Every owner of a law firm loves to know the secret of how they can get customers to patronize them from the internet.
The fact is that knowing how to get customers online is not a secret, it starts from the foundation.
Without a solid marketing foundation, even the most effective marketing strategy will still not be successful.
This is the reason why you need to set the core pillars of your law firm marketing plan from the foundation.
As a law firm owner, if you want to generate more organic traffic and leads, you must first set up your marketing pillars based on the pain point of your target customers, how your target customers are searching for you online and how they are interacting online.
So, before you can succeed in the online competitive space, your law firm needs to have 4 components at the core of your plan for your legal marketing campaign.
Let’s talk about them;
Why do you need a digital marketing plan as a law firm?
Firstly, it is important we talk about how the adoption of having an effective digital marketing plan is essential for the growth and success of your law firm.
Although many lawyers with an online presence test out a few marketing strategies here and there like posting on their social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram E.tc), running PPC ads E.tc.
These attempts most times ended up wasting their time and marketing budget.
Having a fundamental digital marketing plan means that you have to take your time to consider the pain points of your target customers.
What they are searching for online, how they interact with online content, and what your law firm's unique proposition is to make them want to hire you.
It also involves examining the type of platforms that are best for your law firm and the type of digital marketing strategies that will give your law firm the best and greatest competitive advantage over the rest of law firms with an online presence.
I want to talk about the basic marketing strategy that will get your law firm started and help you to effectively promote your law firm online.
Below are the must-have Four (4) pillars of an effective digital marketing strategy that every law firm owner must adopt if they want success for the legal entity;
Four (4) Pillars of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy for Every Law Firm
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the primary source of organic traffic for every business that has an online presence and it can also be a primary source of traffic for law firms too due to the nature of the business.
Your potential clients make use of Google for their everyday needs; with this, there is a possibility that your potential clients are using Google search engine to search for the best lawyers they can hire to deal with any legal difficulty that they have.
Knowing this now, if you can’t be found on the Google search engine, you will be losing clients to your industry competitors that are visible on Google.
Having an effective SEO strategy is essential for your law firm because the goal is for you to become visible to your potential clients who are already actively searching for your service online.
For example, if a potential client searches for “Criminal lawyer in Lagos” and you have been an active criminal for more than 10 years, you will want your website to become visible for those searching for that keyword because criminal law is your specialty.
Why it Matters:
The Law industry is highly competitive, so you need to have a solid SEO strategy if you want to outrank your competitors and have higher visibility.
A higher ranking in the search engine results pages is one of the best ways to get new potential clients that are really interested in your legal service.
SEO Tips for Success:
Audience and keyword research are at the foundation of any effective SEO strategy.
Keyword research is an SEO process of identifying what key phrases your target customers are using to search for services that your law firm can offer.
You can make use of popular SEO tools like SEMrush, Ubbersuggest, or Ahrefs to get comprehensive details on your business-related keywords.
The details might include, keywords search volume, click-through rate, keyword competition E.tc.
After you are done with your keyword research, you will make use of these keywords strategically throughout your law website to increase your potential of showing up on the search engine results pages for those keywords.
Another effective SEO practice is to make use of specific location keywords so that you will have few competitions.
Since your law firm will have an office, it is also an SEO best practice to optimize your law firm with local listings using the popular Google My business to generate traffic from within your office's geographical location.
2. Pay-Per-Click Advertisement (PPC)
Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertisement involves the use of search engine ads (Display and Text) to increase your law firm's awareness and generate more leads.
Pay-per-click advertisement allows you to pay for your ad each time your target customers click on it.
If you are a law firm with a little marketing budget you will likely find PPC ads to be more expensive than other digital marketing strategies, but they generate faster results than any digital marketing strategy.
Meanwhile, you need to also know that PPC advertisement will continue to bring you traffic as far you continue to spend, you will not get any traffic the moment you stop spending on your ad, unlike SEO campaign that is budget friendly but it delivers slow results, yet its results are long term.
Why it Matters:
If you want sustainable growth for your law firm investing in SEO is the best option, but SEO takes time (a few months) before it will start generating results.
This is the reason why many law firms Invest in both SEO and PPC simultaneously so that they won’t put all their egg in one basket and start to generate leads from different marketing strategies.
Because the law industry is highly competitive, running a PPC campaign for your law firm is a necessity.
If you run Google Text Ads, your ads will be shown above the organic search results on the Google search engine this will increase your firm visibility.
It is also important for you to run PPC ads if you see that your competitors are running paid ads so that you can outrank them and get more leads for your business.
