Sooner or later, everyone is going to need legal services. However, for the average client, it must be frustrating and overwhelming to try to sort through the sea of lawyers to find the right one for the job. Searching online just complicates the situation. However, if you are seeking new clients, there are a few tricks you can use to get the exposure you need to reach them. Plus, with the right approach, you can elevate your practice above those of your main competitors. In this article, we will review five of the best marketing tips to push your legal practice into a place where it gets noticed and your client base grows as a result.
1. Stand Out With Three Trending Technologies
There are three technological trends that lawyers can capitalize on instantly. They include:
1. Auto-Responding Functions
Attorneys don’t have the time to sit and monitor the responses they receive from online forms. However, what will make your legal practice stand out immediately is the speed at which you respond to these requests and queries. The fastest way to do this is by utilizing an auto-responder. With this at your disposal, visitors to your website will be impressed that they received a response within minutes of sending the completed form.
2. Provide Mobile Access
The numbers are there. Research conducted by Pew Internet shows that 64% of American adults own a smartphone and that little handheld device gets a lot more action than the average desktop computer these days. It means that to reach this large segment of potential clients, your website has to be accessible from mobile devices. With a mobile-friendly website, visitors can see and use your website with a smartphone or tablet without a problem.
3. Give Something Away
The internet has conditioned people to expect something for nothing. Lawyers can get in on this trend by simply offering something of value in exchange for users providing their contact information. What you give them is up to you, but you could provide a free program, attendance at a webinar, a downloadable white paper, a newsletter, a gift card to a popular online retailer, or whatever. Giving something away will gain you exposure.
2. Show Up Where Client Search
There was a time before the internet took over the world when you could find lawyers in different ways. Clients referred to phone books, an advertising medium, asked friends, neighbors, and family for suggestions. Even coworkers were considered a good source of this kind of information. We all know someone who has had contact with a lawyer at one time or other in their lives. In today’s world, Google is the go-to place and if you expect people to find you online, your website will need some tweaking. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies are what will get traffic moving towards your website. Check out this guide for some SEO tactics you can add yourself, or you can just hire an SEO service to give your website the help it needs to have Google notice it and offer it up as a search result.
3. Consider PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising
PPC is an effective marketing tool where you only pay for the number of times the banner or link gets clicks. Typically, users only click on the ads they intend to investigate further which means traffic that funnels to your website or landing page from PPC is targeted traffic. This type of traffic often leads to conversions and that is what makes PPC so cost-effective. Leads and new clients come from PPC campaigns. However, for this to be useful for a legal practice, it has to be targeted at a demographic-specific to the needs of a particular law firm. For example, lawyers who specialize in small claims should market directly to that type of potential client rather than using a broad brush approach to attract any type of client.
4. Launch A Blog
Blogging may sound like a lot of work, but it does pay serious dividends when you execute it properly. Here’s where digital marketing with blogging will push your legal firm over the edge: it brings you in touch with locals who are likely to use your service. This happens purely from regular blogging about topics relevant to your legal practice. Oh, and by blogging in a conversational tone that makes you sound unlike a lawyer but approachable as a friend with legal know-how. When you publish regular blogs that offer solid solutions and advice, you become a local authority that visitors to your website will find to be trustworthy and legitimate. When the time comes, followers will automatically go to you when they require legal services based on the relationship you have built with them online.
5. Cross-Promote On Other Platforms
The best way to create full penetration of the internet is to use all the social media platforms you can manage effectively. These different platforms are populated by people looking for your services and may not find them any other way online if you don’t reach out and establish a presence in places other than with a website. For example, having a Google My Business Page is important. But so is having profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more. When you use these other social media channels, you can cross-promote your newest blog post, giveaway, free white paper, webinar, and so much more. These sources all work together to pull in extra traffic and introduce your services to potential clients.
Final Thoughts
Technology gives lawyers a valuable tool to reach new clients because, in today’s competitive, high-tech world, traditional means are no longer as effective as they once were. To be successful with current marketing tools, it is important to know which ones are best and how they should be used. The five marketing tips noted above will give you a good jump on your competition and bring you exposure that would not otherwise be realized without employing them. For your law firm to dominate the local market, you have to turn to technology to get the message out to potential clients in a way that gets noticed and reaches the places you’re desired demographic spends time online. By doing this, your client base will increase and your legal services will be in greater demand than before.
