Law firms attempting to grow their client base and online footprint should consider online legal marketing — but marketing tips for law firms are often incomplete and vague.  After all, what does it even mean to create SEO-optimized content?  And how are you supposed to approach social media content creation?  What are the advantages, and what sort of trends should you keep on the lookout for?

We understand that marketing tips for law firms aren’t always clear.  In fact, the entire industry of online legal content marketing can be confusing for law firms that are relatively new to this space.  Contact us here at Walker Advertising to speak to a representative who will help explain what we do and how we can help you grow your firm business through access to qualified leads in your practice areas of choice.

If you’d like to learn more about online legal marketing, and marketing tips for law firms generally, then keep reading!  We’ll cover some of the basics so that you have a better understanding of what you need to do to get started with a comprehensive law firm’s marketing plan.

What is Law Firm Marketing?

Law firm marketing refers to the strategic process of promoting a law firm’s services to attract potential clients and increase revenue. It involves creating a comprehensive marketing plan, setting a budget, and implementing various marketing strategies to reach the target audience effectively. In today’s digital age, law firm marketing often includes a mix of traditional and digital tactics. Digital marketing tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising play a crucial role in enhancing a law firm’s online presence. By leveraging these strategies, law firms can connect with potential clients, showcase their expertise, and ultimately drive more business.

Do Law Firms Need Marketing?

Unless your law firm has established significant client-acquisition funnels through partner firms and other in-person networks, then yes — your law firm could benefit from executing a proper marketing plan, particularly one that involves online legal marketing efforts. Marketing simply puts your content out there for prospective clients to see.

The texture and contours of your law firm marketing will essentially align with whatever content you have put out there for the audience. Thus, you have a great deal of control over the brand and overall image that you’d like to present. Further, you have control over the type of audience you’d like to cultivate with your online legal marketing efforts. A detailed and specific law firm marketing plan is crucial in outlining various aspects of your law firm’s operations to drive growth. This plan should effectively utilize re-marketing strategies, social media engagement, and digital marketing tactics to reach potential clients. It is important to continually update your marketing strategies to adapt to changing client needs and market trends. Additionally, maintaining relationships with past clients is essential for generating leads and referrals, as it enhances word-of-mouth marketing and encourages positive reviews.

It’s all rather simple and straightforward. Write about employment discrimination disputes if you’d like to draw in an audience of employees who have experienced discrimination in the workplace. Write about motorcycle accident lawsuits if you’d like to draw in an audience of motorcyclists who have been injured in an accident and don’t know what to do next.

Setting Up a Law Firm Marketing Strategy

Setting up a law firm marketing strategy involves several key steps to ensure that your efforts are targeted and effective. First, it’s essential to define your law firm’s goals and target audience. This includes identifying the types of clients you want to attract and the specific legal services you want to promote. Next, conduct a thorough competitor analysis to understand the competitive landscape and identify opportunities to differentiate your firm. Developing a unique value proposition (UVP) is crucial; it highlights your firm’s strengths and sets you apart from competitors. Your UVP should clearly communicate why potential clients should choose your firm over others. Once these foundational elements are in place, you can create a detailed marketing plan that outlines the specific tactics and channels you will use to reach your target audience.

Do Law Firms Need Search Engine Optimization?

Yes — if you are pushing written content (i.e., blog or article content) on your law firm’s website, then you do need to implement various SEO best practices if you intend to organically reach your target audience. Despite routine attempts at updating search engine algorithms to make them more attuned to “natural language,” the reality is that search engines still reward keyword optimization and SEO-optimization strategies in general.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be difficult for many law firms to understand. After all, it is often conceived of as a simple “polishing up” of written content to ensure that the meta description and title fit certain character limits and optimization norms, and that there are sufficient keywords stuffed in the content. In truth, however, SEO-optimized content is that which has been strategically chosen to perform — there is a preliminary strategy involving the use of various SEO tools to identify growth opportunities in certain practice areas, geographies, and niches. Hiring specialized agencies can significantly enhance these efforts by providing expert insights and tailored strategies.

One foundational element for local SEO is leveraging a Google Business Profile to enhance visibility in geographically specific searches.

For example, by using a professional SEO-optimization tool to conduct keyword research, you may find that the keyword “car accident” is far too competitive to break into. Even if you created a high volume of high-quality content geared towards that keyword, it’s unlikely that your individual law firm website would rank at the top of a search engine listing.

By contrast, you might find that the keyword “San Francisco rear-end collision” is less competitive, but has enough of a search volume to justify it as an opportunity that you can tackle with well-written, SEO-optimized content. Thus, SEO optimization doesn’t just entail polishing up a written piece. It involves a comprehensive set of reach-oriented strategies — before, during, and after writing content — that helps you identify growth opportunities, and maximize that opportunity.

