How To Do Marketing For A Law Firm Explained 

Understanding how to do marketing for a law firm before you take a step is essential. It can help you develop an effective marketing plan and put your resources to good use. 

Lawyers can combine traditional and digital marketing strategies to ensure they don’t miss out on any opportunity to grow. The traditional method of marketing includes word-of-mouth and attorney referrals.

This post will focus on digital marketing and SEO in particular. Even if you’re considering promoting your law firm via paid adverts, you must lay a good SEO foundation.

Now, let’s discuss how to market a law firm online. Please, read from start to finish. 

How To Do Marketing For A Law Firm Online

Online or digital marketing allows law firms to gain popularity and build a solid reputation. You can generate leads consistently via only marketing once you have a solid foundation or online presence. 

As a Law Firm SEO Expert, my primary concern is your law firm’s digital marketing strategies, particularly SEO. I always try to understand how much SEO work has been done on clients’ websites, as this enables me to decide the best online marketing strategy to set in motion to deliver the best results.

Digital marketing or online marketing for law firms should include different strategies. If you’re focusing on SEO, your online marketing strategy should include on-page, off-page, technical, and local SEO. 

Note: If these terms seem confusing or you need help marketing your law firm online via SEO, you can contact the Law Firm SEO Expert Agency for professional advice.  

Without further ado, let’s discuss how you can market your law firm or, if you’re using an SEO agency, the steps they’ll take to market your law firm.

1: Plan your marketing budget:  

Do you have plans to hire a digital marketing expert to help you build a robust online presence? If yes, you would need a marketing budget. 

Even if you plan to handle the marketing side of your firm (together with the business side) alone, you still need a budget. 

Before you start talking about how much your marketing budget should be, think about your goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing plans? How many leads and cases do you need to handle to get a reasonable return on your investment? Put that into perspective. 

Furthermore, consider the online marketing firm you can hire given your budget-size. Do you want an online marketing agency that focuses on a specific legal practice area or a legal online marketing agency that serves all the practice areas? 

Note that online marketing firms that serve specific areas of law charge a premium. For example, you can find a marketing agency that only renders marketing services to personal injury law firms. They can charge thousands of dollars per month. Sometimes, you may have to pay more than $10,000 monthly for legal SEO. 

There is nothing wrong with hiring an online marketing agency that provides services for all practice areas. If you’re hiring an SEO law firm, remember that the optimization process is the same for personal injury lawyers, business lawyers, criminal defense lawyers, and all other practice areas. 

A Handy Tip: Online marketing, especially SEO, is a long-term project. Thus, your marketing budget should cover the entire year. 

Another advice to consider is the type of online marketing agency to hire. Hire an affordable agency to deliver your marketing goals without emptying your wallet. 

Also, stay within your budget limit when running your marketing campaign. You can always adjust your budget the following year after seeing the results from the previous year.

2: Build an online office:

Your website is your office online. You need a website for your law firm if you want to invest in online marketing.

A website offers lawyers a chance to give a good account about themselves before clients even experience their legal prowess. Thus, it would be best to create a good first impression from the moment visitors land on your website. 

Create a professional-looking website that sweeps visitors off their feet. Use cool colors and photographs to captivate your potential clients. Just make your website worth visiting. 

Add relevant information to help potential clients know the practice area you cover, location, and address. Also, add your phone numbers, emails, and any information that can help potential clients to reach you.

Your website should have a blog section to publish informative and well-optimized legal content from time to time. A blog will allow you to inform your visitors and showcase your expertise in legal matters. Lawyers can build authority and online reputation this way.  

Case studies, reviews, and testimonials are powerful tools that make visitors convert easily. Reviews and testimonials add social proof to your law firm’s website. 

Make your website a breeze for your visitors to navigate. Don’t design it with too many features that can reduce load speed and responsiveness. 

Benefits of having a website for your law firm:

• You can build an email list via the website. Request for visitors’ email before they leave your site. You can send newsletters to those on your email list occasionally. Emailing potential clients is sometimes an excellent way to remind them about your law firm. 
• A website offers law firms a chance to establish a robust online presence. 
• A website serves as your sales representative. It is the first thing your law firm visitors see before even interacting with you. 
• Websites offer law firms a chance to showcase their services and reach a wider audience they wouldn’t have been able to acquire otherwise. 

3: Optimize your website to boost online visibility:      

When you optimize it, you give Google’s algorithm a chance to interact with your website. Google’s ranking system will analyze your website and decide if it’s worth ranking above others targeting the same keyword or search terms. 

