INSIGHTS
Top 10 inbound marketing tips for lawyers
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Inbound marketing for law firms
Inbound marketing offers a quick and cost-effective way to generate new business enquiries for law firms. Unlike traditional ‘outbound’ marketing (such as cold calling and adverts in the printed media), inbound marketing allows clients to find you, when they need you.
Below, we have provided some targeted tips for lawyers which will hopefully help you to maximise your time and resources.
Specialise in a particular area of law
Establish yourself as a thought leader in one particular area and make sure existing and new clients know that you are focused on this area by promoting your expertise on your website, online platforms, and corporate promotional materials.
Ranking as a leading lawyer for your particular specialism in the main legal directories and getting nominated in specialist categories at relevant awards can also boost your authority.
You may think that this may not work for B2B services however, it can offer the greatest opportunity. In comparison with some of the more retail areas such as personal injury or family law, corporate legal services in terms of online competition is in its infancy.
Don't forget your existing clients
Before going out and targeting new clients, don’t forget your low-hanging fruit: your existing clients! These are the people who already know you, trust you, send you work and pay you. It’s important to work at getting to know them better in order to see where else you can add value to the relationship.
REMEMBER: Positioning yourself as an indispensable business advisor to your existing clients is a sure fire way to generate more instructions.
Touching base with your clients semi-regularly is an easy and cost-effective way to generate new instructions from within your existing client base. This type of activity, most often carried out in the format of email marketing, does require an up-to-date list of client contact details.
With this list, go that one step further and segment your audience into distinct client personas to ensure that you are delivering content that is relevant to them.
Create an effective law firm website
Whether you are setting up a new practice or a part of a long established law firm, your website is crucial to the success of your marketing efforts. If properly developed and supported, your website will help to establish your key stakeholders as thought leaders and experts amongst existing and prospective clients.
Your site should really showcase what you do, clearly stating your specialty and your niche. If you offer several different services within your type of law, outline them very clearly. For further information on what makes an effective law firm website, check out our website design service here.
Use content to build your credibility
If you want to generate more profitable business and establish yourself as an authority in a particular area of service, you need to write about it. Effective content marketing helps attract visitors to your site, provides answers to the questions your prospective clients’ are asking and helps build trust from the outset.
It’s important that you fully leverage the business generating potential of the content you produce. One way of doing so is to develop a content plan that considers all the different ways you can repurpose and redistribute what you write.
For example, bullet points from an article can be expanded upon and repurposed for a new landing page or blog.
For maximum exposure, don’t forget to share your articles across all of your online platforms. Cross-posting will expose your work to a broader audience and increase its sharing potential.
TIP
Make it easy as possible for those who do use social media to share content by including social sharing buttons throughout your website.
Don't be afraid to provide free information
For example, write a guide or white paper on your area of expertise and make it available on your website and to all your connections on LinkedIn. This type of activity helps you establish a position of thought leadership and engage with potential instructing agents.
Build a social media presence
With many of the law firms we visit, there is still often a feeling that social media isn’t for them. Perhaps it’s too informal, or too risky, or lacking in a viable target audience.
The power of social media is immense and, when harnessed correctly, can be a great tool to help grow your law firm in the following ways:
- Brand awareness and thought leadership
- Increased search engine rankings for your website by virtue of social media bookmarking
- Getting content from your website in front of a targeted, valuable audience
- Networking with thought leaders in your field
- Development of new business relationships
- Increasing website visits with warm leads
- Generation of new business for your law firm
The need for law firms to be active on social media is prevalent and something we can help you with. Get in touch with our expert team if you need help with your law firm’s social media.
Establish trust through reviews
We all check the web for reviews of products, restaurants, hotels and all kinds of other businesses. As legal services are increasingly sought online, why shouldn’t this apply to lawyers too? Ensure that your firm stands out in both organic and paid search results through the use of review sites which allow your rating to be included in SERPs.
It’s also a good idea to set up your Google My Business listing to take advantage of Google Maps and Google reviews. When people search for a lawyer online, your local Google directory listing will link to public reviews of your practice. It makes sense to ask happy clients if they would mind reviewing you.
Another way to gain reviews is to have a draft email ready to send to clients with simple instructions as to how they can complete this simple task – try our free review request email template.
Suggested reading: Master the Art of Online Reviews: How Law Firms Can Boost Their Reputation.
Where to start with your law firm marketing?
Cleansing your client databases, updating your website, building a presence on social media, organising events – a law firm marketer’s day is never dull and their task list never-ending. If just starting out, our advice would be to pick one thing to get right, and do it really well. Then, move on to the next thing.
For example, make sure your website ticks all the right boxes before embarking on a social media campaign. Understand what it is you are trying to achieve through your marketing activities, establish KPIs, and work back from there.
If it's not measurable, don't do it
The beauty of online marketing is that it is immediate, transparent and trackable. For example, each month we are able to tell our clients how many new enquiries their website has generated for them, conversion rate, cost per enquiry etc (check out our case studies).
Traditional offline marketing activities are difficult to point to a definite positive return on investment (ROI), mainly because they have no way of monitoring success.
Our Director of Production, Dave, says:
“It’s a truism that what gets measured gets managed. A joined-up online business generation strategy is not only more affordable than ‘traditional’ marketing activity, it’s much more transparent. A good reporting process is a way of measuring success, and a valuable decision-making tool for your business.
Making sure that enquiries are logged, tracked and appropriately attributed to their source gives you the data to make strategic business decisions.”
You can learn more about managing and tracking leads here.
Hire marketing professionals (preferably with niche legal expertise)
When your day job involves managing increasingly challenging billable hour targets, spending time on developing a marketing plan may not be possible, or indeed advisable! Speaking with marketing professionals, particularly those who understand the challenges faced by the legal sector, can take some of this responsibility off of your shoulders.
They will also be more knowledgeable about how to go about promoting you and your firm without the need for as much trial and error.
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Grow your online presence
If your online presence isn’t currently contributing to your firm’s bottom line and you want to partner with an agency who is focused on helping your law firm grow, get in touch today by calling us or completing the online enquiry form.