experience in this area, especially when you consider the competitiveness of the current law firm digital marketing industry.
Digital marketing efforts, such as creating and executing effective Internet marketing campaigns, require a lot of time, effort, and resources.
Most often, lawyers are better off allocating their time, effort, and resources to their cases rather than learning the ins and outs of law firm digital marketing.
While most law firms have a limited marketing budget, outsourcing digital marketing to an experienced agency like Digital Logic can be a worthwhile investment. Every law firm we’ve worked with has seen an impressive return on their investment. For this reason, we maintain a solid 97.5% client retention rate, many of which are lawyers.
Digital Marketing Solutions for Law Firms
As you can see, there is a lot of thought and strategy that goes into digital marketing, especially in a field as competitive as the legal industry. That is why many law firms choose to outsource their internet marketing efforts to an agency that specializes in that area.
Digital Logic is a Shreveport-based company that works with both local and national-level firms. At Digital Logic, our law firm marketing team comprises skilled professionals who specialize in revenue-driving tactics for our clients.
We handle all aspects of digital marketing for legal services, including law firm website development, attorney SEO services, PPC, content marketing, online advertising, paid media, social media marketing, content creation, blog posting, graphic design, directory listings, and more.
Allow us to take over your digital marketing strategy and see what our team of professionals can do for you and your law firm.
