With the correct approach, law firms can quickly create and execute an effective marketing strategy, regardless of what legal services they provide.
Follow the steps listed below, and you will have a solid foundation to work from to help increase your law firm’s brand awareness through Google Search.
Establish a Marketing Budget
Before anything else, you must establish how much money you have in your marketing budget. To understand how much you will need to contribute toward marketing strategies, consider your goals and estimate the cost of reaching them.
Calculate how many legal cases you will need to capture each year in order to hit those goals. This figure will vary depending on your rates and practice area.
Here are some other vital aspects to consider:
- Have you just launched your law firm?
- How competitive is the space in your practice area?
- Have you considered the cost of marketing technology, such as SEO, social media, and email marketing tools?
SEO Optimize Your Website
The next thing to consider is how SEO optimized your law firm website is. If you have built a website to promote your law practice, but it isn’t showing up in any of the relevant keyword searches on Google, how are clients meant to discover you?
It is crucial that your law firm SEO follows the necessary SEO practices.
Here are some of the basics for you to consider for your law firm website:
- Your website should be well-designed and full of high-quality content.
- Your content should target long-tail keywords.
- Set up a Google Business listing.
- Images must load quickly.
- Ensure that there are no broken links to pages of content that no longer exist.
Increase Your Social Media Presence
To bring more clients to your law firm via marketing, you need to go to them. Digitally speaking, that means you need to engage with them on social media. Most law firms now have at least one social media outlet they use on a regular basis as part of their digital marketing efforts.
Which social media platform you choose will depend on what you feel best suits your practice areas, demographic, and brand image. For example, if you are targeting a younger audience, you might consider social media marketing on TikTok or Instagram.
Handle Online Reviews Quickly and Effectively
You might already be inundated with client reviews, or maybe you are just starting to see them come through. Whatever the case, managing reviews is essential.
Recent reports noticed that the vast majority of consumers search for other client reviews before selecting a law firm to partner with.
A couple of negative reviews won’t make a dent, but more than a couple will start to turn potential clients off the idea of working with your law firm and harm your marketing strategy.
To get more positive reviews, ask for one after closing each case, especially from clients who were very happy with your service.
And most importantly, don’t ignore negative reviews! Responding in a neutral manner to negative reviews shows potential clients that you care about receiving all feedback and are willing to use feedback as an opportunity for improvement.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a fantastic way to build your brand reputation and show website visitors just how knowledgeable you are about your chosen practice areas.
Content offers you a chance to answer questions potential clients might have and establish a relationship with them, making them much more likely to choose your law firm over your competitors. Strong content can also showcase your overall knowledge, making you the expert in the eyes of visitors and Google!
When developing your law firm’s blog, focus on legal-related evergreen content, where the content has a clear direction and offers clients a unique and insightful take on the topic in question. Evergreen content is important because it’s continually relevant and stays “fresh” for visitors over a long period of time.
Know Your Audience
Establishing what your target audience looks like is essential for developing content they deem valuable and insightful and ensures a much better engagement rate.
If you already know the average age or demographic of your audience, consider how that information can be used to influence the type of content you create and what topics you cover. You can find a lot of this information by reviewing past clients and looking for correlations in their demographics.
Every piece of content you create must try to answer questions that your potential clients have. They must be the focal point of all content creation.
