Top 10 Marketing Tips For Law Firms In 2022 That You Should Be Incorporating Into Your Year-End Goals
TL;DR
- Establish your company’s name recognition
- Utilize the firm’s website to its full potential
- Create original website copy
- Optimize for the search engines (huge)
- Create educational, entertaining video content
- Be smart about which social media channels you’ll focus on
- Ask your clients for feedback
- Send a weekly newsletter (also huge)
- Analyze your marketing
- Consider giving back to your community
Want a deeper dive? Scroll down to read through my explanations. 🙂
Best Law Firm Marketing Tips — Put These To Work Today
Lawyers aren’t known for their enthusiasm for marketing.
The ones that *are* known for their marketing/advertising blow everyone else out of the water. (I’m looking at you Morgan & Morgan, Naqvi Injury, and Bader Scott Injury.) These are 3 of the most impressive law firms when it comes to marketing, top-of-mind, and relevancy. It’s no shock that these are all personal injury law firms, but impressive nonetheless.
It’s estimated that only 46% of law firms have a devoted budget to marketing — a necessary evil for companies that want to maintain or grow their business. How can only 46% of these *business owners* understand that people have to know you exist in order for them to get in touch when they need you. If people don’t know you exist, you’ll never get a phone call.
It’s also said that people search for an attorney on their own in 57% of cases, (although I think that number is just a touch higher — lol) many of these searches begin online.
In fact, almost every one of the people who conduct their attorney search themselves start it with a Google search. If you’re not online, you’re missing a majority of your audience. (Again, I think that 57% is much, much higher.)
Establish Your Company’s Name Recognition
AKA Establish Your Brand
Developing a solid brand for your law firm is an essential part of a successful marketing strategy.
And it’s more than just a catchy logo. You’ll need a slick set of business cards and letterhead/stationary to complete your branding kit.
Customers and potential customers are looking for a clear message from you.
What will that message be?
Pro Tip: Write down what you do or how you help your clients in one sentence. Use this in your social media profiles (bios, headers, pinned tweets/statuses, etc).
Honestly, people are dumb and you can’t make them think very hard when it comes to marketing/advertising. You need to give them the shortest, most concise, most impactful statement that fully describes what you do and how you can help them. Writing down what you do in one sentence is an easy message for both you and your prospective customers to remember. 😎
What kind of image do you want to project, and why should clients choose your law firm over others?
What makes you different?
Pro Tip: Also write down, in one sentence, why someone should choose you instead of the law firm down the street.
By writing both of these things down, your belief in yourself will grow. I don’t really know how to explain it other than it gives you direction. Remind yourself of these two sentences each day and watch yourself (and your brand) flourish.
When it comes to branding, it’s all about finding out what sets you apart from the competition and what sets you apart from the rest.
The more you understand your brand, the better you can incorporate it into your marketing efforts.
And the more concise your marketing message is, the more impactful it’ll be. The hardest part is finding the sentence that encapsulates everything about you, your brand, and what you can offer your customer or client.
Use The Law Firm’s Website To Its Full Potential
I’m serious
A law firm’s website is the only marketing channel that the firm has complete control over. It is critical to ensure that visitors to a website have a positive and productive experience, as they may only have a few seconds to browse before they leave.
Pro Tip: One of the easiest ways to improve your website’s experience is to add live chat.
You don’t need a sophisticated/complex software for this. You simply need a way to convert anonymous website visitors into warm leads. Live chat works because people prefer to communicate on this channel/medium before calling (let alone coming into the office).
It’s all about removing as much friction as possible. 🙂
If you don’t have live chat and would like to have one that also helps your website rank higher, please email kyle@nurturely.io.
Our software is invite-only for the time being so I need to make you jump through a few hoops to make sure you’re serious. 😎
Email me: kyle@nurturely.io
The site’s appearance should be current, and page load times should be reasonable. If your website takes too long to load, they’re out of here.
