Every industry is leveraging digital, then why not law firms? The best thing about Digital marketing is that it can work for almost any business when done strategically. Every business aspires to attract new clients, and the online landscape is a vast pool of prospect clients. Almost 59% of the global population is active on the internet. Billions of people are connecting worldwide, and the core pillar of this modern information society is the internet.
Online marketing is drastically changing the way brands, businesses, and individuals market themselves. There is something for everyone here. If you have a law firm and you need online marketing strategies to succeed then everything comes down to fundamentals. Without a solid base, even the strongest and smartest marketing strategies fail. To generate relevant traffic and engagement online law firms need strong market research, interaction and the right platforms.
During your website development phase, ask your team to maintain the following parameters and go live with a winning site working for you 24×7.
Wondering, why law firms need digital marketing?
Let us shed some light on that. When it comes to marketing for a law firm – precision and accuracy become highly important. To build a strong reputation for a law firm online, you need to find a balance between expertise, reliability, and intellect, as any wrong move could compromise the reputation and for a law firm reputation is brand. Brand is the firm’s identity and personality.
All lawyers know that reputation and relationships is a great factor when it comes to law practice. One needs a great digital marketing strategy to define and nurture a legal brand. A strategy that can help enhance customer experience, promote awareness about the law firm and most importantly, build trust. Digital marketing provides with a platform to share informative videos, content, case studies, and blogs that can help provide necessary information around legal issues.
Here are some digital marketing strategies for law firms that are important to get an upper hand:
- Start with a website
An informative and well-structured website is a fundamental need for law firms in the legal world. Since so much of local business comes from local clients it is important to have a website to target them with an effective online marketing strategy. A website can help your clients understand your services and facilities. Use high-quality content to share information with both current and potential clients. Convey your values and ethical practises; offer free online information about some of the commonly asked legal questions from your area of expertise. Use case studies and media coverages to portray the area of expertise. This will help in creating a reliable authority among the target audience and increase the number of potential clients for your law firm.
70% of law firms generate new cases through their website; having a good website it key to acquiring new clients and cases. (Source: imarc)
2. Search Engine Optimisation
No matter what marketing strategy you opt for, it can never be complete without a good SEO strategy. Using the right keywords and strategies is of the essence when you are striving to rank on various search engines. Ranking depends on the choice of right keywords that are locally relevant and frequently used by your target audience. It will increase the chances of visibility online. Include categories in your website so that visitors can easily find the pages they want. Categorising can help them find the legal matters that resonate with them. Optimise the pages so that the Search Engines
3. Social media marketing
This one is another powerful differentiator in the online marketing world. Nearly everyone is on social media, including your new and current clients. So, maintaining a strong presence on social media can give a law firm an impressive and engaging professional profile. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be useful platforms to promote and connect with the audience. The best part of social media marketing is it helps build a relationship in advance with the potential patrons; much before they become your clients. You can provide great customer service by replying to direct messages, comments and tweets from people on social media. Giving out legal tips can attract a lot of people too!
The most preferred social media site of lawyers is LinkedIn (76%). It is followed by Facebook (60%), Twitter (37%), Martindale (35%), and Avvo (22%). (ABA, 2020)
4. Content Marketing
In any digital marketing strategy content marketing is the spine! From designing, to writing, to interacting on various online platforms is done via effective content. SEO requires strong content, the videos and images one shares on social media requires strong captions and messaging, the website content must resonate with target audience and all of this is done via a strong content marketing strategy.
One can generate wider customer reach, traffic and leads with the help of content marketing. The best part of content marketing is its diverse forms like articles, blogs, eBooks, brochures, videos, email campaigns and many such interactive materials. It gives the viewer a more detailed aspect on how you can help them and why they need your services. Content marketing helps in attracting high-quality links to the website. This is turn can that can improve SEO and website ranking.
5. Email marketing
It is still one of the most result-oriented facet of digital marketing strategies. Sending emails to the current as well as prospective clients with personalisation can create a long-lasting impression. Ask your website visitors to subscribe to your email and newsletters. Add landing pages where you can get the email of your visitors to start engaging with them via email marketing. Email still has one of the best ROIs when it comes to online marketing.
Emails with personalised subject lines generate 50% higher open rates. Email marketing boasts a 4200% ROI.
6. Reach out for reviews
In the legal arena building reputation is a very crucial. What a client thinks can make or break a firm’s image online. When potential prospect starts looking for information about a firm, they often look for testimonials from past clients or current clients. This helps them build up trust. The more positive reviews you have from clients on social media, Google, website or even email campaigns the easier it is for new clients to trust you. Taking legal advice and help requires a fair amount of trust and clients often have their own apprehensions, hence they need some assurance. Client reviews and testimonials can offer that reassurance.
An estimated 75% of people searching for a lawyer use legal review sites, and 84% of those people trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.
7. CRM solution
This is another important aspect of online marketing. Managing potential clients is very important, and CRM tools can ease this process. CRM automation tools helps in nurturing leads as per their position in the sales cycle. Chatbots, automated responses can engage the visitors while you are away for a while. It is not easy to manually manage every aspect of sales and marketing therefore CRM tools can come as a great help. There are many CRM tools available that can be integrated with online marketing strategy.
8. Video Marketing
Yet another very impactful form of marketing. Videos gain a lot more attention than any other form of marketing material. Since people’s attention span is shrinking day by day, visuals get more cognitive attention. Law firms can utilise this effective video marketing strategy to help the clients understand why they can be a trustworthy partner. Firms that already use video usually see a jump in their client base. Video is a legal marketing strategy that is here to stay.
A brand is 53 times more likely to get featured on the 1st page of Google if they have included a video in your online marketing strategy
These are some nifty digital marketing strategies that can work in favour of law firms. Hope you will start using some of them from today!
