How To Make A Law Firm Marketing Plan? A Cost-Effective Plan

Have you thought about how to make a law firm marketing plan to grow your business? If you haven’t, or you have, but aren’t hitting your marketing goals, this post is for you. 

Every business needs a marketing plan. Your law firm needs a marketing plan, too. It doesn’t matter the marketing strategy you want to use or your practice area. 

To ensure your law firm’s marketing campaign is successful, create a marketing plan detailing how and where you intend to get clients. 

Here, I will explain the step-by-step approach to creating a cost-effective marketing plan. Are you interested in learning how? If so, keep reading to get more details. 

What Is A Law Firm Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan shows how you intend to implement your marketing strategies to achieve your targeted goals. It outlines your target markets, competition, budgets, content initiatives, and editorial schedules. 

Another way to view a marketing plan is an outline showing a business’ marketing efforts over time, usually a year. It details how you plan to execute and monitor your marketing efforts. 

For law firms, the meaning of a marketing plan is the same. It is a document that contains a roadmap of how a firm or marketing agency intends to organize, execute, and track its marketing strategy over a given period, usually one year. 

Why Is Legal Marketing For Lawyers Important?

 Businesses are set up to generate revenue and make profits. Business can only survive if it generates enough revenue for the owners to pay salaries and fund day-to-day operations. 

Now, hear this: if you’re a lawyer practicing in the United States of America, the competition is tough out there. The American Bar Association report shows over 1.3 million lawyers are in the country. 

Why does the number of lawyers out there make law firm marketing important? I’ll tell you why. For potential clients, having the option to choose a lawyer out of 1.3 million lawyers is a tough decision to make. 

For law firms, competing with such a massive number of law firms makes marketing more of a challenge. So, the competition for legal clients is already intense. Law firms without a marketing plan may face more intensity and uncertainty in getting clients. 

Should A Lawyer Create A Marketing Plan Independently?

Of course, you can create a marketing plan for your law firm as a lawyer. But the question is, do you have the knowledge and experience? Do you know how to create an effective marketing plan that will bring success to your business?

The tips in this post will guide you in creating a marketing plan for your law firm. However, some marketing tactics may require expertise to explain and modify to suit your plan. 

That said, you may need a Law firm SEO agency to help you create a marketing plan for your firm. You can work with the agency to ensure the plans outlined for your business meet your desired goal. 

Let’s discuss how to create a marketing plan for a law firm. 

1: Set up a SMART goal for your law firm:

This step is crucial. Unfortunately, some people and even marketing agencies may skip it for reasons best known to them. But know this: failure to create a SMART business goal might cost you dearly, and I don’t want that to happen. So, read this section thoroughly.

SMART means:

• Specific – S
• Measurable – M
• Attainable – A
• Relevant – R
• Time-bound – T 

Let me break this further down. Instead of saying, “I want my law firm to generate more clients and revenue,” be specific! In your marketing plan, indicate your targeted results. 

For example, you can say, “I want to generate 200,000 visitors within 11 months and achieve a revenue of $500,000.”

Compare the first goal and the second one. Which is more specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound? Of course, the second one is. 

A Handy Tip: When setting revenue goals, consider how much you have made yearly in the past and what a realistic figure for you is based on your marketing plan. Based on your practice and other factors, there is no point in setting a figure you know you cannot achieve. 

Having a clear revenue goal will be helpful when planning your budget. You can easily choose a reasonable marketing budget since you know what you’ll generate when you set your marketing rolling. 

2: Know who your target audience is:

You need a thorough understanding of your target audience before creating a product or marketing plan. First, you must understand the people who will patronize your law firm and where they reside. 

Knowing your target audience can help you make concrete decisions for the good of your law firm. So, take this point seriously. 

• Who are your target audience? 

Your practice area will determine who your audience is. It will also help you create strategies that target your audience or get noticed by them.    

• What part of the country will you find more clients?

Sometimes, relocating to another state or area might be the best option for your business. You can relocate to an area with more clients or the potential to get more clients. 

Relocation is great for new businesses. It is easier to relocate to another state or city when you have yet to establish a strong local presence or invest heavily in your current location. 

For instance, as a car accident lawyer, consider relocating to Mississippi, Wyoming, and others. A divorce lawyer may be looking at establishing a base in places with high divorce cases and the potential of getting hired.

Wyoming, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Kentucky have high divorce rates in the United States. However, these trends can change at any time. In the future, these states might have lower divorce rates than others. 

Before relocating or establishing your law firm, consider your target audience. Know who they are and how willing they are to hire legal services.  

It is also essential to know the age of your target audience. That way, you can create targeted marketing plans and know where to find them. In other words, you’ll have better knowledge of the right marketing strategies to deploy when you see the age distribution of your target audience. 

3: Identify where your marketing efforts will yield better results:   

Focus on strategies that will yield the best results. There is no need to waste time on strategies that won’t give you great returns at the end of the day. 

There are many marketing channels you can deploy to get results. However, the most reasonable approach is to focus on marketing channels that will give you the best results. 

How do you identify the marketing channel that will yield the most results? The first thing to do is to create a list of all the marketing channels you know. From there, you can decide on the right one to adopt. 

Most marketers still use traditional marketing methods to get clients, and they work to an extent. However, if you want maximum results, focus your marketing efforts and budget on the online marketing plan. A great option is search engine optimization (SEO). 

