These days, word of mouth can only carry your business so far. In the digital age, no matter how good the reputation of your law firm, if you don’t attract new visitors online, growing your business will always be challenging.
The great thing is, there are many effective ways to get your law firm seen online by the right people - your potential clients. And it’s not just about having a well-designed website it’s about getting new visitors to your website week on week.
To help you do this task we’ve put together ten different ways you can shout about your law firm online, (including some examples and useful links) which should help your visitor numbers skyrocket.
Without further ado, here’s how to promote a law firm in the digital world.
1. Only Do What You Can Measure
8. Optimise for Better Conversion
9. Write Remarkable Legal Content
1. Only Do What You Can Measure
This is number one for several reasons. But the most important reason? If you can’t track, analyse, or measure something - don’t do it. Don’t give yourself the headache of spending time and money on something where you can’t find out if it works.
When you’re promoting your law firm, you want to make sure you’re pooling your efforts into the things that are working - and that’s where measuring and reporting comes in. The best marketing platforms (such as HubSpot) should allow you to measure everything from your social media interactions to your content engagements, your keyword execution to your website’s performance. With this data, you’ll see where you need to make improvements or what you should stop doing altogether.
2. Ask for Online Reviews
If you provided a great service on a client’s case then it’s a great idea to ask for a little something back. Ask them to:
- Leave a review of your law firm on Google, Trustpilot, or even Feefo - It’s a great way to boost your firm’s reputation online and really builds up your authority as the go-to firm for potential clients.
You can set up automated workflow emails with HubSpot that can send out a “thank you” email to your client once their case is complete. You can include links to your review sites that your clients can click to fill in reviews or even ask them to fill out a testimonial for your website.
3. Google My Business
Not on Google My Business? It’s amazingly beneficial in helping your business be found on local searches for prospects looking for legal services.
Another major benefit of Google My Business - it’s free. As mentioned in #2, it’s an effective way to display reviews that clients leave. The more reviews you have, the better.
4. Legal Directories
So you’re probably thinking, “do my potential clients even search for law firms using directories? Surely they just Google it?” While this might be the truth, adding your law firm onto high-quality directories actually increases the authority of your online presence. It’s a great way to start link building by adding your firm to as many legal (and general) business directories to lift up your rankings.
We’ve shared a few high quality and authoritative legal directories that you could add a listing for (if you haven’t done so already):
When adding your firm onto directories, keep in mind that you should make sure your address, phone numbers, and email addresses are consistent on each directory, including formatting, and spelling - Google doesn’t like seeing inconsistencies with information.
5. Email Newsletters
64% of people love to receive rich text emails. As a law firm, you’re privy to all sorts of information - from regulation changes and updates to company and industry-related news. Utilise this information and piece together informative and engaging email newsletters that you can send to your existing client database. You can provide information about new services or content that your clients will be interested in. Did your law firm win an award? Tell people about it - self-promotion is a good thing!
However, be sure not to spam your clients with too many emails and give them options to subscribe and opt out of your emails (especially due to GDPR legislation). By providing your audience with helpful information, it should want to make them subscribe and engage more.
You can use email marketing tools such as HubSpot’s email automation software to help you plan out automated workflows that take the stress out of remembering to send emails on time.
6. Online Advertising (PPC)
64.6% of people click on Google ads if they are looking to buy a product or service online. Take advantage of this number to promote your online presence even further by looking into pay per click (PPC) advertising. PPC can help give your firm the competitive edge it might need against your competitors and climb your way to the top of search engine results rankings. Some great tools to use to help with your PPC campaign are:
You can also use HubSpot’s Ads add-on tool to help track the performance of both Google Adwords and Facebook to easily understand which PPC campaigns are converting. Another great thing that HubSpot’s tool does is it allows you to manage and optimise your campaigns all in one place. How good is that?
7. Promote Through Video
Video content and platform providers are on the rise. 50% of people specifically search for videos relating to a product or service online before deciding to make a physical visit.
