7 Digital Marketing Strategies for Law Firms

In the United States, one out of three people will seek legal counsel in their lifetime, and three out of four people looking for attorneys will use online resources.

Since so many people begin their hunt for legal information on the Internet, it’s important for your law firm to maintain a presence online right where your best prospects are searching.

Keep reading if you want to learn more! For professional help with digital marketing, give us a call at 888-601-5359 or contact us online.

What is digital marketing?

Internet or digital marketing includes a series of online strategies to drive qualified traffic to websites, convert leads, and increase revenue for companies.

An affordable option for businesses in all industries, Internet marketing helps law firms increase their reach and engage more potential clients.

7 digital marketing strategies for law firms

Let’s take a look at some Internet marketing strategies that work well for law firms.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process by which websites are optimized to rank higher in search engine results for targeted keywords or phrases.

When people search for legal services in their area, you want your law firm to appear at the top of search engine results. The higher your website ranks, the more clicks and views it will receive, and more people will find out about your services.

You can be the best lawyer in your area and have a beautifully designed website, but without SEO strategies, people may never find you.

To get started with SEO, if you choose to implement your SEO strategy in-house instead of investing in SEO services from an agency, follow these best practices:

Optimize your site for relevant keywords

If you want to have success with SEO, start by optimizing your site for relevant keywords. Keywords trigger your website to appear in relevant search results. If you want clients to find your practice, you need to conduct keyword research and discover the right terms to integrate on your website.

You can use a keyword research tool, like KeywordsFX, to find relevant terms. You can plug in a phrase, like “criminal defense attorney,” and generate numerous keywords you can potentially use on your site.

When you conduct keyword research, you’ll generally want to stick to terms that contain three or more words, also known as long-tail keywords. These keywords are more specific, so you can feel confident that the leads that search them are interested in your law firm.

Once you have your keywords selected, you’ll want to integrate them throughout your page, including the body text and headings. You don’t want to over-integrate your keywords, though, as it will lead to keyword stuffing and negatively impact your ranking.

Optimize your title tags and meta descriptions

If you want to rank in search results, you need to optimize your title tag and meta description. These two components are what your audience sees first when they find your practice’s listing in the search results.

To optimize these tags, make sure you integrate your core keyword into both. Incorporating your keyword into your title tag and meta description will help you rank in relevant search results.

You’ll also want to ensure you stay within the character limit for each type of tag.

For title tags, keep them within 60 characters.

For meta descriptions, keep them within 155 characters.

Build up your backlink profile

For the last component of SEO, you’ll want to focus on building up your backlink profile. Backlinks are links to your site from an authoritative site in your industry. These links help boost your site’s trust, drive valuable traffic, and help you rank better in search results.

You can earn backlinks by creating informative content.

We’ll dive into content creation more next, but just note that creating content helps you create opportunities to reach out to industry authorities. You can reach out with your related content and invite them to check it out.

If you find they have a broken link on their site, like to a competitor’s website, you can even inform them of the broken link and offer your relevant piece as a replacement for the link.

2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

With PPC ads, lawyers can choose which keywords and phrases they want to trigger their advertisements. If their bid is among the highest for a specific term, their ad will appear above organic results.

However, legal terms are among the most expensive keywords on both Google and Bing, averaging upwards of $100 per click.

One of the major benefits of PPC advertising, though, is that results are instantaneous. As soon as you launch a campaign, it can start driving qualified traffic to your website. Unlike SEO strategies, which can take weeks to show results, PPC campaigns can instantly boost your website views and revenue.

If your law firm wants fast results, PPC ads are a great way to gain a presence in search results while establishing organic rankings.

P.S. Need help launching PPC ads? Our PPC services can help!

3. Content marketing

Content marketing includes everything from blog posts to infographics, ebooks, and videos, and it goes hand in hand with SEO since search engines love quality content.

Lawyers typically have a wealth of knowledge on a variety of topics and industries. With content marketing, your firm can showcase thought leadership and position itself as a leader in the field.

If someone searches for legal advice and comes across a helpful post by your law firm, they will be more likely to check out your website and find out more information about the services you provide. This makes content marketing a valuable investment and relationship building tool for law firms.

Follow these best practices for launching a successful content marketing campaign:

Try a variety of content formats

When you create content, you want to keep it fresh and exciting for your audience. To get the most from your content marketing strategy, you’ll want to use a variety of formats, so your content appeals to different learning styles.

You can present content in numerous formats, including:

• Blogs
• Infographics
• Videos
• Ebooks
• Guides
• Podcasts
• And more

Using multiple formats will help you appeal to various members of your audience that consume content differently. You can also look to various trends and statistics on the legal sector to compile interesting information for readers.

Create content often

When you add content marketing to your marketing plan for lawyers, you need to ensure you create content often to drive success. Creating content consistently enables you to rank in different search results. So, you’re creating multiple avenues for new people to discover your practice.