PPC Tips for Success:
You need to know about your competitor's online activities, if they are running paid ads and if the search engine results pages for your business-related keywords are being dominated by ads.
If they are dominated by ads then you need to consider running your own ads and driving your target customers to your ads landing page to get their personal information for further marketing activities.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social Media advertisement seems to be one area of marketing that most people are familiar with, yet it is still an area that is wildly misunderstood.
While are there various social media platforms e.g Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, Linkedln, and so on, all of them are not created the same and they also have different audiences.
The social media platform you will use for your firm will depend on your type of target customers and how they interact with online content.
Why it Matters:
Social media advertisement is an attraction-based marketing that can help your firm get noticed by potential clients while they are actively searching for your service.
By regularly posting compelling content that is based on topics that are relevant to your target customers, you will gain more social media followers, build customer trust and loyalty, and you will have a higher potential of reaching more clients who need law services.
There is a possibility that your social media followers will engage with you for months or even years before they can request for your service.
Therefore, you must nurture your social media followers with high-quality content so that you can become their first choice if they want to hire an attorney.
Social Media Advertisement Tips for Success:
You should be mindful of what you post. Don’t post contents that are not related to your business so as to get engagement from your target customers.
You should instead focus your energy on creating and posting content that your target customers will find interest in.
For example, if you are a divorce law attorney, you can post about couple issues, how to handle divorce legally, who will be in charge of the children after divorce, the proper way to share wealth after divorce e.tc.
However, you should also mix up your content; you should mix hard and soft topics together and you should also ask questions on divorce issues so that your followers will be able to interact with your posts.
Interestingly, it is not necessary for you to have a presence on all the social media platforms at once.
You can start with one or two social media channels, after then you will take your time to figure out the platform that your target customers mostly hang out on so that you can improve on your content and generate leads consistently before you expand your reach to more social media channels.
4. Content Marketing
The sales you make from your business depend on how good your content is, that is why the best SEO strategy that brings huge revenue to businesses is all about their content marketing strategy. “Your sale is as good as your content”.
Before your law firm's marketing strategy can be successful you need to have a good content marketing plan, that is because your target customers are not only for a law company to work with but they are also looking for answers to their questions on the web.
For example, if your target customer searches for “How to file a divorce” on the search engine, their expectation is to find a comprehensive guide on the process to file a divorce instead of a law firm page with a description of their legal activities.
With this in mind, you have the opportunity as a law firm owner to post educational, SEO-optimized content for generating organic traffic and leads from your target customers.
Why it Matters:
With an effective content marketing strategy, your law firm will attract more organic traffic from your target customers who are actively searching for content related to your business.
Great content will increase your website visibility, help you to build trust, attract more social media followers, and, generate more potential leads for your firm.
When you want to write your content it can come in various forms, such as blog articles, whitepapers, ebooks, social media posts, videos, and so on.
You can numerous digital mediums to create content with high engagement, which can also help your target customers to learn more about what your business is all about and it can solve their problems.
Content Marketing Tips for Success:
If you want to have the best results from your content, you need to list your business-related keywords with high search volume to draw in more target customers.
Among the keywords that you research will be long-tail keywords.
These keywords are suitable for blog posts, and they attract high-quality leads that really need the content.
As a divorce lawyer, targeting long-tail keywords like, “5 simple steps to easily file for divorce” or “10 reasons for divorce” will let you attract clients who really want to divorce their partners.
You can publish these articles on the blog page of your website, after publishing on your website you can also share them on your social media channels.
It is also great if you can create videos on these topics and publish them on YouTube for your target customers who might like video content over a block of texts.
Finally, if you already have a list of email subscribers you can send these and more of your content to them for nurturing.
Content marketing can also be used to attract high-quality backlinks to your website, which will significantly increase your website ranking on the search engine.
When you publish valuable high-quality long-form content other websites will want to link to your website to educate their readers, you can also reach out directly to website owners so that can link to your blog content.
Get started with the Four (4) pillars of Successful Digital Marketing.
You don’t have to stress yourself if you want to promote your law firm with digital marketing strategies.
You can start with the basics (SEO, PPC advertisement, content marketing, social media marketing) of digital marketing, with your marketing foundation intact, you will have a great support system that will support all your marketing efforts in the future.
If you want to grow your law firm you need to be effective in utilizing these 4 pillars of digital marketing strategies, implement all the four pillars today and set up your law firm for success. Once you have started your marketing strategy, as time goes by you will begin to see quality results.