If you want your law firm to stand out in a competitive industry, you’re going to have to have more than just top-notch legal services.
Your firm also has to be visible, credible, trustworthy, and in possession of that very special something that draws the potential clients to your doors.
And to achieve all of that, it’s not enough to just market yourself, you’ve got to have the right marketing strategies.
So, whether you’re a solo practitioner just starting out or part of a larger firm looking to expand its client base, today’s blog is what you need to start making your mark in the legal landscape.
We’re bringing you 9 proven law firm marketing plans for you to try to start building up your reputation and bringing in the client base you need!
Why is it so Important to Choose the Right Law Firm Marketing Strategy?
Selecting the right legal marketing strategy is of utmost importance for law firms like yours.
The legal industry is known for being intensely competitive and choosing the right strategy is the only way to get your brand out there and bring clients to your door.
In order to be successful, your marketing strategy needs to do a few things:
- It needs to increase your visibility so that potential clients can find you to connect.
- It needs to target the right audience so that the clients you attract are the ones in need of services in your areas of expertise.
- It needs to build up a sense of trust and credibility around your brand.
- It needs to set you apart from your competition and clearly communicate what makes your firm both unique and a better choice than your competitors.
By choosing the right marketing strategies that meet these needs, you can dramatically increase your chances of reaching the right clients and building up a strong reputation in your industry!
9 Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Law Firm
So … which is the right strategy for you?
No matter what kind of law you practice, the seven strategies outlined below are designed to help boost your visibility, build up community trust in your firm, and help you meet your business goals.
Let’s dive in now.
1. Lay a Solid Foundation
Before you can start marketing any kind of services, it’s essential to understand your competition, your client base, and the services they need from your firm.
Here are some steps your marketing team can take to make sure you’re always resonating with your target audience!
Build Out User Personas
First, you need to understand who your ideal clients are and what kind of services they’re seeking.
The key to this is building up detailed and accurate user personas.
A user persona is a detailed description of a fictional representative of your target audience, the type of someone who would be very interested in the services you’re providing.
So, take a look at what you have to offer and ask yourself the following questions:
- What specific legal services is your user persona seeking? (Keep in mind, you should create more than 1 persona!)
- What is the typical age, gender, occupation, and location of your clients?
- What is motivating them to seek out legal services?
- What would they need to hear/see/experience to trust your law firm with their case?
- How would they go about searching for legal services in the first place?
Be detailed! And once your marketing team has created several personas for each of the services you offer, you’ll be better able to fine-tune your messaging to what your clients need to hear.
Those potential clients are looking for services fast and by having messaging that prioritizes their needs and concerns you can show them that your firm understands and is ready to help.
Market Research and Competitor Analysis
Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to do some market research and see what your competitors are doing.
Analyze your competitor’s strategies and any presence they have online, including their website, their socials, and their email marketing. Are they doing anything that’s working that you need to be doing as well? Are they doing anything that’s not working that you can do better?
You should also take a look at their online reviews to see if you can uncover any unmet customer needs, suggestions on how to improve, or any niche types of under-served services that your brand can capitalize on!
2. Build a Strong Online Presence
For most people who suddenly find themselves in need of legal services, the search for a lawyer begins online.
This is why your brand needs a strong online presence to ensure that your law firm is among the top search results for the type of services your potential clients are Googling.
Here are some suggestions on how to beef up your digital presence:
Have a User-Friendly Website
The first stop for many potential clients is going to be your website.
Hire a professional web developer to make sure that your website is professional-looking, visually appealing, easy to navigate, and has all of your content and contact information front and center where it’s easy to find.
It also must load quickly and be full of informative content to keep your potential client’s attention and let them know that your firm is the real deal and the right solution to their legal needs.
Your website is also an excellent place for trust signals like positive customer reviews and case studies to let your clients know that you are credible and trustworthy so be sure to utilize those where they fit.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A more visible website is the key to more visitors and clients.
To climb higher in search engine rankings, make sure that your website and other online content is optimized for both law firm SEO and local SEO.
Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush and research trending keywords that align with words and phrases that your potential clients are searching for when looking for legal services. Then you can take those keywords and sprinkle them through your website and all of the written content it contains, including case studies, services descriptions, blog posts, and more.
We recommend hiring a professional SEO expert to clean up your technical SEO as well.
Technical SEO involves the optimization of your website’s infrastructure and its server to enhance how search engine bots can efficiently crawl, index, and rank your website.
This includes things like your website’s loading speed, it’s mobile-friendliness, ease of navigation, XML sitemaps, backlinks, and security. Doing this will rid your site of anything holding it back and help you rank higher.
Content Marketing
Having valuable and educational content on your website is also a great way to boost your search engine rankings.
