Digital marketing has become an important aspect in every industry and law firms are no exception in this case. Attorneys tend to believe that the good reputation of their firm combined with a skilled group of experts is enough to keep a steady stream of clients coming through their doors. However, from a practical aspect, for a law firm, it doesn’t matter how good their reputation is, if they are not pro-active about attracting new visitors online and marketing their business, they will always face challenges. With increased competition, building a strong online presence or effectively marketing their law firms has become quite challenging for attorneys. That’s why it’s important to incorporate strong marketing tactics that can make it as easy as possible for potential clients to locate your law firm. Relying on a digital marketing services company is a unique way to increase online engagement, optimize brand presence and attract more clients to your law firm.
10 Effective Tips to Attract Clients
- Develop a Personal Brand: As per a study conducted by LexisNexis and Martindale-Hubbell, about 85 percent of law firms found that the majority of traffic to their website was directed at their lawyers’ bio pages. This is because potential clients in most cases are looking to hire a lawyer and not a firm. Once a website visitor lands on a service page, they most probably may research the partners’ page and their biography. The partners themselves need to almost be a brand of their own, with their own social entities and touchpoints connected to their personal name. For instance, if someone searches on Google to see more information, there needs to be something of substance for them to ingest. A detailed summary with specific details of the attorney’s professional achievements, a clear statement of expertise and results, reviews or recommendations from at least 10 clients and a professional headshot must be included. Make sure that each bio page has a strong call-to-action, to drive conversion. For example, include a contact form directly on the bio page, or make the phone number and e-mail address very prominent on the page.
- Create a Well-designed Website: Any company with an online presence needs to have a well-designed website, and the legal sector is no different. When prospective customers are attempting to use your services, your website design should be user-friendly and provide solutions. Being mobile-friendly is one of the most crucial aspects of any website in the present era. It is possible that certain prospective customers would only use their phones to access the internet, therefore your website must be as user-friendly for them as it is for desktop users. Every page of your website, as well as all of your advertisements, articles, and marketing materials, should have a call to action. This makes it clear to visitors to your website exactly what you want them to do, which is most likely to click on a Contact Us button to be taken to a form where they can enter their contact details.
- Create High-quality Content: Law firms need to focus on quality content instead of quantity as this will help establish them as experts, and that will increase brand awareness. Create a schedule for publishing content as this will help plan posts in advance. Select topics to write about that are relevant for particular times of the year. For instance, if you are focusing on blogs, write a few high quality blog pieces rather than lots of other low quality ones. Rather than posting a blog on the firm website and hoping for the best, law firms need to be proactive when it comes to discovering and then driving their target audience to their blog. Social media platforms are among the easiest and cheapest methods of accomplishing this. Use Facebook and LinkedIn to post links to your blog. Twitter being another powerful resource, use this platform also to post links to your blog. Do some basic research into the key influencers in your firm’s area(s) of expertise. For instance, tax lawyers should look for accounts that tweet news for CPAs and financial planners. After finding some relevant Twitter users, tweet your latest blog posts directly at these influencers. In most cases, these accounts will retweet your blog, exposing your firm to a far larger audience than that to which you would otherwise have access. Another consideration is an FAQ placed on a designated page on your website. For instance, including an FAQ page containing questions and answers to the inquiries that you hear most often is crucial. If you are able to write answers succinctly, you may even end up having your answer show up in a featured snippet and get high up in the SERPs.
- Find a Niche Service Area: Many law firms will have multiple specialties or specialize in different services. Choose one or two specific services you want to focus on and create specialized pages for each of these services. Explore and focus on key concepts and avoid keyword dumping. Have dedicated landing pages and sections on the website for each of the specialized services you provide. Give in detail what your law firm does, and how you can help your clients. This will not only improve retention rates on the website and get you more leads, but also give more space to optimize for keywords for each specific area of practice. For the best results, make each specialty clear either with a dropdown menu or in a clickable CTA menu. For instance, a family law attorney, should not put that all over the blogs. Instead, just post content about family law issues and things that people need to know to handle the issues addressed in the blog.
- Set Up Your GBP (Google Business Profile): Enhancing local SEO efforts for legal companies can be greatly facilitated by claiming and refining their Google Business Profiles. Make it simpler for potential clients to find you by including accurate information about your services and contact data on your profile page. Getting pleased customers to write reviews will help you build a better internet reputation.