So, how often should you create content?

That number will depend on your practice and your audience. Some companies can see success with only creating two pieces of content a week, while others drive better results when publishing ten. It may take some experimenting to figure out how much publishing you need to do to maximize your results.

Use a content calendar

When you create content often, it’s easy to miss deadlines and lose track of content projects. To help keep your law firm organized, you’ll want to use a content calendar.

A content calendar ensures that you know when a piece starts, when it’s going to get edited, and when you want to publish it. It makes it easier for you to ensure your content is spread out over time, too, so you don’t push all your content out at once.

4. Social media

When you do Internet marketing for lawyers, don’t forget to include social media marketing as part of your plan! Social media marketing enables you to connect directly with clients interested in your services.

This tool is valuable to your business because it enables you to build a direct connection with your audience. You can share helpful information directly and get your target audience to engage with your brand.

Here’s how you can launch a social media strategy:

Choose the right platforms

When you launch a social media strategy, you want to ensure you’re using the right platforms to reach your target audience.

You can choose from multiple social media platforms, including:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

You’ll want to choose platforms where your audience spends most of their time. You can investigate each platform’s demographics and see which ones your audience uses the most.

Post often

If you want to succeed with social media marketing, you need to post often. Your audience follows numerous friends, family members, and businesses on social media. If you want your message to reach your audience, you need to post often to ensure leads see it.

How often you post will depend on the platform and your audience.

Some platforms, like Twitter, are meant for posting dozens of times a day. If you tried to post dozens of times on a different platform, like Facebook, for example, it might clog up a user’s feed and annoy them.

It’s also critical to take your audience into account when posting content on social. Your audience may want to see five Facebook posts from you, or they may only want to see one a day. You need to know your audience to figure out the proper posting frequency.

Run social media ads

Social media platforms offer advertising that enables you to reach new clients for your law firm. These ads appear in relevant users’ newsfeeds like social media posts but are tagged with words like “sponsored” or “promoted” to indicate paid content.

You can target people precisely with these social ads. From demographics to socioeconomic status to buying habits, you have numerous ways to target interested leads.

When you create your social media ads, make them visually appealing. Social media platforms enable you to run photo and video ads, so you want to ensure your visual is attractive and catches your audience’s attention, so they stop scrolling.

5. Email marketing

Email marketing is a cost-effective way for lawyers to reach new clients.

Skip the legal jargon in your emails. Nobody is going to spend time reading your novel of an email explaining a new law. After all, isn’t that what people are paying you to do?

Instead, focus on providing helpful resources that aid potential clients in their search for legal information.

If recipients like what they see, they can reply to get in contact with you, or easily forward the email to others who may be interested. You can also include links to your website and social media accounts, making it easier for potential clients to take the next step and contact you for more information.

6. Web design

When people land on your website, they have to be able to easily find the information they’re looking for, or they’ll look somewhere else!

A well-designed and organized website contributes to lower bounce rates and an improved online experience for users.

For law firms, it’s essential for potential clients to be able to find contact information. In addition, your website should contain information about your lawyers and can even link to their profiles, blogs, and academic publications to which they have contributed.

In addition, it’s important for law firms to ensure that their websites are responsive. Since so many people search for information on the go, they need to be able to access your site from their phones or tablets.

If they encounter navigation or site speed problems, they’ll waste no time turning to a competitor.

While SEO attracts qualified leads to your website, great design will keep them there and help convert them into satisfied clients.

7. Reputation management

When you do online marketing for lawyers, you want to ensure you include a strategy to build up reviews and testimonials for your firm. These two elements are critical to your firm’s success because people want to partner with a lawyer that drives results.

People who hire your law firm choose you because they think you’ll do the best job of helping them win their case. Reviews and testimonials provide insight into whether you’re capable of getting clients the best results.

For reviews, you’ll want to encourage clients to leave their feedback on sites like Google, Yelp, or your Facebook page (if you have one). Encourage them to be honest about their experience — don’t try to pad your profile with only positive reviews.

For testimonials, try to reach out to your current clients and see if they’d be willing to talk about what it was like to work with your firm. You can then interview them and pull quotes or create a video to showcase to future clients.

By building up your reputation online, you’ll help your law firm earn new clients and expand your practice.

How does digital marketing benefit law firms?

Lawyers understand the importance of nurturing qualified leads, and Internet marketing helps them reach prospects online.

Since so many people turn to the Internet for legal advice, it’s crucial for law firms to maintain a presence online where people are searching.

Drive leads with digital marketing for law firms

Interested in learning more about how Internet marketing can increase leads and generate revenue for your law firm?

WebFX understands what it takes to drive results and get your law firm the results you deserve. Contact us today to find out more about our custom Internet marketing plans.

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