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This is a comprehensive law firm marketing guide for achieving success in the modern digital age. The marketing strategies listed throughout this guide have been thoroughly researched, tested, and applied to numerous law firms around the U.S. These strategies have contributed to substantial growth for several legal practices including a Florida based law firm who generated over 4,900 leads from their website in a single year.
Many of the sections include specific examples and documentation to back up these claims along with practical advice and free resources for your legal practice.
Before marketing your legal practice, it’s important to understand modern consumer behavior. Not having at least a general understanding of this is like trying to navigate an unfamiliar area without a map or GPS.
Knowing and understanding your audience is the foundation for any successful law firm marketing campaign. In this case, understanding how people search for lawyers in the modern age is the first step toward generating more clients and achieving sustainable growth for your legal practice in 2023 and beyond.
Let’s start off by stating the obvious; almost everyone has a cell phone with the ability to conduct searches online. In fact, a 2018 Forbes study shows that over 80% of consumers research a business online before making a purchase. The number of internet searches are only likely to continue increasing as technology develops.
People searching for attorneys are no exception to this rule. For example, if someone is injured in an accident and doesn’t personally know a lawyer, the first thing they’re most likely going to do is search for a personal injury attorney online within their area. The same concept applies for people looking for a lawyer to set up wills, a probate attorney after a relative passes away, etc.
The tool they’re most likely to use when conducting these searches is the world’s largest search engine, Google. While conducting their search, people are likely to check reviews, listings, other attorney websites, etc. As a result, having high quality content, good online reviews, and a memorable website is paramount to the success of your practice.
Your website is the central hub for all your digital marketing efforts. This section is relevant for attorneys developing a brand new website, looking to redesign a website, or are simply adding to their existing one.
When developing a website for your legal practice, you want to consider details such as: the name of your domain, your geographic area, your target audience, practice areas you want to market, and the unique selling points your law firm has to offer. We’ll explain these details further.
Domain Name – This is more important than you may think for two reasons. First, having an effective domain name let’s potential clients know right away what your legal practice is about. Secondly, many search engines still use domain names as ranking factors. For example, if a personal injury lawyer named Danny is developing a new website, the domain name “dannyinjurylaw” is going to be more effective than “dannyandassociates.” The first domain name is more marketable and generally performs better in search results for searches related to personal injury.
Target Audience – Marketing 101: know your audience! Let’s use that same personal injury attorney named Danny as an example. His target audience is people injured in an accident; thus, his website should have pictures, backgrounds, and an overall theme related to accident injuries. If he specializes in auto accidents specifically, then he should take pictures of car wreck scenes for his website (Stock photos are a secondary option but they aren’t as ideal).
Practice Areas – Your website should be organized in a way that conveys your primary practice areas
Unique Selling Points – There are many law firms out there, many of which have been practicing for a very long time. As a result, it’s important to highlight your unique selling points to clients. For instance, if you specialize in a specific niche (i.e. motorcycle accidents) you’ll want to convey this within your content. You can also include details on specific awards that you’ve won or other features that distinguishes your law firm from the pack.
Geographic Area – Targeting your website to a specific geographic location can differentiate yourself from other attorneys advertising in that area. This can be a highly effective practice especially for smaller practices and/or practices that have a lot of local community involvement.
Think of your website like your office. When a potential client walks into your office, what do you want them to see? I’m going to go ahead and assume you want to give a good impression. That is, you want your clients to walk into a very professional looking and welcoming environment. Basically, you should want them to see you at your best.
If you want to generate more clients, you should treat your website the same way because visitors to your website are potential clients; thus, you should provide them with a good experience and convey value.
When someone is doing research on a lawyer and they find a beautifully designed website with a significant amount of well-written content and a layout that’s easy to navigate, they’re much more likely to dial that phone number.
On the other hand, when they find a “bare bones” website that’s outdated and poorly maintained (like many we see) they’re likely to leave the website, continue searching for other attorneys, and possibly go to one of your competitors.
Based on our experience, here are some key elements of a good law firm website:
In short, visitors to your website are potential clients so conveying value and impressing them can make a huge difference in the amount of phone calls you receive.
With over 40,000 searches per second nobody can deny the power of leveraging Google’s Search Engine. Maximizing your visibility on Google can literally determine the success of your legal practice as it has for many of our clients.
Google’s Search Algorithm uses a highly complex formula to determine where a website ranks on their search results page. In fact, there are over 300 factors involved in this calculation. We aren’t going to overwhelm you with the deep complexities of this formula, but rather give you some basic guidelines so you can better understand how to tailor the content on your website.