Adding new information to your profile on a regular basis will help you maintain a good search engine ranking on Google. Using social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to display customer testimonials and running focused marketing campaigns can help promote legal services.
- Make video content: Google owns YouTube, the second-largest search engine, therefore searches on Google show results for videos. Consequently, it’s a good idea to spend money making a few videos that you can publish on YouTube and upload on your website. Ask your content producer to produce a number of videos covering various relevant topics. Law firms can effectively draw in prospective clients in search or browsing mode by using short-form videos. The videos are easily shareable on a number of websites, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Videos should provide value by providing prospective clients with straightforward explanations of complicated legal ideas or by providing answers to frequently asked questions. Additionally, subtitles must be included for improved accessibility and user experience. By including this kind of video marketing approach into their marketing plan along with other digital marketing techniques like email newsletters and landing sites, law firms can increase their visibility and draw in new business. Videos may address some of the frequently asked questions you get, or they may showcase your business talking about different scenarios in which it has helped clients. Videos help strengthen the bond between your company and prospective customers.
- Manage Reviews – Managing reviews is another important tactic to build trust with potential clients. Online reviews inspire twice as much client trust than Facebook “likes”, tweets, or follower counts. People are a lot more likely to trust the opinions of other people than what individual law firms have to say about themselves. By featuring client testimonials prominently, a law firm can set itself apart from the very beginning. In fact, client reviews on sites like Yelp, Google+ Local, etc. have been proven to influence 79 percent of consumers’ decisions. Make sure to actively manage these reviews and publish these on a client testimonial page on your website, if appropriate (so long as you are not violating a client’s privacy). Try to respond or reply to reviews as frequently as possible, (both the positive and negative ones) as this will help your clients feel heard and appreciated. Never let negative reviews go unaddressed or unresolved. Take adequate steps to resolve or explain the issue with respect and genuine effort.
- Google Paid Search: A well-executed paid campaign on Google AdWords can help in quality lead generation. Google Paid Search offers a unique platform for attorneys to get found at the exact moment people are looking for help. By clearly understanding what their clients are searching for, law firms can adjust an AdWords campaign to reach highly qualified leads. Create keyword dense landing pages on the client website to improve quality score (a measurement Google uses to improve rankings and reduce cost). Create unique “Thank You” pages for completed form submissions as this will help better track conversions. Create a responsive website design and include contact information that is easy to find on a mobile.
- Encourage Visitors to Take Action – Incorporating interactive content such as live chat, quizzes and polls – help users to respond and remember content to websites in a better manner. This leads to more clicks, and more users returning to your website. For instance, live chat is considered a more casual way than speaking with an attorney via email. It provides instant gratification and peace of mind from speaking directly with someone in real time. At the same time, in certain cases, intrusive live chat boxes may interrupt and frustrate the visitors causing them to leave the website without contacting the firm. Make the chat option noticeable but remember, nobody likes to be interrupted. Any piece of content a law firm produces for their promotion, should encourage people to take further action. Every page on a law firm website should have a call to action, saying something like “Talk to An Attorney Now” or “Contact Us,” where users can fill out a form with their contact information.
- Use the Live Chat Feature on Your Website: Instead of sending emails or making phone calls, live chat on your website enables customers to speak with your business directly. Since people are used to receiving their answers right away, having a live chat feature as a resource can help them get the information they need more quickly. Every page of your website should include an easily navigable chat feature. A chat box is not the same as live chat. Whereas a chat box simply provides answers to pre-programmed inquiries, live chat enables users to communicate with real people to get the answers to their questions. It will be difficult to design a bot with all the answers clients may ever need, given the intricacy of legal issues and the diversity of people’s needs. For round-the-clock assistance for site users, you have the option to completely outsource the management of the live chat system or manage it in-house.
Law firms are continuously working towards discovering unique marketing strategies that help gain more quality leads. Do not assume that just because a law firm is well-known in the legal industry they can do a good job. A unique combination of strong branding, search engine optimization, and trust-building content could help a law firm stand out from competitors. Using the above marketing strategies would help a law firm to not only get more traffic to their website, but also build a strong online presence. An experienced organic SEO company providing outsourced legal marketing services can help implement these strategies effectively and make sure that their client law firm stays ahead of the competition.
