Law Firm Marketing: 4 Strategies to Promote Your Legal Practice

Digital marketing can be a powerful ally for law firms looking to promote their practices, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. If you’re looking for basic strategies to start promoting your legal practice by expanding your reach or connecting with new audiences online, look no further. Here are 4 strategies that work well for lawyers.

Upgrade Your Website

Your online presence begins and ends with your website, so this is the best place to start if you’re looking to see a boost in the number of clients coming to your practice. The reason for that is that all of your marketing strategies are driving traffic back to your website. It’s what shows up when people search for you, it’s linked in your local listings, and it’s where people are directed from your social media platforms. All roads lead to your website, so what are clients finding when they get there?

Here are some of the things that impact the effectiveness of legal firm web design.

Content

Most likely, people are coming to your website to get information about what you do and how you do it. Are they finding what they’re looking for? You have a secret weapon when it comes to website content: you have access to a lot of information about your clients. You know their pain points, you know the questions they ask, and you know why they’re looking for you. With that in mind, audit your website and decide if it conveys this information. Having a page for every service you offer that includes answers to the most frequently asked questions about your services is a good starting point. From there, starting a blog, creating case studies or testimonials from your clients, and an “About” page that lists your locations and hours is a logical next step.

Conversion Elements

Anything that gives a potential client a place to contact you is considered a conversion element. These can be forms that people fill out, buttons they click to call you, chat widgets, anything that helps convert a visitor into a client. If your website doesn’t make it easy for visitors to become clients, it’s not doing its main job.

Security

Website security is important, but most people don’t realize exactly how important it is. Websites that don’t have a secure socket layer (SSL) certificate aren’t able to utilize HTTPS web addresses. Not only does this make them more vulnerable to cyber attacks, it also means that most web browsers will warn users that your site isn’t secure when they visit. On top of that, search engines have openly said that they consider SSL certificates a ranking factor. Having an insecure site is just bad all around.

Audit Your Local Search Listings

In 2019, 45% of people used local search to find lawyers in their area, which is why local search is the second most important marketing strategy for your law firm. Local search is just what its name implies: a search for something near you. Plus, even if you aren’t actively promoting your practice through local search, you likely already have automatically-generated listings on local search engines. Because they’re generated from whatever information search engines collect across the internet, automatic search listings are often riddled with inaccurate information, and inaccurate information is penalized by search engines. Therefore, spending time correcting inaccuracies can be really beneficial for your local search marketing efforts.

The most important information to get right is called NAP information - which stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. At the bare minimum, make sure this information is accurate across the internet, but to really shine, add as much information as you can. Photos, descriptions, operating hours, your website, and managing your reviews (more on that in a second) will help you stand out from your competitors.

Review Your Reviews

The easiest way to figure out what people are saying about a product or service you’re interested in is to read the reviews. You might think reviews aren’t really something you can change, but there are actually several things that search engines look at when they assess your reviews as a ranking factor (oh yeah, they do that).

There are three major factors at play with online reviews:

• How many reviews are there?
• What’s the overall sentiment of the reviews?
• Is the business responding to negative reviews? How quickly?

The easiest way to get more reviews is to request them from your clients. The easiest way to get more positive reviews is to request feedback from your clients first, and head off any unhappy clients before they take to the internet. It’s a bit of a delicate balance, however, because too many overly positive reviews aren’t great either, as studies show 52% of people are likely to think your reviews are fake.

Get Social With Social Media

Perhaps the best way to communicate who you are and what you do is through social media profiles. While operating a business profile is, of course, much different than posting to your own personal pages, social media gives you a chance to connect directly with clients new and old alike. It’s also a huge market - after all, who do you know who isn’t on social media these days? Picking a platform is important - Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are all popular and effective platforms for lawyers looking to tap into new markets. Figuring out what to post once you’re there is an art form, but you’ll quickly begin to see which types of posts get the most engagement from your audience. Asking your clients to follow you on social media is a good way to get started.

Need more help with your law firm marketing strategy? MyAdvice can help with these strategies - and more. We’ve been doing this for 20 years now, and there’s nothing we haven’t seen or helped solve. Click here to see what we can do for law practices just like yours.