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Digital Marketing for Law Firms — 11 Strategies Connecting You to Perfect Prospects

By Liam Griffin 30 January, 2023, 10 mins read

The old days of clients lining up in front of the door because of your stellar reputation are gone. Today’s law firm marketing blueprint is all about Google ads, SEO, and strategic digital tactics. 

It’s not enough to excel in your profession. You also have to excel in the digital space: a space that’s only going to become more crowded as Millenials and Gen Z attorneys, with their innate understanding of the web, carve out their piece of the pie.

Fortunately, online marketing for law firms is much easier to understand than your average legal brief. And today, Australia’s #1-rated marketing agency – Megaphone – is here to help you master online marketing faster. 

Read on to learn 11 important digital marketing strategies for law firms. We’ll cover Pay-Per-Click advertising, content, and modern websites. We’ll also cover a specific, old-school tactic that delivers an average of $42 for every $1 invested. 

Let’s start with…

1. Optimising Your Website for Conversions

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Your website is where all the magic happens. It’s where people visit your firm before becoming a lead, before giving you their business, or before leaving to go to a competitor.

This is why the #1 tip for digital marketing in law is to create a website designed to convert. Since law firm services are usually a big decision, we suggest setting lead generation – not immediate sales – as your key goal. 

One thing you should do is create landing pages. Consider the services your largest client groups want and create personalised landing pages around them. Add calls to action, persuasive headlines, and – of course – buttons. 

Don’t ignore theUser Experience (UX) either. You need a website that loads quickly, navigates easily, and feels good for mobile users. Over 62% of website traffic now comes from smartphones, so modern websites need to be mobile-first. 

An excellent website has an uncluttered layout, easy navigation, and text that’s easy to read on tablets and smartphones. It also has landing pages you can drive traffic to in order to maximise conversions. 

2. Paid Ads for Law Firms

Paid ads on Search or Social platforms – Facebook, TikTok, Google – let you buy traffic. More specifically, they help you get traffic in one of two ways: 

  1. Intent-based targeting, i.e. targeting users based on what they’re doing right now. This is what Google offers. Someone is looking for “best lawyer in Melbourne”, and you can target them based on this intent. 
  2. Interest-based targeting, i.e. targeting users based on interests and past activity. This is what most Social platforms offer. You can target someone interested in law services based on their Social and web activity. 

You can read our in-depth guide on paid ads here. But the main features of quality ads are…

  1. A strong offer
  2. Benefit-driven copywriting
  3. Quality visuals (for social media)
  4. Targeting set to the right audience
  5. Bidding that’s profitable for you

Once your ads are live, use A/B split testing to find combinations of ads and landing pages that perform best. Double down on these and iterate until you find a paid ad setup that works for you. 

3. Produce Blogs & Videos

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Remember that people are searching for information because they have a problem. Presenting the best educational material about their pain point in an engaging way allows you to display your expertise and winning personality.

Yes; PPC ads get people to your website. But once someone is on your website, it’s your content that becomes front and centre of your marketing. It’s the primary way for prospects to learn about your company and offer. 

There are two main ways to create and deliver content. One is through video. The other is through blog posts and/or articles. 

If budget permits, we suggest you use both. Videos are easy to consume and can be incorporated into email campaigns, your YouTube and Social channels, etc. Blog posts help generate organic traffic on Google, and are easy for B2B customers to read at work. 

Remember: today, it doesn’t take much to repurpose content. A blog post is easy to turn into a video script and vice versa. Take a video, transcribe it with a service like Rev, and edit it for your article. Now you’ve got two media types you can share! 

(Some sites even offer video and text versions on landing pages and blog posts. That way, consumers can choose their favourite medium.)

Protip: use a condensed version of your transcriptions for YouTube video descriptions. The short version makes your post more discoverable and can double as a social media post.

4. Get Found on Google

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Your dream customers are looking for you on Google. SEO can put you in front of these people by helping you rank on the search engine. 

Add a sentence here that explains SEO for dummies.

The two main types of SEO that benefit law firms are Local SEO and classic SEO

Local SEO means increasing visibility for local Google users. It puts you on Google Maps and gives you ranks for phrases like “law firms near me”. It’s your best choice if your main target audience is located in your area. 

Classic SEO, or just SEO, means increasing visibility for specific queries. For example, you can rank #1 for “divorce law” in Australia. It won’t matter where users are; they’ll see your page in their search results anyway. 

Classic SEO is best when you’re focusing on a specific service, or specific keywords. Local SEO is best if you want to be seen by local prospects. 

Which one should you focus on? In short, both.

To rank highly and get your target audience on your site, you need: 

  1. Content – blog posts, videos, landing pages.
  2. Off-page signals – media mentions, backlinks.
  3. Technical SEO – page speed, quality UX design.

Local SEO also involves other things, like Google My Business listings and local media mentions and backlinks. 

Provided you do things right, your people will find you on Google and convert on your optimised website (see point #1)! 