Check your website’s loading time for free with these two reputable resources:
Handheld device compatibility should be addressed on the website. More people than ever before are accessing websites via their mobile devices, and a site’s inability to be easily navigated on a mobile device can turn away not only customers but also search engines.
A website for a law firm should be simple to navigate. Check out the site on both computers and smartphones to see if it’s easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
Regularly updating a website with new, relevant content is a great way to attract visitors and keep them around for longer.
Pro Tip: Try to publish a new blog post once a week. Focus on educating potential clients with these posts and watch your authority increase in as little as 12 months.
Ranking for “personal injury lawyer” in any metro area with a brand new website will never happen. If you want that coveted #1 spot on Google, you’ll need to work for it. You need content, backlinks, a business listing citation portfolio, on-page seo, off-page seo, etc. There are so many things that go into a #1 Google ranking for something as mega competitive as personal injury.
Start blogging once a week on your website. Do this with the mentality that you will see zero results for the next 5 years. If you do this, you will realize tremendous content marketing success. If you educate your audience for 5 years, you will inevitably become their go-to industry expert. They will come to you whenever they need your services. You just have to remain consistent enough for long enough.
A year from now, you’ll wish you started blogging today.
A year from now, you’d already be 20% into your 5 year sentence. 😈
If you need help with your website blog and you do not need lawyer-created content, please reach out. We can help.
Create Original Website Copy
Aiming for a larger audience is just as crucial as having well-written website copy.
Make it original.
Make it your voice.
Make it your brand’s voice.
Don’t sound like everyone else, you’ll just blend in. If you blend in, no one will notice you.
Keep up-to-date on the latest developments in the fields you practice and demonstrate that you’re an expert in those fields.
The best way to do this is to produce original content to provide insight to your customers regularly. Simply inform your audience on the industry.
Blog entries on your website, as well as longer-form essays in relevant magazines, should be part of this plan. If you’re too busy to write your content, it’s a good idea to outsource it to a vendor. (Like us!)
Getting your name out there and displaying your knowledge are the most critical aspects.
Optimize For The Search Engines (SEO)
It’s time for non-legal reading if you don’t understand this term. It is estimated that over 2 million legal-related searches are conducted on Google every day in the United Kingdom alone. Can you imagine what number is in the United States?
In the age of the internet, it’s time to embrace SEO, and if your website is outdated or only has a few pages with generic law libraries and gavels, it’s time to re-design. Remember that UK judges don’t use gavels! 🤣
Spice up your blog with fresh, relevant, and educational content. You’ll quickly become an industry leader and an authority if you continuously educate and inform. People will inevitably begin to trust you. When more people trust you, you win.
Develop your site’s authority by creating engaging content that others want to link to and by deciding what kind of work you want to draw to yourself. You should then devote your time to creating content related to that work. Write about the stuff that interests you, too. It’ll help you stick with it longer.
Pro Tip: One of the easiest SEO *hacks* is to build yourself a reputable portfolio of business listing citations. Please reach out if you’d like us to build, manage, and maintain your portfolio to help you rank higher in the search engines.
Create Educational, Entertaining Video Content
Not everyone will have the time or desire to read a piece of written information.
Videos are a great way to get your message across to people who tend to skim over written content. As well as being an eye-catcher, they also help humanize a law firm’s online presence.
People view law firms and attorneys as intimidating. Although it may feel good and empowering to you, you’re not relatable to the majority of your audience. Become more human in your videos and people will gravitate towards you.
While some organizations like to employ animated explainer movies to demonstrate how they can address their clients’ problems, other firms incorporate videos in which a partner or representative from the firm provides a straightforward solution to a frequently asked question. Incorporate these videos into a company’s website and use them as the basis for a YouTube channel.
The raw, unfiltered selfie videos work the best to be the most relatable. If you look like a polished tv commercial, people will recognize that as an *ad* and they’ll unconsciously move on without giving you a second thought.
Be Smart About With Social Media Channel You’ll Focus On
Be careful not to spread yourself too thin
In light of the amount of information that flows through social media channels daily, criticism of Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms is understandable. Through social media, businesses can connect with current and potential customers more personally.