Using your keywords through long-form content is a good strategy to help boost your search engine rankings. Law is an often complex subject (and what the average person knows about it is usually gleaned from Law & Order reruns) that requires lots of research. For this reason, blogs, whitepapers, and case studies make invaluable resources for clients wanting to learn more about their legal matters.
If your blogs and other written content are well-written, informative, and helpful, your visitors will refer to them more often, increasing the time spent on your page and indicating to search engine bots that your website is both valuable and authoritative.
Social Media
Even law firms can have a social media presence!
Take advantage of the reach social media gives you to promote your services and engage with potential clients.
It’s also a great platform to share your thought leadership blogs and other informative content. Make sure everything you post is easily shareable so that your followers can like, share, and repost to help engage your followers and boost your online cred.
3. Have a Strong Brand
Building a strong brand is essential for your law firm, just like it is for any other type of business.
In the legal industry, where trust, credibility, and reputation are of vital importance, having a strong and recognizable brand can make all the difference for your success.
Here’s how you can go about building a strong brand around your firm:
Create a Brand Guide and Stick to it
If you haven’t done so already, create a brand guidebook.
This will include everything about your brand from your logo to your colors down to the hex code. It will also contain your core messaging, your slogan, the set of grammar rules you follow, and the tone of voice you use to communicate with your potential clients.
This consistency is key in building up familiarity and recognition and having a recognizable brand is essential for building trust and establishing a reputation in the industry.
If you don’t already have a brand guide, feel free to click that link and we can help you out with that before you get started with your next marketing campaign.
Know Your Value Prop
Knowing what you’re good at and leaning into it is crucial for making your law firm stand out in such a highly competitive market.
If you have a specialized set of skills or a niche, don’t be afraid to highlight those to differentiate yourself in the market and to attract those clients who need that set of specialized skills. Having a set specialty can also help you better serve your clients as your attorneys and staff become more familiar with the process.
So, think about what makes your law firm unique.
What makes your law firm the right choice for your prospective clients over your competitors?
Whatever it may be, lean on those unique selling points and highlight them in your content marketing, your ads, and your messaging.
4. Content Marketing
Content is king for any type of marketing!
And for law firms, your content marketing can be of even greater importance as clients seek out resources to help them understand their legal problems and the kind of advice they should be seeking out.
Consult your user personas to see what kind of content would best resonate and then you can start creating …
Informative and Valuable Legal Content
Law firms can produce invaluable and informative articles that dive deep into intricate legal matters that your ideal customer persona may be facing.
Offer these resources on your website in the form of blog posts, infographics, white papers, FAQs, legal guides, and practice area pages, and share them on social media or in an email marketing campaign (more on that later!).
Content That Establishes Your Expertise
Positioning your firm as a thought leader within your specific legal domain is a great strategy too.
Through content like informative legal articles, law firms can share their expertise, give advice and insights, and analyze legal trends or significant cases your audience is likely to be interested in. This demonstrates both your authority and your credibility in your field!
Comprehensive legal guides can also help to break down the complicated legal process into easier-to-digest steps that your audience (who lacks the legal foundation you have) can better understand, giving them the knowledge they need to confidently make decisions about their legal issue and their future.
Case Studies
Beef up your content marketing with persuasive case studies and other success stories from the clients who have already benefitted from your legal services.
Case studies are particularly effective since they spotlight actual real-life legal challenges faced by your potential client’s peers and show clear-cut examples of your firm’s problem-solving skills and effectiveness.
Having client testimony is also a powerful way to instill trust in your visitors and boost your firm’s stellar reputation, so be sure to gather feedback from satisfied clients for this purpose!
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool not just for communicating but for connecting your firm with your potential and existing clients.
It offers you a means of maintaining relationships, delivering your amazing content, nurturing leads, and building credibility.
The following are techniques for optimizing your email marketing strategies!
Personalized Campaigns
One of the ways to make your email marketing more effective is to segment your email list.
How you do this is up to you and your brand, but common ways to segment email lists are by client interests, needs, behaviors, or legal services required.
By doing this, you can create better-targeted email campaigns that can deliver messaging and content that are much more relevant and interesting to your recipients, making it much more likely they’ll click on your emails to begin with.
Don’t forget to personalize your email subject lines too with things like first names, locations, or occupations for that human touch!
Lead Generation
Your email campaign can be a powerful tool for acquiring new clients.
By making strategic use of lead generation forms, you can collect valuable information from interested visitors, setting the stage for ongoing engagement and further nurturing.
To get those email addresses, consider sweetening the deal with lead magnets like downloadable legal guides, eBooks, white papers, or case studies in exchange for subscriptions on ads and landing pages.