Here are a few important signals that search engines use when ranking a website;
Relevance – The goal of search engines is to match user search queries as closely as possible. For instance, when someone searches for “personal injury lawyer,” you’ll most likely see various law firms in your area that practice in this area of law. In other words, if you want to rank on the first page for a specific search, then your website and content should relate to this search as closely as possible.
Prominence – Search engines use several signals to calculate how ‘important’ a website is in relation to that search. For instance,
Proximity – This is pretty straight forward. If you’re searching for a specific product or service, the closer you are to the location of that product and service, the more likely it is to show up higher on the search engine results page (SERP).
When writing content, your goal should be to educate the reader while conveying yourself as an expert in your field. Establishing this authority is critical for not only instilling confidence in the legal knowledge and expertise of your firm but also in the eyes of Google in order to improve rankings. All other things being equal, Google will choose a site or page with a larger quantity of high quality content than others, in order to have the best possible user experience.
Choosing the right content can be challenging for attorneys and those writing for law firms. Oftentimes, it comes down to choosing the right keywords for the area of law you are looking at targeting and providing relevant and useful content related to it. This can be in the form of actual practice area pages, blog posts and even public information sections providing useful basic legal information to the public. Seasoned law firm sites will often have an intricate web of these articles interlinked together with useful outbound links that also are well known authority sources and highly ranked pages. Keyword research tools such as AHREFS are incredibly useful for content writers and managers looking to fine tune their website content efforts.
When it comes to marketing, understanding your audience is everything. If you’ve been practicing as an attorney for a long time, you probably know your clients quite well. When writing your content, consider the following:
These are the types of questions to consider to pinpoint the audience you wish to reach.
In our experience, using Google Ads is the single fastest and most effective way for attorneys to reach potential clients directly. Why is it the most effective? Because, you’re reaching your client the moment they’re looking for your service.
To elaborate, when someone is searching for an attorney, generally speaking, they’re going to see 1-4 ads at the top of Google before even scrolling down to the organic search results. I can’t imagine that having your name pop up at the top of Google when someone is searching for your practice area sounds like a bad idea.
The way Google Ads works is you set a daily budget (multiply this number by 30.4 to determine monthly spend), and you bid for a position on Google’s Search Results. You incur costs after a potential client clicks on your advertisement; this is known as the “Pay-Per-Click Model.” For example, if you set a bid at $5.00 per click, and your next highest competing bidder is bidding $4.50 per click, you’ll incur a cost of $4.51 per click. See Google’s documentation on the Ad Auction for more information on how this formula is calculated.
We have seen spectacular levels of success using Google Ads to market a legal practice. For example, one of our clients received x conversions (phone calls/leads) in one year for their medical malpractice area alone. This isn’t an isolated incident as other clients of ours have significantly grown their practice with the help of Google’s powerful advertising platform.
With that said, marketing a legal practice on Google Ads can be very expensive if the Campaigns aren’t set up and managed efficiently. If you look at the estimated cost-per-click for the keyword “auto accident attorney” in the State of Florida, it’s a jaw-dropping x. This is why hiring an expert for PPC management is critical. A knowledgeable PPC expert can find keywords that have lower cost-per-clicks, filter out irrelevant searches to maximize the efficiency of your budget, and ensure you receive the most targeted and relevant clicks on your ads.
Using specialized Google Ads software and custom programmatic scripts, our company is able to replicate these Campaign strategies and apply them to your specific practice area. Some of these Campaigns have produced substantial revenue and we have the ability to directly copy and paste them with certain edited variables (i.e. name, location, etc).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a practice that involves optimizing your website or business’ visibility and performance on search engines. This practice differs from paid search results (i.e. Google Ads) as SEO primarily focuses on improving a websites’ performance in the natural (organic) search results.
While increasing your natural organic ranking on search engines takes longer than paying for ads, the results can be far more rewarding since organic traffic is free.
Many are unaware of the true complexity of Google’s Search Algorithm. Theoretically speaking, there are hundreds of factors that influence where your website ranks. Our company specializes in understanding these factors. Using this knowledge, we design pages and content that are search engine friendly, highly relevant, and that provides users with the best possible experience. In other words, everybody wins!
Local SEO – Traditional SEO primarily focuses on where your website ranks in the natural search results for certain general search terms. On the other hand, Local SEO focuses on where your business ranks within a specific geographic location or for a geographic search term (i.e. New York Personal Injury Lawyer).
