The Top 3 Digital Marketing Strategies Your Law Firm Needs To Master

We live in a technology-driven world. This means over 90% of your potential clients will begin their search for an attorney online. If you’re not utilizing digital marketing, your law firm is being left behind. Digital marketing, not your forte? Don’t panic—this article will take you through the top three strategies your law firm needs to succeed in the digital world.

An effective digital marketing strategy focuses on numerous factors, including quality-driven content, engaging social media campaigns, and an attractive website. Before we dive into each strategy, let’s review what is meant by digital marketing.

What is Digital Marketing for Law Firms?

Digital marketing is also known as online marketing and internet advertising. The shift in technology, enabling consumers to have the internet at their fingertips 24/7, has impacted how people interact with businesses. Like any other type of marketing, digital marketing is a way to connect with and influence your potential clients. Any online marketing is considered a digital marketing strategy. Primary examples include social media marketing, blogging, email marketing, and pay-per-click advertising.

Any marketing tool you use online can be a digital marketing asset. Some you may already have at your disposal include:

  • Your website
  • Branded assets such as your logo
  • Written content including blogs and client testimonials
  • Video and imagery content
  • Social media pages

Strategy #1: You Website

No business can survive in today’s world without a website. In fact, it’s not enough to have a website—you must have an exceptional website. When a client is looking for a firm to provide a service, they will start by reviewing your website. As you know, first impressions are everything, and most visitors to your site will judge your firm’s quality by the appearance of your website.

How unfair! Clearly these people haven’t heard the phrase ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover.’ Nevertheless, if visitors don’t like what they see in mere seconds mind you, they will move on to the next firm on their search engine list.

So how do you make a great first impression? Speed. If your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds, you’ll immediately lose nearly half of your visitors. Next, the design of your website needs to be appealing to draw in clients. Once you’ve got their attention, your site needs to be responsive and user-friendly. This means providing quick answers to the most frequently asked questions starting with “Who are you? Where are you? How can you help me?

If your website is not readily providing potential clients with the information they seek, your visitors will simply bounce to the next attorney listing.

Strategy #2: Social Media

Your social media presence is just as crucial in driving clients to your firm. With so many different platforms out there, where should you focus your time? LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. When utilizing social media, it’s essential to use consistent branding when it comes to taglines, photos, contact information, etc. This is vital for optimization across all of your digital marketing efforts.

As a social media platform, LinkedIn is a target-rich environment for lawyers and law firms. LinkedIn is a must for your firm not only because it takes less time to stay engaged than Facebook and Twitter, it’s an ideal place to drum up professional business. To start, you need to create a strong profile. Think of LinkedIn as your digital business card. To be successful on LinkedIn, you’ll need to connect with colleagues and clients, publish content regularly, build relationships by sharing content, join networking groups, and participate in conversations.

Referrals are a significant part of legal business. As a service-based business, lawyers need to be where perspective clients browse, and that’s Facebook. Not only does Facebook have an extensive and diverse user base, more than 1.4 billion users are active every day! Having a basic Facebook page will enable you to build trust among clients through engagement, demonstrate your expertise, provide live-chat access through Messenger, and run targeted ads.

When skillfully managed, Twitter can be a powerful tool for gathering vital information insights about potential clients. One of the benefits of using Twitter is the limited character count, which forces you to write succinctly and to get to the point. Twitter is an ideal platform for networking, and it allows you to position your firm as an authoritative resource providing valuable information for your target audience.

Strategy #3: SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of refining your website to rank higher in search engine results. When you type ‘law firm’ in a search engine, say Google or Yahoo, hundreds of websites pop up. SEO is responsible for the order of these sites. The top listed sites will be the most visited. If your site doesn’t show up until page five of someone’s search, chances are slim that you’ll ever be found.

It’s no easy task to get your site to rank in the top results of a search engine. Investing in SEO services will pay off big, as your potential client won’t even find you otherwise. Many elements of your website can be designed and optimized for high-ranking results. Every image, video, tag, blog, etc. must utilize SEO tactics.

When it comes to an effective SEO strategy, it’s not a one and done process. Your site needs frequent reviews to ensure your SEO strategy is doing what it’s intended to do—allow clients to find you. SEO is all about keywords. Someone specializing in SEO can help you determine which keywords your site needs and how to incorporate them into every element of your website.

One critical aspect of successful SEO is high-quality content. Any content creator worth their salt will know it’s not enough to plug keywords into your blogs and website pages. The internet is smart, and continually evolving to sniff out deceptions. The content on your website needs to be useful to readers, but it also needs to be crafted in a way that attracts search engine traffic.

When it comes to digital marketing, you certainly can attempt to go it alone. However, this probably wasn’t a topic covered in law school. Hiring a professional will enable you to focus attention on your area of expertise.

An effective digital marketing strategy is essential in driving clients to your firm. When done correctly, these three strategies will build your credibility and help your firm reach your target audience. Your success depends on your digital presence, welcome to the future of marketing!