Start with Your Firm’s Online Presence: 7 Legal Marketing Essentials
on Topics: Guest Posts
This article is the first, featured guest post of a three-part series from Alessandra Torres, Content Manager at Consultwebs.
In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for any business, including law firms. With more and more clients turning to the internet to find legal services, it’s essential that law firms have a comprehensive online marketing strategy in place to attract new clients and build trust with potential clients.
In this post, we’ll take a look at the four key components of a successful law firm marketing strategy: online presence, branding, earning trust, and measuring success or failure. We’ll explore each of these areas and provide practical tips and advice on how to implement them effectively.
It’s no longer enough to simply employ one strategy, such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization)—legal marketing needs to use a multi-pronged approach to build an online presence. To boost the visibility of your firm and showcase it online, you need a legal marketing strategy that covers all the basics.
Whether you’re a solo practitioner or a large law firm, this post will give you the tools and knowledge you need to create a winning online marketing strategy for your law firm.
7 Legal Marketing Essentials
One of the most important components of a successful law firm’s marketing strategy is having a strong online presence. This includes having a professional website that is easy to navigate, informative, and mobile-friendly. A website is often the first point of contact for potential clients, so it’s essential that it makes a good first impression. Additionally, having a social media presence on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can also help to build your law firm’s online presence. As mentioned above, an effective digital legal marketing strategy does not consist of just a single approach.
There are many proven benefits of a strong online presence for law firms, including:
● More conversions (i.e., inquiries, cases)
● Higher visibility
● Lower cost per case
● Better organic traffic
Here are 7 things you need to focus on in your legal marketing plan.
1. Create a Professional Website
First things first—you need a website. This is the base of your operations and the foundation of your online presence and legal marketing strategy. A robust website includes everything potential clients need to know.
Here are some features of a high-quality website:
● Easy to navigate with clear sections, simple text, and user-friendly navigation.
● Detailed information is presented in a way that’s easy to read.
● SEO-optimized content.
● Visually appealing.
● Engaging videos, blog posts, or other content that is appealing to your audience.
● Clear contact information for people who want to get in touch with you.
For some inspiration, you can check out some of the best law firm websites. Developing an excellent website requires an investment—don’t skimp on this part of legal marketing. If you do, you may get left behind, as more firms are investing in their websites in recent years.
2. Engaging in Regular Content Creation
Another way to optimize your online presence is to include content creation as part of your legal marketing strategy.
Content creation includes things like:
● Photo and video content
● Written content like blogs or articles
● Social media content
● Whitepapers or reports
● Webinars or training
By creating content about your law firm and its services, you boost your online presence. It helps people find your firm more easily while providing valuable content to potential clients.
3. Prioritizing Local SEO
If you want more clients, you need to be visible online. The best way to increase brand visibility locally is through local SEO.
A robust law firm SEO strategy helps your business rank high on search engines like Google. When potential clients search for keywords like, “law firms near me” or “best law firm in [city],” you’ll want your business to show up.
While most SEO efforts are focused on Google (as it has the largest market share), it’s also important to optimize your content for other search engines like Reddit, YouTube, Quora, Bing, and many others.
Why is prioritizing Local SEO the right move? Finding areas near your firm reduces competition, doing local SEO also uses Google’s algorithm to your advantage, because it takes search proximity into account when delivering its results.This improves a law firm’s chances of appearing on local (“near me”) searches done by potential clients.
4. Optimizing Your Google Business Profile
A strong Google Business Profile, GBP, is key to your legal marketing strategy. This is what pops up on Google when people search for law firms in their area. Strong SEO helps your profile rank higher and become visible.
Reasons to focus on your GBP account include:
● Boosts general online visibility
● Makes your firm appear in Google Maps
● Helps you build a positive reputation with customer reviews
● Gives you data-driven insights about how people find you online
● Supports communication with potential clients
5. Managing Your Social Media Accounts
Social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok can all be part of an effective legal marketing strategy.
While some people may not associate law firms with these types of platforms, they’re the perfect place to find potential clients. Why? Because that’s where people spend time online! Your clients are on social media, so you should be, too.
You can check out our guide to taking advantage of the legal TikTok market to get started or review our social media guide for law firms.
6. Using Directories and Online Citations
Another online spot you want to be found is in legal directories and online citations. These are compilations of law firms organized by location, type of law practice, or other factors.
Some common legal directories include:
● NOLO
● Justia
Directories and citations may also be attached to law schools or legal professional societies. In short, they’re the place to go to find a lawyer.
You should optimize your online presence by ensuring you are listed on any relevant online directory or citation. Make it part of your legal marketing strategy to regularly update and review the content for accuracy so that clients can find you easily.
7. Trying Paid Marketing Strategies
SEO focuses on long-term sales activation and is a highly effective way to boost your company’s visibility, but sometimes you need just a little bit more.
To boost your short-term sales activation, you’ll want to focus on an Agile Advertising strategy in which an agency reallocates your digital advertising dollars where data suggest they will be best spent. For example, through different paid advertising options like Google Ads or LSAs, you can give your firm that immediate boost.
Many firms are diversifying their marketing efforts with both SEO and Agile digital advertising and finding more success.
Takeaway
These seven areas are fundamental to a successful legal marketing strategy. Though we’re just scratching the surface here, each one should be carefully considered and included in your legal marketing plan.
Guest Author Bio
As a Content Manager in Consultwebs’ Marketing Department, Alessandra Torres is responsible for producing engaging and clear text across all channels. She graduated from Hogeschool Utrecht with a bachelor’s degree in Communications and Media. She has worked as a marketing intern as well as a marketing consultant, and a content creator. When it comes to why Consultwebs is the best, she says, “Consultwebs knows the digital marketing game. Moreover, the team is driven, passionate, and forward-thinking.”