On-Page SEO – This is an industry term that refers to optimizations that take place directly on your website. The main component of On-page SEO
Off-Page SEO – Also an industry term, this refers to optimizations that take place off your website. The main component of off-page SEO is the quality and quantity of links directed to your website. Think of these links like “references”.
Having a review generation strategy is paramount in the age of information and social media. Getting positive reviews from your clients will not only increase the amount of leads you receive, but also positively influence your rankings on search engines.
Although there are many different sites to gather reviews, this section will focus primarily on Google Reviews. We’re going to share with you an effective method of generating Google reviews that has had a positive impact on our clients’ legal practices.
Whitespark has an excellent Review Link Generator. Basically, using this free tool will allow you to generate a link to send your clients. When clients click the link, they’re taken directly to your Google Maps listing, specifically, to the reviews page where it prompts them to leave a review. It’s important to note, they’ll require a Google Account in order to leave a review.
You can copy the two hyperlinked URLs above (change the display text as needed) and custom design an email template of your preference to send clients (ideally after a positive interaction).
Tips For Generating/Maintaining Google Reviews
One important piece of the SEO puzzle involves the overall online presence of your business. For example, we want to have your business listed on high quality websites with the correct information (i.e directories, listings, etc)
The quantity/quality of websites that reference your business and link to your website plays a major role in Google rankings. So having numerous high quality citations with correct business information is important.
There are several reasons why these citations are beneficial.
Being listed in the top legal directories can increase your presence in Google’s search results, give you a boost in referral traffic, and increase the amount of calls your law firm receives. Furthermore, this adds more links to your website so search engines will look at your practices website more favorably and are more likely to rank you higher on their results page.
Here’s a list of various legal directories. that we’ve vetted and gone through the process of signing up for.
We incorporate link building strategies that are 100% White Hat (natural) and won’t get you in trouble with Google’s Algorithm.
Artificial link building is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines ever since the Penguin Update.
If anyone tells you that they can build a ton of links quickly or have a network of websites/blogs to post your website on RUN FOR THE HILLS!
We use link building strategies such as:
Your website host is where your website files and database is stored. The hosting company and plan you choose can directly impact how well you rank on search engines and how fast your website loads.
A slow hosting platform will be apparent when there’s a long delay when you click links on your site. If you click a link, and your mouse is spinning for 2+ seconds before the new page even begins to load, this is a slow Time-To-First-Byte (TTFB server response time), which is most likely caused by a slow hosting platform. A general TTFB score to aim for is below 350ms, and anything more than this will start to appear as a ‘delay’ to the user when they click something on the website.
Page Speed is the reference to how long it takes for a web page to completely finish loading, or download and display all elements on the page. This portion of website speed is purely technical, from a website development standpoint. For example, there can be two identical looking websites from a visual or functionality standpoint, however one that was built with speed in mind can load much quicker than the other if this isn’t taken into account.
There are several elements that can impact website loading time, such as images being loaded that aren’t optimized, the amount of CCS / JavaScript that’s loading on the page, or even the order of when items load / execute will impact website speed.
Running your website through various online tools, such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix will score your webpage, and point out various issues to the developer, and provide recommendations on how to increase the website loading speed. These can sometimes be as simple as running your images through an online compressor, or as complex as having to make backend website modifications to reduce the JavaScript that’s loaded, or rewrite certain aspects of code to keep the same functionality, and reduce ‘bloat’.
What if I told you that your landing page is even more important than your advertisement? There are many misconceptions about landing pages in the marketing world, even among experienced internet marketers.
Landing page optimization is the process of making changes to a web page with the goal of increasing the conversion rate for visitors. This includes optimizing the design, content, and call-to-action to make the page more attractive and effective for the user. It can also involve A/B testing to find the best combination of elements for the page.
Many believe that you need to keep your landing pages separate from your website. Based on our experience, this simply isn’t the case.
For example, many of our clients’ most effective landing pages are on their main website. We personally believe that it’s best to consolidate your website traffic as much as possible. In other words, you should be making positive changes to your website to increase leads from organic traffic, paid traffic, and any other significant traffic source.
Our visual design and copywriting experts produce high quality landing pages that perform well both organically as well as for paid traffic such as Google Ads.
Live chat on websites has become increasingly popular as it allows customers to get real-time help from customer service representatives. It is a great way to provide quick and efficient customer service and support. There are certain live chat programs that specialize in law firms specifically. One of the best programs based on our experience is Ngage Live Chat.