Here’s why you should start using video to promote your law firm:
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It improves your SEO and can increase traffic to your website - Google is now beginning to increase the number of videos that are displayed in the search results - so long as it relevantly “answers” a search query.
- It strengthens your online presence and engagement - People find that video content is easier to digest than reading content and will likely share videos that they’ve enjoyed with others. Use it to share testimonials, legal educational videos or even a video that tells the story of your law firm in an interesting way.
- Videos can increase your conversion rate by 80% - so embedding a high-quality video onto your landing page will only result in beneficial lead-to-customer conversions.
The best way to treat videos as the same way you would for any other content you produce. Start with keyword research and determine what video content would be the most optimal for your firm to promote. Upload onto popular platforms including YouTube and Facebook and then work on promoting them through your firm’s social media channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
8. Optimise for Better Conversion
Optimisation uses various strategies and techniques to improve different areas of your marketing - not just your website. Some of this optimisation can become quite technical but if you monitor performance levels (from your content to your website conversion rates) on a regular basis, you can work on improving and tweaking the areas that need some TLC bit by bit over time. Here are three things you can do to bump up your optimisation methods:
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Provide relevant content - Ensure that all your content, from blogs to emails are well written, and informative, and provide useful answers for your target audience. then start re-optimising and you’ll see an increase in your rankings.
- Use visuals - No one wants to read a hefty bit of text, especially if they’re on the go. Utilise visuals such as infographics or relevant images to break up the content in your blog posts and increase engagement levels in your audience.
- Not so Flash - If your website is still using Flash, STOP. These days, web design has moved far beyond using Flash, especially since it can cause problems for device (mobile and tablet) users trying to access your full website. Rid yourself of Flash and look for other friendlier alternatives that will help improve your website’s loading times (and decrease your users’ frustrations).
- Optimise content behind the scenes - Make sure your online content has relevant page titles, meta descriptions, and ALT tags on all your images. If you’re unsure of how to optimise technically, book a free assessment with Digital Media Stream and we can explain this for you jargon-free.
Analysing and optimising are tools that will help you guide your website to a better version of itself. Of course, you can’t magically expect results overnight - so make sure to keep on top of both if you want to see your performance and conversion soar.
9. Write Remarkable Legal Content
97% of law firms don’t have personalised content - meaning that content goes nowhere in particular and speaks to no one. Your content should be able to influence your potential clients across the buyer’s journey, no matter what stage they’re in.
Give your content a purpose by using it to drive actions using call-to-actions that provide your audience with downloadable content and offers such as educational eBooks, infographics, and even webinars. Read our blog on how to create remarkable legal content for more in-depth tips.
10. Become Social
Social media is incredibly beneficial for your law firm - especially seeing as one-third of the world log into social networks on a regular basis. Read our blog on how to build a successful social media strategy for your law firm and find out how to:
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Choose the right platform
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Use SMART marketing
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Be regular and relevant with content
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Engage your audience and build relationships with clients
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Perform analytics and see ROI on your social selling
While we’re on the subject of social media, did you know that 72% of adults use Facebook - 70% of whom log on daily? You can use social media advertising (similar to PPC) to help promote your law firm through different channels.
With that being said, it’s important to keep your business at the forefront of the digital world and make your law firm outshine your competitors by implementing a great social media strategy, whether organically or through paid methods.
CONCLUSION
The more opportunities you have to promote your law firm online, the better ROI you’ll see on each investment over time. So be sure to incorporate these ten things as part of your law firm promotion:
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Measure the results of everything you do.
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Turn your clients into promoters and send you referrals.
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Add and maintain your business on Google.
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Add your law firm to good quality legal directories.
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Send out relevant newsletters to your clients with useful information.
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Utilise PPC to advertise your services.
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Jump on the video content bandwagon.
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Optimise everything you do to increase conversion.
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Make sure your legal content is “wow”.
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Use social media to your law firm’s advantage.
By staying ahead of the curve, you can be sure that your inbound marketing strategy for your law firm stays on track, is optimised, and growing day by day with increased lead generation and revenue.
