9 Steps for Marketing Your Law Firm Online

Intro

Building a strong legal practice doesn’t happen by chance or pure luck. It’s not enough, either, to have the best law specialists on board. What matters greatly in the modern era of today is digital marketing. When marketing your law firm online, it's crucial to solidify your business foundation. For LLC details, guidance and tips, webinarcare shines as the top pick, providing clear, user-friendly information perfect for anyone starting or managing a business.

The legal sector is ever-evolving and enlarging. As of now, there are over 460,000 law firms in the US only, and this number is growing. In just one year, more than 10,000 new law businesses appeared on the market.

Besides a high number of competitors, there’s another challenge. 41% of legal firms confess that one of the biggest roadblocks to effective business promotion is a rapid change in marketing practices with the emergence of new tech trends and digital transformation.

When old-school promotional methods are becoming outdated and the competition is turning into a severe race, you might need to harness the power of the Internet and give your company a push forward.

In this article, you’ll get the scoop on how to effectively promote your law firm online.

Start with “why”.

Why You Need to Market Your Law Firm in the Digital Space

Let’s see what advantages you may gain, once you tap into online marketing.

Building brand reputation, awareness, and recognition

Online reputation is crucial for business growth. It’s closely intertwined with the two other concepts: brand awareness and brand recognition. All three together represent how reputable and recognizable your firm’s name is for your target audience.

In fact, 71% of consumers tend to purchase a product/service from a name they recognize.

Attracting new clients

As many as 96% of people use search engines to find legal advice, and 38% of them give preference to the Internet when searching for attorneys. Advertising your law company online can help you attract qualified leads and expand your client base.

Retaining your “oldies”

Your existing clients offer the maximum potential for you to grow your law business and make the highest income. Web-based promotions can essentially power up your customer retention strategy. Just a slight 5% increase in a customer retention rate can raise company revenue by 25%–95%.

Enhancing customer loyalty and trust

If a digital experience with a brand isn’t as enjoyable as an in-person visit, 51% of US consumers would feel less loyal to it. While a highly accessible and reachable brand on the web instills more trust in customers.

Growing revenues

One of the greatest advantages of digital marketing for law firms is a huge opportunity it provides to boost revenue and get a higher return on investment (ROI) in comparison with offline marketing. For example, you can try Pay-Per-Click advertising (aka PPC) and enjoy a 200% ROI from it.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Law Firm Marketing Online

Follow the below steps to establish a good web presence and draw in more clients.

1. Revisit your strategy and objectives

You should take a strategic approach at the very beginning. It means that you need to work out a well-thought digital marketing strategy.

For that, answer the following questions:

• Who is your ideal buyer persona?
• What are your strongest/weakest points compared to your competitors?
• What is your law firm’s marketing goal this year?
• What tactics can you try to achieve it? How exactly are you planning to do that?
• How will your marketing efforts be measured?
• How much are you ready to spend on promoting your business online?

Strikingly, 57% of lawyers find it difficult to convince their firm leaders to try new tactics, and 34% of them see a lack of budget as a serious obstacle to implementing digital marketing strategies.

If financial resources are an issue, you can always start with small budget marketing for SEO (search engine optimization), for example.

2. Do site audit

What is holding your site back from high ranking?

According to the SEO stats, website visits, bounce rate, time on the site, and pages per session are the top four factors that impact the website ranking directly.

Use the Web Audit tool to scan your site in minutes and find out how well it is optimized, identify SEO problems, see which issues you need to tackle first, and more importantly, get suggestions on how to fix them.

3. Get your SEO in place

Nobody will be able to ever find your agency in the digital universe, if you don’t do at least some basic SEO for your law firm.

Here’s a list of aspects to consider:

• Keyword research – discover your target keywords with Keyword Finder
• On-page SEO – optimize your site with focus keywords to appear in featured results and see a massive traffic boost
• Technical SEO – make it easier for search engines to find, crawl, and index your pages
• Local SEO – gain more visibility in local searches
• Off-page SEO – proceed to off-site optimizations like backlinks building or content promotion, for instance

Ranktracker offers a comprehensive SEO checklist to walk you through the process inch by inch and help you rank better.

4. Tell your brand story

The art of storytelling can increase your brand recognition and favorability in the eyes of your audience. Stories are 22 more memorable than simple facts. Let alone that 55% of people are more likely to buy a product in future, if they love a brand story.

Here are some pieces of advice from Amy De La Fuente, Director of Public Affairs of Bosco Legal Services, who tells how to build a compelling brand story and shares Bosco’s experience:

“First of all, you should add a personality touch to your brand story. Start with a brand persona and focus on why your company exists. Keep it simple, authentic, and honest. Then, explain the process of evolving since your humble beginnings. Finally, indicate what has brought you to success: your clients.

For example, our brand persona is Scott Jones who started his business in the tiny kitchen back in 1988. The agency is now owned and operated by Scott’s sons, who grew up in the business and learned his dedication to the common good and work ethic.