Live chat allows customers to ask questions and get immediate answers, often with more detailed information than a phone call or email. It also allows customers to communicate with representatives in real-time, giving them a personal connection to the company and helping to build trust. Additionally, it helps to streamline customer service, as customers can quickly and easily get the help they need without needing to wait on hold or wait for an email response. Live chat is a great tool for providing customers with a personalized and efficient customer service experience.
In our experience, we have seen an average of a 50% increase in overall inquiries when implementing live chat on client sites. This has been a beneficial addition across the board and something that is highly recommended for law firm clients.
When starting any sort of marketing Campaign, it’s important that your staff is trained in client intake.
The best solution is to have someone trained in screening calls to avoid unqualified leads as well as handling scheduling for qualified leads.
If hiring someone specifically for this task is currently outside your budget, there are other solutions as well. For example, services like Gabbyville offer bilingual live virtual receptionist and answering services.
Pricing for a virtual receptionist ranges between $250 to $1,500 per month.
If you deal with higher volumes of clients it may not be a bad idea to invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in addition to a receptionist.
Negative reviews are one of a business owner’s worst nightmares. However, if managed properly, a negative review has the potential to be an asset to a business. While a negative review itself cannot be prevented, they can be leveraged to show transparency and growth in a company to new potential clients and customers. This in turn can improve your reputation as a progressive and problem solving company.
In many situations, business owners find it easiest to manage their reviews by outsourcing this to a reputation firm. This frees up valuable time for them to manage their daily business operations, and allows the review experts to handle any negativity in the best way possible. Oftentimes, this is managed by the same agency that deals with their marketing, as reviews are an integral part of SEO strategy.
A key aspect of managing a negative review is uniquely tailored responses to customer feedback. One of the worst things a prospective customer can see when researching a company is seeing a clearly canned response to genuine customer reviews. Crafting a response specifically addressing the customer’s concerns is key to not only potentially turning around the situation and resolving their issue, but also to showcase their customer service attributes.
Video marketing is an incredibly powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. It can help to build brand awareness and increase engagement with clients, while also providing an entertaining and informative way to communicate with potential clients. Video marketing can be used to showcase services and practice areas, introduce a new area of law, educate clients, etc.
Video marketing is a great way for law firms to take advantage of landing page optimization. Videos give the user a more personal experience, as they can see and hear the attorney in action. Videos can be used to explain complex legal concepts in an easy-to-understand way or to provide helpful tips for people going through a legal process.
Videos can also be used to show potential clients the value of working with the firm, as well as to demonstrate the firm’s expertise in a particular area of law. Videos can be used on the firm’s website, social media, and other digital platforms to reach potential clients and increase engagement.
One unique aspect of our marketing agency is the high tech video equipment used by….
One of the most important factors when judging the effectiveness of a law firm marketing campaign is measuring how many clients contacted your firm or were retained as a result of the advertisement. The good news is, with proper software integration and as well as experience, this is 100% possible.
One of the most important tools used in measuring marketing results is Google Analytics. Used correctly, this tool allows for the tracking of user behavior throughout the site, with useful information such as session length, how often they visit the site over a period of time, and more.
Another powerful tool used in conjunction with Google Analytics is CallRail. This allows for the connection of website visitors with real time call data, and gives business owners and marketing managers the ability to easily track call traffic that is a direct result of marketing efforts. This direct connection between marketing and end results allows marketing teams to fine tune their strategy for maximum results – targeting the right demographics to get productive phone calls and useful web traffic.
The dawn of a new age is here in 2023; for a long time there have been rumblings on Artificial intelligence and how it would impact our future.
Many new programs such as Chat GPT interact in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.
While this is an incredibly powerful tool for content creation, it ultimately is only as good as the human behind it. While AI can provide exceptionally well written content, it must be directed to do so. Proper SEO strategy involves proper keyword and market research in order to select the best topics possible, as well as evaluate the accuracy of the content generated. In all cases, AI generated content such as what is produced by ChatGPT requires tweaking, editing and proper linking and backend SEO strategy to actually be effective.
In other words, while this is a useful tool, it is ultimately not effective without an experienced SEO team at the wheel. With our decades of combined experience, the team at Borealis has the expertise, skills and knowledge to utilize this new tool to its maximum potential. This not only benefits our clients directly but also ensures that the content created is actually beneficial to the overall SEO and marketing strategy.
