Marketing Lawyers in 2021

Now that we’re in the digital age, online marketing is essential for lawyers to raise brand awareness and eventually, to attract potential customers. People are spending more time online, thus the power has shifted from traditional to online marketing. It’s clear that in a digitally connected world, you must be marketing online to maintain the flow of high-value cases and new clients.

This guide is for law firms who are just breaking into the world of digital marketing. It includes the important elements of a successful digital strategy to grow your business and reach new clients. After reading this guide, you’d be able to create an online marketing plan that builds towards your big-picture goal, and creates a return on investment (ROI).

1. Focus on your clients

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Your clients — past, current, and potential — make up the soul of your firm. Build your marketing strategy around them. Understand what your customers need and what challenges you can help with to engage with prospects and clients. Learn how to create a buyer persona for your firm. Buyer personas are profiles of your target market based on marketing research. 

2. Marketing Framework: Strategy over tactics

An effective marketing strategy is built at a holistic level. Evaluate the core of your marketing strategies instead of individual tactics. Instead of thinking about your next marketing campaign in a vacuum, think about whether the campaign contributes to your growth framework and long-term business goals. The framework is a written plan that guides the direction of the campaigns, goals, and growth of your firm. 

3. Lead clients to your website: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Although it is important to have a stand-out website design that’s easy to navigate, what’s the point if your target audience won’t see it? That’s where SEO comes into play. In a nutshell, SEO allows your site to pop up at the top of search pages, generating more traffic. The more your website is optimized, the higher it places in search results. 

4. Find Clients: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM also refers to online advertising, paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. These terms all mean the same thing: drive traffic to your website using paid advertisements. When a prospective client searches for a keyword, SEM allows you to bid for ad placement in the search results.

5. Turn Leads to Customers: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

 CRO is the practice of increasing the rate of website visitors that perform the desired action. In your case, desired actions may include clicking the contact option or interacting with chat support. If you focus on lead generation and acquiring new clients through online marketing, make sure that your sites are optimized for conversions. Make sure that driving traffic to your website is profitable by converting them into clients. CRO works by getting contact information of potential leads who visit your website.

6. Build Connections: Content Marketing

Your content strategy should account for audience interaction. Deepen your relationships with content that addresses clients’ concerns and builds dialogue. This ultimately will lead to more business, in the form of returning clients or recommendations through word of mouth. Your content marketing strategy should contain a variety including blog posts, videos, and guides, to name a few. Focus on creating high-quality educational and timely content relevant to your audience. 

7. Maintain your Image: Social Media Marketing

Build your online presence and cultivate a likeable image through social media. This is an integral part of public relations and online marketing today. Use social media platforms to build your firm’s branding, connect with your audience, drive website traffic, and increase leads. The first thing that people see on your profile would be your bio. Make sure it captures the image you are trying to portray. Social media marketing also involves posting quality bite-sized content (which you could take from your blog), engagement with your followers, analyzing your results and running paid advertising on social media. 

8. Amplify your Presence: Email marketing

Email remains one of the best ways for your law firm to capture new business, or retain a connection with current and past clients. Stay in touch with your subscribers with newsletters delivered monthly or weekly. Competitive law firms utilize email marketing by sending relevant personal emails, which can be done through email segmentation. This is done by dividing your subscribers into segments based on criteria, then you can send personalized emails.

9. Constantly analyze performance

In a continually changing landscape, you need to measure your online marketing success as efficiently as possible. Pay attention to your online marketing metrics to understand the effectiveness of your online activity.

If you need help getting started with marketing your legal firm, call Advantage Attorney Marketing.  We specialize in attorney marketing, and we can help you with all the above tips: from SEO to PPC advertising.