So, if you have a new website, build a solid SEO foundation. Optimize the headlines and subheadings (H1, H2, H3, etc.). Additionally, strategically add the keyword in the body of the content. Furthermore, take care of the website’s technical SEO.

Ensure your content is high-quality and 100% unique (no plagiarism). Use active voice and short paragraphs to improve the readability of your content. 

 A Handy Tip: This particular tip is about keywords. Understand that keyword research is essential in every SEO strategy. Keywords or search terms imply the words people use to search for information, products, or services online. 

Consider targeting long-tail keywords. Additionally, ensure your keyword has a reasonable search volume and is not too competitive. 

Avoid keywords like “law” or “attorney.” These are general terms, though, with high search volumes but high competition. 

A long-tail keyword for lawyers carries your practice area and location. An example is a personal injury lawyer [your city]. When you include your location, you’ll likely appear in location-based searches. The chances of ranking with long-tail keywords are pretty high, too. 

Here are the various SEO strategies to optimize your website and increase your online visibility.   

• On-page SEO. Includes everything you do on your website to improve online visibility, traffic, and lead generation. 
• Off-page SEO. Everything you do outside your website to improve traffic, page authority, and leads. Examples include link-building and guest posting. 
• Technical SEO. It is part of on-page search engine optimization and involves improving the elements of a website to encourage higher ranking.  
• Local SEO. A search engine optimization that helps boost a website’s chance of appearing in local searches. 

In marketing, everything goes. The primary aim is to generate more leads and revenue. Thus, if you have the financial capacity, feel free to run paid adverts. But ensure you have an expert managing your paid ads to get the best results. 

4: Take your local SEO game to another level:

You have a website and have optimized it. You’re also sure the SEO agency handling your optimization project followed SEO best practices. 

The next step to take is to improve your local SEO game. Add your law firm to business directories. 

Consider reputable business directories. You can use the free listings or upgrade to the premium plan. The premium plans have some features that the law firm you’re promoting could benefit from. 

However, keep in mind that Google My Business is free. It belongs to Google and is considered one of the most reputable business directories. 

A Handy Tip: Ensure all the information you provide online about your business is 100% accurate across all your profiles. If you move to a new area, edit your address. Edit your online business profiles when the need arises. 

If you make any changes on your website, ensure you do the same to your other profiles. Google considers the accuracy of information provided on business profiles when ranking profiles. Inaccuracy is enough reason to demote a site. 

In addition to Google My Business, you can list your business on Yelp, Yellow Pages, Bing, etc. Create as many business profiles as possible on as many business directories as possible. 

Most people are searching business directories for businesses in their locality. So, creating a business profile in diverse directories will benefit your law firm. 

Note: Avoid online business directories with questionable reputations. Listing your business on such online platforms can do more harm than good.

5: Set your law firm up for success with reviews:

You have a website and several business profiles online. Now, customers can review your services.

Why are reviews a powerful marketing tool? As a lawyer, you must have won some of your clients via referrals. Someone might have referred one or two clients to you after telling them how good you are. 

Reviews and testimonials will help your law firm to build strong social proof. They can increase your online profile’s conversation rate, helping you to land more clients. 

A report indicates that 82% of consumers read online reviews of local businesses. So, develop the habit of asking for reviews online. You can get reviews on GMB (Google My Business) and other business directories that allow customers to give reviews. 

A Handy Tip: Add your business to reputable business directories. Online marketing entails building reputation, authority, trust, and visibility. Thus, listing your business on directories with questionable reputations might not be a good idea. 

Having a few negative reviews won’t put potential clients off, provided you respond professionally to such reviews. How you respond to customer complaints and negative reviews says a lot about you. 

When you deliver satisfactory service to a client, ask for reviews. You may get positive reviews from such happy and satisfied clients. 

Conclusion

You have learned how to do marketing for a law firm. Remember, online marketing for lawyers involves using a mix of strategies. 

You can combine on-page and off-page SEO, local SEO, technical SEO, and other forms of marketing. Most lawyers may even run paid adverts in addition to their SEO efforts. 

The bottom line is to improve your law firm’s search visibility, establishing a solid online presence. An effective marketing strategy will increase your website ranking and help your law firm generate more leads. 

Your law firm will benefit from online marketing, provided you hire the best SEO agency. But if you choose to take care of your website’s SEO independently, ensure you have the required knowledge and time.