There is no denying that social media is an important avenue for businesses to take advantage of in the modern age. Law firms are not an exception to this. While you don’t have to necessarily spend erroneous hours on each platform, it’s recommended that you build out your law firm’s profile for each major platform and include a section on your website that links to each of your social media pages. In this section, we’re going to dive into each major platform.
Tik Tok – One of the newest forms of social media, Tik Tok has taken the world by storm. This is a short-form video hosting service that hosts user-generated videos. As of 2022 TikTok generated almost $10 billion in ad revenue and has over 1.5 billion active monthly users. With numbers like these, it’s difficult to deny that TikTok is going to be around for a long time and will influence future generations. Here’s an example of a divorce lawyer on TikTok who regularly uploads comedy themed content related to his practice area.
Instagram – Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta. As of 2021, the net advertising revenue of Instagram Stories worldwide was close to 11.43 billion U.S. dollars. With 2 billion active users, instagram remains one of the most popular social media platforms. Here’s an example of a law firm on instagram with more than 5,000 followers
Facebook – Facebook remains one of the oldest and most used social media platforms with 2.96 billion users and $82.4B in advertising revenue. This mammoth social networking website is also owned by Meta Platforms. Having a Business Facebook page for your law firm on this platform is important as most people you know are likely using this platform.
YouTube – YouTube is a video sharing platform where people can watch, like, comment and share videos. It is owned by Google and was created in 2005. YouTube is the world’s most popular video sharing platform with over 2 billion users. It offers a wide range of content from music, educational, news, and entertainment videos. YouTube also allows users to create their own channels and upload their own videos. YouTube’s worldwide advertising revenues amounted to 7.96 billion U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter of 2022. In our experience, incorporating YouTube videos with your landing page is a highly effective way to increase conversion rates.
SnapChat – Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app developed by Snap Inc. It allows users to send photos, videos, text messages, and drawings to other users. It also includes features such as lenses, filters, and face swaps, and allows users to share their location with friends. SnapChat has 616.9 million users with $4.12 billion in ad revenue. SnapChat can be useful in advertising to the younger generation; however, there are far better options for law firms.
Pinterest – Although you don’t hear about this social media platform as frequently, Pintrist quietly has around 445 million users and produces 2.1 billion in ad revenue. Pinterest is an online platform that allows users to create collections of images, videos, and other content based on their interests. Users can also follow other users and browse their collections, as well as share and comment on pins. The platform is used mainly for inspiration and DIY projects, as well as to discover and shop for products. While it’s worth it to at least create a business page for your law firm, we advise spending your marketing budget elsewhere.
Reddit – With 52 million active users and 439 million in ad revenue, Reddit is a highly popular website. Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered users submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members. The highest-voted posts appear on the front page of the site. Reddit also has subreddits, which are communities dedicated to a specific topic. There is even a section for r/legaladvice. You can post links on Reddit, but be warned, there are specific criteria citing when you can or can’t post links to your website so it’s important to read the rules and terms of service before advertising on Reddit.
Linkedin – As one of the most popular B2B social media platforms, Linkedin has just over 849 million users worldwide and brings in $3.8 billion in advertising revenue annually. This platform shares many similarities with other social networking sites such as Facebook, with “connections” instead of “friends”. Targeted towards working professionals, the majority of the content, posts and comments are related to new business ventures, ideas and industry specific news updates. Many law firms find the platform to be an excellent place to showcase their expertise, skills and successes, with Linkedin’s algorithm putting their content in front of highly relevant audiences.
Twitter – Another early social media platform, Twitter is unique in its model and how users interface with the platform. With 330 million users and over 5.1 billion in annual revenue from advertisements, it is still one of the most widely used platforms across a range of different user demographics and groups. Businesses and specifically legal firms find Twitter to be a useful tool for keeping in touch with their client base and providing updates on important changes and updates to their firm.
Attorneys did not spend years in undergraduate and law school to spend their time tediously writing advertisements, coding websites and analyzing the ever changing attributes of Google’s search engine. Attempting to handle all aspects of their law firm by themselves, including marketing, is generally a less productive use of time which is better suited for what they specialize in – creating the best possible legal outcomes for their clients.
Working with a marketing agency specializing in law firms is a wise choice for maximizing growth potential, profitability and long term success. These agencies are not only intimately familiar with all aspects of the digital marketing world, but they also are experts in all aspects of the legal field. This makes them a perfect partner for ensuring continued exposure, new client acquisition and branding to showcase a firm’s expertise and track record of success.
At legal marketing experts, we don’t see our clients as “customers” but rather long term business relationships. We take a lot of pride in our work and are very serious about maximizing the results for each project.