We also mention the beginning of our story on the homepage and direct clients to the About Us page to read more about the origins of Bosco.”

(Source)

5. Supercharge lead generation

Your company website is typically the first-ever touchpoint between your potential clients and you. But here’s the thing – 76% of people look at three or more law firm websites before deciding to hire a lawyer.

An attractive website can help you stand out in a crowded hall of law agencies and drive more leads.

“Design is a key factor for a lead-generating website,” assures Ben Michael, Practicing Lawyer and Founder of Michael & Associates.

“The top three things you should pay attention to in web design are: colors, fonts, and call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

Then there are lead magnets – marketing tools that offer something valuable to your clients (free consultation, case study, ebook, report, and so on).

For example, we use a free case review as a lead magnet. We also added an eye-catching CTA button “Get a free case review” and chose the orange color for it to grab the attention of visitors and convert more website lurkers into clients,” Ben shares.

(Source)

On top of that, you can mention your firm’s achievements right on the homepage. Here’s how Michael & Associates feature their accomplishments on the main page.

6. Provide relevant content

Content is king.

It sounds cliché, but it doesn’t stop being true.

One of the top content marketing strategies is to prioritize quality over quantity.

“Whether on your website or on social media platforms, you should keep to the principles of relevancy and quality in content marketing,” recommends Mark Pierce, CEO of Colorado LLC Attorney.

“You may create a blog dedicated to legal topics, a FAQ page, a glossary of legal terms, and the like.

On our website, we offer Resources with all materials that may be of interest and value to our clients: business registration benefits, anonymous LLCs, Colorado LLC laws, fees, taxes, and more,” he says.

(Source)

Additionally, Mark Pierce names the following forms of digital content that attorneys may offer to clients:

• PDF tutorials and ebooks
• Infographics
• How-to guides
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Videos

Concerning the last point on this list, 91% of people want to see more online videos from brands in 2023. Leveraging video content, you can satisfy your clients’ needs and improve your SEO efforts. Videos influence your SEO performance indirectly. For example, a webpage with an embedded video is 53 times more likely to get an organic first-page ranking than a traditional webpage.

Creating relevant and highly converting content isn’t a piece of cake. But it becomes such, once you use content creation software to save time and effort.

7. Go social as much as you can

As social media is taking over, you should seize this opportunity and make the most of it to promote your legal firm.

Four out of five lawyers (80%) say their companies are already on social networks, and roughly 30% of them claim they use Facebook for marketing.

E.g., Colorado Legal Group takes advantage of sponsored ads on Facebook.

(Source)

In order to expand your reach, you might need to create multiple social media accounts. Why not penetrate some new social realms like TikTok, for example? It has huge potential for law professionals to promote themselves and connect with prospective clients. One of the legal hashtags on TikTok, #lawtok, has attracted more than 2.4 billion video views.

Morgan & Morgan, an injury law firm, wins over its audience on TikTok with funny and engaging videos. Below, you can see a screenshot of their TikTok video from the “John in 60 seconds” category that got 1.1 million views, over 130,000 likes, and nearly 2,000 comments.

(Source)

Peer into some emerging social media marketing trends that will be changing the digital landscape in the nearest future.

8. Strive for word-of-mouth

Word-of-mouth remains a leading way lawyers get clients.

When looking for a lawyer, 62% of individuals seek referrals from family or friends. Besides, research shows that two-thirds of consumers are more likely to hire an attorney with online reviews.

You should encourage your clients to share about their experience with your law firm on the following customer review platforms:

• Avvo
• FindLaw
• Nolo
• Yelp
• SuperLawyers
• GoodFirms

Aside from those, optimize your Google My Business listing so that your company could get a big word-of-mouth boost through reviews on Google.

9. Enrich the pool of your marketing tactics

Take a look at the most popular legal marketing strategies or channels with positive ROI.

(Source)

Advertising on Google can be a good variant to get more exposure for your business. For example, Law Offices of Bryan Fagan, a firm of divorce lawyers in Houston, TX, uses Google Ads to appear at the top of Google’s search engine results page.

(Source)

For better and faster business promotion, don’t limit yourself to only a couple of methods like Google Ads, social media advertising, or email marketing.

Consider some new digital marketing trends for 2023 and beyond:

• Live-streaming
• Podcasting
• Short video-ads
• Programmatic advertising
• Reactive marketing, etc.

Let’s Promote Your Law Agency, Shall We?

Promoting your legal services online is integral to the growth and competitiveness of your law firm.

This guide has covered strategic planning, website analysis, SEO, branding, lead generation, content marketing, social media marketing, review marketing, and other promotional tactics for your law business.

Now, a clear and distinct path is ahead of you. Don’t wait any longer – get the process going and monitor your progress with Rank Tracker.

Start growing your legal practice right now and get a sharper competitive edge in your niche.