Finding clients online begins with the legal marketing strategy.
In addition to working within set goals and a budget, a legal marketing strategy ensures that your online marketing efforts pay off. Identifying a target audience and the problems you solve at the start ensures you’ll reach the right people with the information that will lead them to you and your firm.
Here are the five best ways to find legal clients online:
1. A Great Website
It’s not enough to have a website. To compete online, a website must be great. This means it is easy to navigate, looks nice, and is full of informative, readable content. In addition, a great law firm website ranks high on search engine results (more on this below). Look at your competitors’ websites and you’ll know which are great and which aren’t. Does it look professional? Does it talk only about the law firm and the attorneys without explaining how they help people? Does the content use legalese like “tort law” or “default” without explaining what those terms mean? Check out Is it Time for a Law Firm Website Redesign to help you decide what works — and doesn’t — and if it’s time to transform your website into the legal marketing tool it is meant to be.
2. Embrace Social Media
The time has come to stop saying you don’t have time for social media or you don’t know how to use it. Social media is key to finding clients online. There is so much help available to get you started. From hiring a professional marketer to reading articles online, social media is a scalable marketing activity that brings you directly to your potential clients. We recently shared ways for lawyers to get started on LinkedIn by prioritizing different features on the platform. Because LinkedIn ranks so high on Google searches (we promise, we’ll get to this below), it’s a great place for attorneys to start.
Lawyers who serve consumers have many social media platforms to choose from. For instance, if you focus on trust and estate planning, you’re likely looking to reach adults who are middle age and older. There are plenty of surveys, like this one, that break down the demographics of social media users. A little research will go a long way in helping you find your online audience. (Spoiler alert: Older adults favor YouTube and Facebook.)
3. SEO? SE-Yes!
Search engine optimization, known as SEO, allows a firm’s website and social media profiles to be seen more. It’s a strategy that combines technology and content to get your firm’s website and social media profiles to rank higher when people search on Google and other search engines. For example, if you have a personal injury practice in a city with 25 other personal injury law firms, you want your website and social media profiles to show up first should someone use the Internet to look for an attorney. Using keyword-rich content, like “auto accident injury” or “trip-and-fall lawsuit,” is just one way to boost search engine rankings. Learn more about how SEO can help law firms and attorneys find clients online.
4. Advertising and Paid Posts
SEO focuses on ways to create brand awareness and drive traffic to your website organically —The meaning people looked for something and found you. The other side of that is online advertising, which means you paid for your posts and website to appear higher or more often. While the downside of this approach is cost, the upside is the ability to target Internet users by demographics and interests. Often, the paid ads are pay-per-click, meaning every time someone clicks your paid-for link you are charged. See the pros and cons of organic vs. PPC for law firms in our previous post.
5. Ratings and Reviews
Whether it’s a Super Lawyers or Best Lawyers rating, a local newspaper’s “top attorneys” list, or positive reviews on Avvo, LinkedIn, Yelp, Nextdoor, or Google, having a third party sing your praises is valuable online marketing currency. When given the opportunity to complete a local or legal publication survey, take the time to do it. Once listed, be sure you have a complete profile that describes the services you offer. Beware that you will often be asked to pay for “premium” profiles, which is usually not necessary. Importantly, ask clients for feedback and reviews — potential clients may see a previous client’s positive experience as a deciding factor in who to call to take their case.
Scorpion is here to bring all these online legal marketing strategies together. Let us know how we can help!