Clio’s 2018 Legal Trend Report is still fresh in most of our minds. In that report, Clio revealed that 78% of consumers search for lawyers online. So, you’re making the right decision by channeling most of your budget to online marketing. 

Here is how to use SEO to get clients for your law firm:

Find high-potential SEO keywords: 

In this case, you need to conduct a thorough keyword research. Use the right tools to find the right keywords to target. Examples of keyword research tools include Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, AnswerThePublic, and others. 

Take note of the keywords’ KD and search volume:  

You can’t just go about targeting any keyword you encounter. Consider the details of every keyword before incorporating them into your content. What is the KD (keyword difficulty) and search volume?  

The KD considers how difficult it would be to rank for a given keyword. Medium difficulty ranges from (31 – 60), while high difficulty ranges from (61 – 100). 

The search volume will also tell you whether people use the search term monthly and how many people do so. 

Use location-specific keywords: 

 We are still on keywords. They are important, so we need to share more information on using them correctly to optimize your law firm website. 

Your choice of location-specific keywords will depend on where your law firm is located. If you’re based in Chicago, your keyword should include Chicago. 

For instance, if you’re a divorce lawyer, your target keyword (long-tail keyword) will be “divorce lawyer in Chicago.” Another location-specific keyword you can use is “near me.” In other words, your keywords can be “divorce lawyer near me.” 

A Handy Tip: Avoid keyword cannibalization and stuffing when performing on-site SEO. They are against Google’s rules and can land you in trouble. Google can penalize your website or place it where potential clients won’t find you in the SERP (search engine result page).

Source: Semrush 

Create content around your keywords: 

You need content to rank and convince visitors to hire you. So, creating a website isn’t enough or shouldn’t be the final project for your online marketing campaign. After creating your website and installing the necessary plugins, you must plan and execute effective SEO strategies to improve your online visibility. 

Create blog posts that provide value to your visitors. You can create blog posts that answer questions or provide information on steps to take after an XYZ incident before approaching a lawyer. Provide content with value, and Google will reward you by ranking your web page higher in the search engine results. 

Visitors will consume your content before hiring you. That means they will rate your knowledge and understanding of various topics of interest to them and even rate the quality of your content. If your content is high-quality, visitors will rate you highly and consider you an expert in your practice area. 

A Handy Tip: Use your keywords naturally in your content. You can also use various keywords to improve your chances of ranking for different search terms. 

Perform technical SEO: 

You need to fix the technical side of your website. That is the URL structure, loading speed, and mobile-friendliness. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, as most visitors will be from mobile searches. 

A study by SISTRIX shows that more searches are carried out on mobile phones (64.1%) than on desktops (35.9%). 

Source: SISTRIX

Website loading speed is another technical aspect of your website SEO that needs attention. Google appreciates websites that load fast and want websites to load in half a second or less. 

Your website speed will directly impact the results of your online marketing efforts. Remember, people are now more time-conscious than they were years ago. And you cannot blame anyone for this. There are many options to choose from ( law firm websites to visit) and things to do nowadays. 

A Handy Tip: You need an SEO expert to help you optimize your website’s speed and user experience. An increased website speed will improve user experience and positively impact your website ranking.

Invest in local SEO for your website:

Local search engine optimization is another vital tactic for your online marketing plan. Why is local SEO important?

As a lawyer based in Houston (or whatever city or part of the world you’re based in), most or even all your clients will come from your specific location. 

Local SEO for law firms will improve your chances of appearing in the local search results of potential legal clients. In other words, people searching for legal representation in your location will find your website, contact and visit you in person. 

You can do local SEO for lawyers by using location-specific keywords. Another way to perform local SEO is by creating a Google Business Profile for your law firm or adding it to online directories (Justia, FindLaw, Avvo, SuperLawyers, etc). 

4: Monitor and improve website performance:

Search engine optimization is not a one-off. If that is how you have been looking at it, you must change your mindset. Even though SEO can bring you sustainable traffic when you stop putting more effort into it for a while, staying inactive for too long can allow your competitors to rank higher than you in SERPs. 

Another thing you must know is that SEO isn’t a one-size-fits-all tactic. You need a custom SEO plan to address your online marketing needs and achieve targeted results. 

Note that a strategy that worked for website A might yield different results for website B. Thus, you must deploy custom SEO strategies and monitor your website performance 24/7. Look at the underperforming strategies and those performing well to know where to focus more 

of your SEO efforts. 

Channeling your efforts on the well-performing SEO strategies to yield maximum results makes more sense. However, you need an expert to monitor your website’s SEO performance and make improvements where needed. 

A Handy Tip: Search engine optimization is complex. It may be challenging for you to manage your law firm’s SEO and render legal services simultaneously. One thing has to be sacrificed. And, of course, you cannot sacrifice the time you spend on your business. 

A reasonable thing to do is to outsource your law firm’s SEO to a reputable agency to manage while you focus on growing your business. Hire an agency willing to go the extra mile to get the results you seek. 

Conclusion

You have seen how to make a law firm marketing plan. We explained the steps you can follow to create a cost-effective marketing plan that would yield the most results. 

Online marketing will fetch better results for your law firm than other marketing channels. And when we say “online marketing,” we refer to search engine optimization. 

SEO is cost-effective and can give you sustainable traffic. It has a higher click-through and conversion rate than other online marketing strategies. With an effective SEO plan for your law firm, you’ll rank high and be easily found online by potential legal clients. 

So, invest in SEO for your law firm and watch your business grow faster than anticipated. You’ll become popular online and start generating more revenue.