5. Create a Marketing Calendar

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Marketers always need new creatives. Every one of your ads, blog posts, videos, and events needs marketing collateral: emails, images, video scripts, and more. 

Producing these creatives once isn’t enough. You need to keep producing them over and over again to power your marketing. 

To make sure your marketing campaigns and assets are in sync, you want a marketing calendar. This calendar should include, on a basic level…

  1. Marketing campaigns across SEO, PPC, Social, etc.
  2. Marketing creative used in each campaign (such as video ads, organic posts, or email copy).
  3. Deadlines and progress boxes for each piece of content.

This way, you’ll never be caught wondering what to publish when you’ve planned months ahead. You will always be able to deliver the best content to the right channel at the optimum time.

A specific subset of the marketing calendar is the Content Calendar. Your content calendar coordinates the complex web of content creators, platforms, and marketers you need to use to maximise ad budget return on investment (ROI).

6. 42x Your Returns With Email Marketing

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Email marketing is the single most profitable marketing channel, with an average ROI of 42x. It works exceptionally well in law firm marketing. The main reason is that customers need a while to make decisions – and emails keep you top-of-mind as you do that. 

Emails give visitors an opportunity to get some of the in-depth legal information they’re searching the internet for – from you. And by offering an ebook or legal report on a topic pertinent to one of your core services, you position yourself as the go-to expert in your niche. 

Each email in your campaign should offer more information and take prospects deeper into your sales funnel. Once you’ve proven your domain expertise and won some interest, you can market or sell to your leads to seal the deal. 

7. Social Media Ads for Lawyers

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There’s a stereotype that social media is too low-brow and basic for lawyers. We beg to differ. Social media marketing, especially ads, can be hugely successful for lawyers. Social campaigns can… 

  1. Build brand awareness.
  2. Assist with lead generation. 
  3. Assist with lead nurturing.
  4. Establish thought leadership – make you appear as experts in the field.
  5. Improving SEO.

We specifically recommend advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. These Social platforms are popular with consumers, but also with professionals socialising. You can find your clientele there, and returns on ad spend can supass 10x.. 

And if you do your paid ads just right, you can…

  1. Immediately convert visitors into customers
  2. Keep retargeting people who’ve engaged with you using Meta Pixel

In terms of specific social networks…

  • Facebook can be good for family law as well as estate planning. 
  • LinkedIn works well for connecting with young professionals and businesses.
  • Instagram is perfect for visual ads: images and videos.
  • YouTube is excellent for longer ads.
  • TikTok is perfect for targeting younger audiences, however, can also connect with older viewers. 

8. Make Local Community Appearances

A personal appearance at a local event can multiply your online marketing results. People will see you and engage with your website and content: social media posts, press releases, emails, etc… 

This way, you can squeeze every drop of revenue out of these appearances. This is a smart way to deepen relationships with existing clients and find opportunities to spread your brand message while making new connections. Just make sure you have your online presence set up, so you can direct people you meet with business cards or QR codes.

9. Why Do Law Firms Need Social Media

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What would be the consequences of entering litigation without a plan?

Pretty disastrous. You wouldn’t know what to do, you’d be unprepared for the other side’s action plan, and you’d likely lose your case. 

The same is true with marketing. You need a plan for turning your time and resources into measurable results. It’s important that this plan helps you reach your high-level strategic goals, on time and on budget – and consistently. 

A good marketing plan contains:

  1. Marketing goals and budget
  2. An analysis of your competition’s marketing efforts
  3. Target market profiles for each of your core services
  4. The channels and tactics you’ll use to reach each target audience
  5. Your timeline in a content calendar

10. Analyse and Iterate

How will you know which of your marketing efforts are working?

How will you know which marketing channels and campaigns are giving you the best returns for your limited resources?

These are important questions. You’ve got to have a measuring stick for your marketing results and tactics. This way, you always know what’s working and what isn’t; what to double down on and what to cut back on. 

This is where analytics and iteration come in. 

Analytics – metrics and statistics – tell you how you’re doing. They include total website visitor numbers, lead conversion rates, and more. 

Looking at your metrics lets you know exactly what’s working at any given moment. This helps start, stop, and prioritise marketing initiatives. 

After you’ve analysed your data, it’s time to iterate. This means testing other marketing methods – new ad creative, new channels, new landing pages – to see if they can beat what you have now. 

Over time, iterating based on data helps you find law firm marketing methods that deliver outstanding results. This is how you create a digital marketing mix that works for your company over time. 

The Most Important Thing to Consider

Now you know how to market your law firm. Follow the tips on this page to see articles with more in-depth information. 

Want to accelerate your results?

Talk to Megaphone Marketing directly. We’ll offer you a free strategy session, worth $1,200. By the end of your session, you’ll know exactly which steps to take next in order to grow your practice. 

If we find that we’re a great fit and can help get you more clients, we’ll throw in $600 of free Google Ad credits to get you started on the right foot. 

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