It’s not just about acquiring new clients though! Email campaigns are also great for fostering relationships with your existing client base or partners so that the next time they (or their friends or family!) are in need of legal services or consultations, your firm is the first to come to mind.
Delivering Valuable Content
Nurture existing clients and acquire new ones by sharing your valuable content through your email marketing campaign.
The content you choose to share can include thought pieces, blogs, legal updates, information on changes in the law, tips for dealing with common legal issues, or even invitations to webinars or other events.
Whatever it is, though, be sure that it has value to the audience you’re sending it to and that the frequency at which you’re sending it is in that “just right” sweet spot between too little and too much.
One last thing: Keep your email campaign compliant with legal regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR by always including the required opt-in and opt-out mechanisms.
6. Online Advertising
Online ads are a versatile tool in your marketing arsenal and a very effective way to get your content in front of the right people at the right time.
Here are some tips for an effective online advertising campaign:
Pay-per-click (PPC) Campaigns for Law Firms
PPC campaigns like Google Ads, Bing Ads, and more are extremely effective at driving targeted traffic to your law firm’s website.
By creating eye-catching ads with relevant keywords, you can make sure that your ads appear along with search engine results for your specific legal services where your potential clients are sure to see them.
A standout advantage of PPC advertising is the level of control it provides over budget management, ad placement, and geographical targeting, making it a particularly great resource for amplifying awareness of your brand and getting your ads to the right people.
But your efforts will be no good if your ads don’t take your clients to the right destination. Include a lead form in your ads or have an optimized landing page with a lead form that asks only for the information necessary to improve your conversion rates. This will make sure that your PPC efforts are helping to boost conversions and deliver tangible results for your firm.
Display Ads and Remarketing
Display ads are the type of ads that appear on websites, apps, or social media platforms.
They’re usually made up of a combination of engaging visuals, catchy copy, and multimedia content and are designed to grab your audience’s attention and promote your law firm’s expertise and special services.
Display ads are an excellent way to create brand awareness by placing your firm’s ads on relevant websites or apps where your potential clients are scrolling.
Using display ads as a remarketing strategy is a particularly effective way of reaching out to those visitors who have previously interacted with your firm’s site or landing page without contacting or subscribing to your newsletter by keeping your firm top-of-mind for whenever they are ready to come back!
7. Reputation Management
This is probably the most important strategy that you can implement.
By taking careful watch over your reputation, you can position your brand as an authority and a source of legal services that is credible and trustworthy.
Make no mistake, your potential clients who are seeking legal advice are scouring the Internet, looking for a law firm with good reviews, positive word of mouth, and one that seems credible and trustworthy.
To make sure that your brand is all of those things at very first glance, here’s what you can do:
Manage Online Reviews and Client Testimonials
Online reviews are gold for law firms.
Managing them effectively will involve actively monitoring platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, and any other legal-specific review sites.
If you get a review, respond to it whether it’s positive or negative. This demonstrates your firm’s commitment to satisfaction and also gives you a chance to mend fences with a client who left your offices displeased for any reason.
You want to make sure that your positive reviews outweigh your negative ones, though, so encourage satisfied clients to leave you reviews (offer incentives if need be!) and be sure to engage with anybody who has shared their experiences on social media or any review site!
Encourage Client Feedback
Client feedback can provide some valuable insight into how your law firm can improve its services to better fit your client’s needs.
To encourage this feedback, establish channels for your clients to share any concerns or suggestions they might have so that you can see it instead of their feedback floating off into the vortex of social media where it has no use to you.
Whether it’s reviews on your website or a client feedback survey or Typeform, be sure it’s easily accessible and simple to fill out. If your client leaves feedback that requests a response from you, be sure that someone on your team does so quickly.
It may take some effort and monitoring but trust us on this one! It’s worth it and it all leads to better client retention and more word-of-mouth referrals.
Building Trust and Credibility
Remember, your reputation is built on trust and credibility!
Maintaining a strong online reputation is a continuous process and so is delivering exceptional legal services, upholding ethical standards, and engaging with your community.
Build up trust in your law firm by showcasing your expertise, being involved in your community, and providing valuable content to your clients. This is the very best way to gather positive reviews, more referrals, and a sterling reputation in your community and beyond!
8. Networking and Building Partnerships
Networking and partnerships are invaluable assets in the legal industry.
Building relationships with the right people can open doors and create more opportunities for your firm.
Here are some suggestions to expand your circle and make mutually beneficial partnerships:
Legal Associations and Networking Events
Legal associates provide lawyers with opportunities to connect with peers, share insights, and stay updated on industry trends and any changes in legislation, which keeps your firm in the know and avoids any potentially embarrassing scenarios.
Networking events are also beneficial. Whether local or national, they offer a platform to establish meaningful connections with potential clients, partners, and other legal professionals.
