Did you know that, according to GoRemotely, the US legal business sector has an estimated market share of $160 billion—and that some lawyers earn as much as $2,400 hourly? It can be an incredibly lucrative industry to work in if you know how to get the right clients.
When it comes to being a successful lawyer and getting the right clients, knowing how to do marketing for lawyers is key. If you’re a lawyer looking to improve your client list and make more money, then you might be asking yourself questions such as:
“Are there any online strategies I should be using to attract clients?”
“How do I stand out so that clients choose my firm instead of others?”
“How can I ensure my clients find out about me and my services?”
Considering how many questions you might have, it’s stressful to develop the right law firm marketing plan. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to law firm marketing strategy. By helping you understand how to improve your online presence, you can focus on getting clients and serving them.
Read on to learn more.
Understand Your Clients
The first step of creating a legal marketing online strategy is to understand your clients through and through. To do this, you need to create an ideal buyer persona where you detail everything about your clients. This includes details such as:
- Age
- Occupation
- Gender
- Where they live
- Are they married? Do they have children?
- What their career goals are
- What their life goals are
- Why do they need your legal services?
- What problems will you solve by offering them your legal services?
- How will their life ultimately change with your legal services?
- Where and when will they find you online?
By taking note of all these details, you’ll know exactly who your ideal client is and what they want. By having these details, you’ll know how to create content specifically tailored to them and where to post it. Additionally, you’ll know how to brand yourself and your website to attract them to you.
Set Goals for Your Marketing Strategy
The next step for how to grow a law firm is to set goals for your marketing strategy. Sit down with your partner and pinpoint what goals you think you’ll have in three months, six months, and twelve months. Some example goals when it comes to online marketing for lawyers include:
- Establishing authority in your industry
- Establishing authority in your local area
- Getting a new type of client
- Attracting the same type of clients you already are—but a larger number than before
- Improving your online presence
Depending on where you are now as a legal practice, your goals will vary. For example, if you’ve just opened up a new office in a new city, establishing authority in your local area is the right goal. If you’re doing well but want to keep getting leads, we’d recommend improving your online presence over time, which will get you more leads over time.
Local Business Listings
One of the best ways for clients to find you is by putting your law firm in local business listings. By listing your law firm in Google Maps, any client looking for a law firm “near me” will inevitably stumble upon your listing.
You’ll also want to include your law firm in the Internet Yellow Pages, Bing Places, Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and Google +. When doing this, include information such as your office address, email, a contact number, and information about opening hours.
By providing these details (and making them consistent on every listing and on your website), you’ll make your firm more visible, easier to contact, and more professional.
Use the Online Sales Funnel
When creating a digital marketing strategy, you need to use the online sales funnel. It’s all about knowing what path your client takes from when they discover your firm until they choose to hire you for legal representation. The online sales funnel includes three steps:
- The Top of the Funnel, where your clients come across your shared content on social media, video marketing, and advertising
- The Middle of the Funnel, where your clients visit your website; in this area, you need to work on strong website design, a clear landing page, and site optimization
- The Bottom of the Funnel, where you do engage with your clients through email marketing and sales calls
Top of the Funnel
The top of the funnel will be informed by two things we’ve covered already: understand your clients and set goals for your marketing strategy. By knowing who your clients are and how they’ll find you, you can create content in the form of advertising, video marketing, and social media posts to get them to discover you.
Middle of the Funnel
Once you’ve gotten your clients’ attention, they’ll visit your website. You need to have a high-quality web design. Simply visit this website to find out about some of the best law firm websites and get inspired.
Additionally, you need to think about site optimization and search engine optimization (SEO). When it comes to site optimization, you need to think about how your users will navigate your site, design it for use on both laptops, and have a responsive design for phones.
Also, SEO for lawyers means creating content that will appear near the top of search results on Google. For example, you could create blog posts helping your clients with their numerous legal needs.
Finally, you need a call to action (CTA) that appears throughout your site in which you have your visitors take a final step when they’re visiting. This might be, for example, signing up for an email newsletter or contacting you with a contact form.
Bottom of the Funnel
Once you’ve given your visitors a CTA, you can use it for the bottom part of the funnel. By the time they’ve visited your website, they should have given you the contact information you need to stay in touch with them. You can do this through email marketing or calls.
Often, clients won’t give you their contact information for nothing—but they might do it if you offer free, short consultations or a detailed PDF that can help them with their legal issues in exchange for their contact information.
Need to Know More About Marketing for Lawyers?
Do you need to know more about marketing for lawyers? Maybe you’re curious about other strategies you can use to draw clients in, or you want to know how to best design your legal website.
Whatever you need to know, we can help. Check out the news section of our website to find more information about everything law-related.