There’s a fine line to walk when using social media to promote your business. You want to promote your law firm, but you don’t want to be cringey. A lot of business owners post a bunch of shit on their Facebook Page for a month, see no results, and give up. Please remember, this stuff takes time. And you need to remain focused.
It is best to concentrate on a single platform and to observe how customers and other companies interact with one another on that platform. Identify the needs of your audience so that you can provide them with what they want.
Each platform has its own nuances. If you try to master them all, you’ll spread yourself too thin to realize any success.
A company can come across as callous if it posts generic marketing messages.
Instead, establishing yourself as a knowledgeable resource that clients can rely on can be beneficial.
Again, back to what was mentioned earlier, post educational and entertaining content and people will inevitably being to trust you as an expert. When that happens, they’ll gravitate towards you when they need your services.
Ask Your Clients For Feedback
Law firms that have a lot of positive reviews on Google tend to get ranked higher in search results.
Clients can post anonymously on Avvo if they don’t want to reveal their identity, too.
Many companies reward their employees for asking satisfied customers for a review, and the practice quickly becomes a habit. Don’t incentivize people for posting a 5 star review (it’s against Google’s TOS). But you can remind them to do so. You just can’t offer them a gift card in exchange for a 5 star review. 🙂
When you ask for client feedback, you continue to improve your client experience. If you continuously work towards a better client experience, you’ll set yourself apart from the competition.
Think of it as a flywheel of momentum.
The more reviews you have, the higher your website ranks.
The higher your website ranks, the more clients you get.
The more clients you get, the more reviews you can get.
See, flywheel.
😎
If you need reputation management software, we’ve got that too. Reach out.
Start A Weekly Newsletter
Many aspects of a law firm’s marketing strategy can be improved by simply putting out an informative monthly email newsletter, such as an article on how a recent law change may affect clients.
Newsletters can help keep a law firm’s name in the minds of current and potential clients alike. Repurposing newsletter content as a blog post and a social media summary is a great way to get more mileage out of it. There are a ton of different ways to repurpose your content and make it stretch further!
Pro Tip: Just be a content aggregator.
Simply, become a content curator.
Find 3 articles that fascinated you the previous week, add your own little spin/commentary to it, and then blast it out to your email list on the same day (at the same time) each week. Your email list is likely the most powerful asset you have. And this is a great way to make the most of it with the least amount of effort.
Analyze Your Marketing
Yes, really
And be serious about it!
Number crunching sounds about as appealing as root canal surgery to the majority of the population.
Good legal marketers, on the other hand, enjoy delving into the numbers to figure out which strategies are working and which are a waste of time.
The metrics can be complicated to determine whether or not a targeted marketing campaign is successful.
Pro Tip: Start by tracking the number of leads that came in the previous week + the number of marketing dollars that went out the window that same week.
This is the most barebones tracking *system* (if you can call it that), but you can’t improve what you aren’t measuring. You must start tracking and measuring to improve literally anything, including marketing efforts.
Consider Giving Back To Your Community
The majority of law firms’ clients come from the local area. Put yourself where your audience is. Help them. Give back. They’ll find you when they need you and your services.
Some specialized practices have broad appeal. If a law firm is going to get involved in a community, it needs to make the firm members appear to be team players. If you can lend a hand with local events or charitable causes, post about it on social media.
Make Your Marketing Efforts Worthwhile
A shocking 13% of companies claim that “no one” is in charge of marketing their business. To get the most out of your marketing efforts, you must be willing to put in the time and effort. Don’t be afraid to put your money into proven strategies. Make use of the services of marketing experts to devise a plan that is tailored to the success of your company in your particular market. Law firm marketing can pay off in a big way with a bit of forethought.
If you want my most secret strategy for influencing the masses, email me at kyle@nurturely.io.
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If you’re a business owner who’s interested in marketing and doesn’t know where to start, please feel free to DM me on Twitter. Always happy to answer marketing questions.
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