Complementary Businesses
Collaborating with complementary businesses is a strategic marketing tactic for law firms to expand their client base.
A complementary business is a business whose clientele’s needs also align with your services. So, give a stack of your business cards or other contact information to other businesses to hand out to clients who are more likely to be in need of your legal services (and vice versa, it’s a two-way street).
For example, a family law firm could collaborate with financial advisors or therapists. A business law firm could work with accountants or consultants.
These partnerships can lead to mutual referrals and offer clients a solution to their legal needs.
Developing Referral Relationships
Referrals are also a great way to drive new clients.
Building these relationships involves creating a network of professionals like other lawyers, legal consultants, or professionals in related industries who can refer clients to your firm whenever your legal expertise is needed.
This is a two-way street too! Be sure that you’re reciprocating when appropriate so that you and your partners are getting the mutual benefit of more clients and more business!
9. Monitoring Your Campaign for Success
Remember, your success hinges on more than just implementing these strategies. Marketing is no “set and forget it” activity!
It’s going to take continuous monitoring, analysis, and fine-tuning to make sure that your marketing campaigns are delivering the best possible results. Measuring and analyzing your marketing efforts not only enables you to gauge your performance but also provides insights into areas where improvements are needed.
But how do you monitor your campaign effectively?
Below, we’ll list some of our favorite tools and the KPIs that you should be keeping track of to optimize your results!
Best Tools
- Google Analytics: A web analytics tool that provides valuable insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion tracking.
- Marketing Automation Platforms: Tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot can help manage campaigns, track leads, and analyze marketing performance.
- Social Media Analytics: Platforms like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics offer data on the performance of your social media marketing efforts.
- Email Marketing Analytics: Tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact provide data on email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion tracking.
- SEO Tools: Tools like Moz, SEMrush, and Ahrefs can help monitor keyword rankings, track website SEO health, and analyze competitor data.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software: Systems like Salesforce and Zoho CRM allow you to track and analyze customer interactions and lead data.
- Heatmap and User Experience Tools: Tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg help you understand how users interact with your website, including which areas attract the most attention.
- Competitor Analysis Tools: Tools like SpyFu and SimilarWeb can be used to assess your competitors' strategies and performance.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) for Law Firm Marketing
- Website Traffic: Monitors the number of visitors to your website, as well as pageviews and user engagement metrics.
- Conversion Rates: Tracks the percentage of website visitors who take desired actions, such as filling out contact forms or making inquiries.
- Lead Generation: Measures the number and quality of leads generated through various marketing channels.
- Return on Investment (ROI): Assesses the profitability of your marketing campaigns by comparing the costs to the revenue generated.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Calculates the cost of acquiring a new client through marketing efforts.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Evaluates the effectiveness of online ads and email campaigns by measuring the CTR.
- Social Media Engagement: Monitor likes, shares, comments, and follower growth on social media platforms.
- Email Marketing Performance: Evaluates open rates, click-through rates, and email conversion rates.
- Search Engine Rankings: Tracks keyword rankings on search engines to assess your SEO performance.
- Client Retention Rate: Measures the number of existing clients who continue to engage with your services.
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Designity: Guilty of Being Your Ideal Marketing Partner
If these strategies sound like something that could benefit your firm, then that’s great!
We’re glad we could help!
But, as with all things, implementing a marketing strategy and having consistent and high-quality content is a difficult thing to get done, especially for small law firms with smaller marketing budgets or those with heavy caseloads and no in-house creative or marketing team to help them get it done.
There’s no reason that lack of manpower or creative skill sets should hold your law firm back, however.
Choosing Designity as your marketing partner gives you access to a talent pool made up of the top 3% of US-based creative talent, including graphic designers to create eye-catching ads, copywriters to write blog posts, white papers, and case studies, and social media experts who can expand your followers and strengthen your online presence.
Designity clients also have a designated Creative Director on their team, an experienced design and marketing expert who acts as your project manager and single point of contact throughout your journey.
A partnership with Designity means you get to focus on the client work you need to and let your Creative Director handle every other aspect of your marketing strategies. Just tell us your goals, give us direction, and your CD will handle everything else from sourcing the perfect video editors, animators, writers, and designers for your marketing projects to building out timelines and scheduling the order your projects get completed.
Have a look at our portfolio to see how we’ve been able to help other law firms just like yours to boost their online presence, reach more clients, and grow their business.
And when you’re done looking, why not book your demo call today?
It takes just a few minutes and then you’re free to start your two-week, no-obligation trial. If we’re not the marketing partner your firm has been dreaming of, then cancel any time during your trial without owing us a thing.
What have you got to lose?
Book your demo call today.
We can’t wait to meet you.
