Digital marketing provides a powerful opportunity to connect with potential clients. These days, however, it's not merely a nice-to-have option. It's an absolute necessity for building brand awareness and gaining clients' trust. Without a solid web presence, you'll find it difficult to build meaningful relationships with would-be clients.
There's no denying the importance of digital marketing in the modern legal industry, but online outreach is far from easy. With the wrong approach, you risk wasting your time and money on minimally effective strategies that fail to get clients invested in your practice.
With so many tools and techniques to keep track of, it's easy to see why marketing can feel overwhelming for many attorneys.
Thankfully, you don't need to go it alone. To help, we've compiled a comprehensive list of the main digital marketing pain points that most lawyers encounter. Along the way, you'll find solutions to these common issues, as well as general suggestions to attract more leads and get them to convert.
Unimpressive Search Engine Results
Jockeying for position on Google's search engine results page (SERP) can be tough. Most attorneys are well aware that the top spot on this page is highly coveted. This ranking will attract the most attention from a vast majority of leads. The lower down your law firm appears on the SERP, the less likely prospective clients are to give your page a passing glance.
Unfortunately, it's tough to translate this inherent understanding of the SERP's supremacy to actual results. A lot goes into Google's current algorithm. Keywords matter, of course. But so do links, and, perhaps most importantly, value-driven content.
To improve search engine rankings, use these crucial strategies:
- Select targeted keywords that reflect the needs and preferences of your top clients.
- Use these keywords not only within content, but also for title tags, headings, and URLs.
- Ensure that your website's content aligns with search terms and answers visitors' main questions.
- Use off-page linking to boost local SEO. Examples might include social media shares, legal directories, or reviews published on other websites.
- Ensure that your website loads quickly and is mobile-friendly.
Limited Following on Social Media
These days, most law firms have some type of presence on social media. Results from American Bar Association (ABA) surveys suggest that LinkedIn is the most popular platform. But it's just one of several that promise to build stronger connections with potential clients.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok could all have a role to play. However, knowing which platforms to use can be a struggle. It's easy for attorneys to spread themselves too thin with various social media accounts that don't actually inspire a strong following.
With social media, as in any area of digital marketing, it's important to understand what this type of outreach can help you accomplish. And which sites are best suited to your unique brand or marketing goals.
This will largely depend on your target clients and your practice area. For example, a solo practice that primarily helps younger clients with DUI charges could be well-positioned to make an impression on TikTok. At the same time, a larger, corporate-oriented firm will have far more success on LinkedIn.
Consistency is also essential. No social media strategy will be effective in the long run if it comes across as haphazard. Rather, the goal should be to build an authentic connection with followers through regular updates and interactions.
Ultimately, social media should drive followers toward your website or email marketing campaign, where they are more likely to build on initial connections. And, hopefully, begin the onboarding process.
Attracting the Right Leads
Perhaps your website traffic looks decent, but you're still not getting visitors to engage. Consider the possibility that you're casting too wide of a net. This can be a tricky balance to strike: strategically branding to attract specific types of visitors without potentially driving away valuable leads.
This often comes down to properly selecting and displaying your law firm's practice areas. Clients may feel more confident when working with law firms that focus on a few specific types of cases. Often, this goes beyond standard categories such as personal injury or criminal defense to incorporate subcategories like slip-and-fall or DUI defense.
Getting Qualified Leads to Convert
There are no guarantees that you'll see a strong new clientele when leads provide contact information. Many of the most promising leads fail to take the next crucial step in the marketing funnel: signing up for an in-person consultation and onboarding to become actual, fully-fledged clients.
This problem can have many facets, which will vary based on the practice area and the type of client you hope to attract. Common issues include:
- Your website is visually unappealing or difficult to navigate. If you've observed a high bounce rate on your website, it's possible that its design or content is not appealing to targeted leads. A variety of adjustments may be required to ensure that your website is perceived as authoritative and value-driven.
- Leads aren't completing forms or don't seem willing to provide contact information. If your SEO efforts get visitors to your site but they don't ever take the final step in the marketing funnel, how valuable are these leads? Extra nurturing may be required. When in doubt, entice them to get in touch with help from a lead magnet. Free downloadable content, for example, may encourage them to share contact information.
- Not getting in touch quickly enough over the phone. While email-based nurturing is important, many clients still prefer the personal touch of a traditional conversation over the phone. Unfortunately, staffing concerns keep many practices from providing the immediate phone-based connections that future clients desire. If leads make the effort to call, they expect that practices will answer or respond quickly. And if this expectation isn't met, most will be quick to turn to competing law firms instead.
Keeping Up With Marketing Trends
These days, the digital world moves at lightning speed. Just when you think you've mastered the complications of digital marketing, a new search engine algorithm or a hot new social media platform arrives. This can be disheartening. It may frequently feel as if you're starting at square one.
If there's a silver lining to the constancy of change, it's that new opportunities are always around the corner. If the current status quo of digital marketing isn't quite cutting it, new solutions might provide better outreach or engagement.
Attorneys who learn to embrace — instead of fear — digital developments often find that these changes ultimately bring better results. As long as they're willing to deal with the inherent barrier to entry.
Ultimately, it comes down to strategic selection. Every new tech opportunity must be examined closely to determine whether it will actually boost your marketing strategy. Some new solutions can make a world of difference. But others involve too steep of a learning curve, followed by a minimal return on investment.
Tracking & Making Sense of Confusing Metrics
You've put all the key components of a modern digital marketing strategy into place, and perhaps you're starting to see more leads. Without considerable oversight, however, it's tough to know if you're actually achieving a desirable return on investment.
Tracking metrics should help you discern whether your marketing efforts actually make a difference over time. But like any aspect of digital marketing, this can feel like a lot of effort. Many key performance indicators (KPIs) need to be taken into account, such as:
- Impressions. This metric reveals how often digital content is viewed. It provides a basic benchmark for your law firm's digital reach, as well as feedback regarding your efforts to build brand awareness.
- Engagement. As you strive to get leads actively involved with your law firm, you may look to engagement metrics to show the extent to which people interact online. Common examples include likes and comments on social media.
- Website traffic and bounce rate. If you aim to get more visitors to your website — and keep them there — you'll want to track traffic over time to see if it increases in response to new marketing initiatives. Meanwhile, the bounce rate will reveal whether visitors actually like what they find on your website.
- Conversions. As we've mentioned, lead generation only drives value if those leads actually take the next step toward onboarding. Conversions provide insight into how often leads sign up for your email lists, or otherwise take action to get more involved with your practice.
Thankfully, metrics are built into many marketing solutions. Dedicated marketing services can also help you track a variety of metrics ensuring that you make progress toward your goals of gaining more (and better) leads. Plus, more conversions.
Keep Digital Marketing Stress to a Minimum
Do these pain points look or feel familiar? While these marketing struggles can be difficult to overcome, better leads and conversion rates are well within reach. It simply takes a nuanced marketing strategy to find and appeal to future clients.
There's no need to tackle all this on your own. With the experts from Scorpion in your corner, you can feel confident that a better and more sophisticated web presence is on the horizon. Get in touch today to learn more about our legal marketing services.
