Potential leads are out there, but you need a way to effectively capture and convert them. Establishing a digital marketing strategy for your law firm is the best way to effectively market your services to prospective leads. Digital marketing strategies are different for every firm. In order to be successful, you need to approach your strategy in the right way. Before implementing your marketing strategy, do the following: Law firm marketing strategy requires attention to detail, strong digital media, and a willingness to try new strategies. Whatever plan you spend time on should get you closer to a predetermined goal. Over 93 percent of people go online to search for a local business, according to Blue Corona Marketing Solutions. Any digital marketing strategy you choose to run should begin and end with your website. Nobody wants to hire a lawyer who doesn’t have authority in the industry. A good law firm website should act as a funnel of information to prospective clients. Content that you post on your website should have this practice in mind. Some questions you might ask yourself: Your website needs to be professional, which means its functionality, design and user experience need to stand out against your competition. The best websites for consumers are: Your site performance can actually turn off clients before you even get a chance to speak to them. In fact, 76 percent of consumers said that site performance is one of the top factors they look for when buying a product/service, Statista found. Not sure how fast your website speed is? Google’s Page Speed Insights will tell you how to improve your site’s performance. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly you’re hurting your bottom line. Most research indicates more than half of internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Mobile users are often looking something up quickly while on the go. By making your website mobile-friendly, you are creating a lasting impression as a firm that will pay attention to detail. Have an employee, friend or family member try to navigate through your website on desktop and mobile phone. If they cannot navigate easily, chances are other customers won’t be able to either. As part of your marketing strategy, your law firm should be striving toward conversion rate optimization. A conversion happens when an interested potential client becomes a paying customer. First, think in terms of your firm’s communications. Consider your call availability, your messaging responses and your turnaround time for answering calls and chats. If these aren’t up to speed, you could be losing potential clients and lowering your conversion rates. Blazeo’s (formerly ApexChat) Live Chat Software ensures every chat request is answered promptly by a real person who can assure your potential clients that your firm is ready and able to assist them with their needs. We can help you turn interested parties into paying clients, and your conversation rates will skyrocket. Be prepared for an influx of clients as agents at our chat service and call center help your firm connect with more people, more efficiently. Online marketing has evolved to the point where there are many different ways to reach your target audience. Depending on your niche, marketing campaigns can be tailored to fit a specific demographic. Paid search ads, otherwise known as pay per click ads (PPC) are ads you pay for when someone clicks on them. We highly recommend running some form of PPC ad for your law firm, as the top 3 – 4 listings are usually paid advertisements that get prominently featured. As you can see these ads took up a large portion of my screen. Blue Corona Marketing Solutions found that on average, 41 percent of clicks go to the top 3 paid ads on the search results page. The downside for lawyers is that keywords are expensive, averaging roughly $54 per click. Paid social media advertisements are powerful tools to expand your campaign’s reach and convert more leads to your website. One of the best digital marketing tools for law firms is Facebook. Facebook is the leading platform for paid advertisements, with the average Facebook ad campaign CPC listed at five U.S. cents. Utilizing Facebook paid advertisements allows you to directly market yourself to potential customers on the largest paid advertisement platform on the web. Let’s talk about local SEO a bit. Local SEO is the practice of getting your company at the top of the search engine results page for localized queries. Local service ads have a different SEO algorithm that puts an emphasis on your local audience. Becoming one of the featured law firms in your area can boost click-throughs from the search results. Learn more about leveraging Google Local Service Ads here. As you can see local service ads feature your firm’s name, user review rating, area of practice, your location and your hours of business. Yes, you need to have a social media presence as a law firm. Internet marketing has changed the way customers communicate with businesses, and law firms are no exception. In fact, 95 percent of millennials expect brands to have a Facebook presence, 87 percent of Gen X’ers think brands should have a Facebook page as well. A good rule for social media posting is the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the content that you share should be about your customers. This includes answering their questions, retweeting links and sharing articles that they will find valuable. The remaining 20 percent can be sales-oriented shares. Blumenreich Law Firm does a good job of following this rule. The majority of their tweets are links to outside articles that would be of interest to their followers, with the occasional sales pitch slipped in. Lawyers who are great social media marketers stay in their clients’ lives by providing relevant high-quality content on a daily basis. Email marketing for lawyers is a highly cost-effective way to generate and close more leads. Potential clients want to feel wanted, especially when they have legal troubles. Opt-in email marketing is one of the best ways to stay in front of potential and existing clients, as it’s cost-effective and keeps your clients engaged with your firm even if they aren’t active clients. Your law firm can greatly benefit from a convenient call center from Blazeo (formerly ApexChat). Imagine a potential client calling your firm or contacting you through your website. Perhaps as things stand right now, you’re having a tough time answering all your calls or responding to every chat request. You don’t quite get to one in time, and the client gives up and contacts another firm. Don’t let things like this happen to your firm. Let Blazeo handle your calls and live chat requests. With our call center, you can be sure that your phone calls will always be answered and someone will immediately respond to a live chat request. Response times will drop significantly, and your potential clients will receive the attention they deserve. They’ll be able to chat with a real human being, making these satisfied folks more likely to choose your law firm and provide positive reviews about your availability. Pay special attention to Blazeo’s Live Chat Software. This will make your law firm’s website a prime ground for connecting with clients. With the simple click of a button, potential clients will be able to chat with an agent 24 hours a day. Our agents can answer basic questions and connect potential clients with your firm for more in-depth communication. You’ll never have to miss another chat request or lose a frustrated client because you have trouble keeping up with queries. All this strategy is great, but you can’t waste time on ineffective advertising strategies. A good digital marketing strategy requires you to accurately measure and track each and every advertising campaign. Your goal is to find out which digital marketing strategies work and which should be changed or eliminated. Limiting the number of mistakes you make by tracking and pivoting accordingly will save you a lot of headaches in the long run. We recommend doing the following for your firm: KPI’s are one of the most important aspects of any law firms digital marketing strategy. How will you know if your firm is achieving its goals if you never outlined what your goals are in the first place? Here are a few performance indicators your firm should be tracking: Anytime you are deciding what new ways you can market your firm, think about how you might track success for any new KPI you create. Using these tools outlined in this article, you can now implement an optimized digital marketing strategy for your law firm. Learn about how you can grow your law firm by optimizing the client experience.
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