Now, with respect to video content and social media platforms, there is an SEO-optimization aspect to content strategy there, too, but SEO is not as critical to content success on social media. Take the YouTube platform, for example. On YouTube, roughly five to 10 percent of views on the average video are driven through search inquiries. Instead, the vast majority of views are generated through the recommendation engine (i.e., homepage recommendations and adjacently-placed suggested video recommendations), which places content on the homepage or the sidebar for viewers to click.

Spending too much time and resources on SEO-optimization for social media would be a waste given these more limited impacts. That being said, there is still plenty of justification for doing some basic optimization and keyword research, as this can help with the initial trickle of views — particularly when your page is just starting out and you don’t have much reach.

Should Law Firms Use Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Other Social Media Platforms for Social Media Marketing?

Yes — if you have the resources to do so, we encourage you to embrace social media marketing on various platforms (like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and others) as part of your overall legal content marketing strategy. Each social media platform tends to pull a different crowd — for example, Facebook draws an older demographic, TikTok draws a younger “Gen Z” and “Gen Alpha” demographic, and Instagram skews female.

Identifying goals and tailoring law firm marketing strategies based on firm size, location, and practice areas is crucial for creating effective marketing plans that attract and retain clients.

That being said, every year, audiences across multiple demographics continue to cut the cord on cable and spend more of their time scrolling through social media content. The data is fairly definitive in this regard. So establishing your firm’s brand presence on social media is critical as the landscape of content consumption shifts.

Establishing an organic presence on social media isn’t easy or straightforward. Growing your presence means that you’ll need to understand how social media algorithms “select” content to promote. Here are some notable factors to consider in 2024 and beyond:

• Audience social engagement is critical. Comments and reshares are more important than ever before, as they start conversations between users and keep them more deeply entrenched on the platform. Creating social media content that is controversial or entertaining is a strategic move, then, as it makes it more likely that users will comment and reshare.
• Don’t rely on too many different content pillars. The way social media algorithms work is they test new content you upload against your current followers. If they followed your social media page due to a previous content pillar they liked, they are less likely to click through or watch through a piece of content that is different from what they joined your page for — this sends negative signals to the algorithm and they suppress further promotion beyond your followers. Growth therefore depends on you choosing a smaller set of content and pushing it consistently over time.
• Cross-posting is more useful than ever before. As social media platforms converge in terms of functionality, it has become increasingly important to minimize your production burden by developing content that can be cross-posted across various platforms. For example, if you develop a vertical short for TikTok, that same short can be cross-posted to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. This expands your reach greatly. Given the potential for cross-posting, it is worth reducing the amount of content you create that is suitable for only one platform.

Content Marketing for Law Firms

Content marketing is a cornerstone of effective law firm marketing. It involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. By producing high-quality content such as blog posts, articles, videos, and social media posts, law firms can educate potential clients about their services and establish themselves as thought leaders in their practice areas. Effective content marketing helps build trust with potential clients, increases online visibility, and drives more leads and conversions. For instance, a well-written blog post on recent changes in employment law can position your firm as an authority on the subject, making it more likely that potential clients will turn to you for legal advice and representation.

What are the Goals of Legal Marketing?

The ultimate goal of marketing for law firms is to generate “leads” that can convert into clients after a consultation to evaluate whether they have an actionable claim and whether it’s something that fits your firm schedule/goals. Every other aspect of law firm marketing is designed to support and maximize this lead generation dynamic. A comprehensive legal marketing strategy is essential, aligning with business goals and incorporating various elements such as SEO, content marketing, and targeted advertising to attract and retain clients effectively.

That being said, grand strategy is fine, but let’s dive a little deeper into the respective subcategories of online legal marketing so that we can tease apart the relevant goals unique to those subcategories.

• Law firm website blog content. Clickthrough rate, time-on-page, conversion rate.
• Social media content. Audience retention rate, views, engagement rate (i.e., comments, shares, etc.), follower growth.
• Paid online advertising. Clickthrough rate, audience retention rate, conversion rate.

Bear in mind that these are all meant to support the primary goal: driving leads. The more actionable leads you get access to, the more potential clients you can filter through and take on as a firm. However, the fact that you have to drive leads should not disrupt your content strategy when it comes to different subcategories of online legal marketing.

For example, when pursuing an organic social media growth strategy, you have to give your teams time to develop high-quality content that stands out from the crowd, and time to gain followers so that your organic reach can expand — if you expect fast, predictable growth in service of lead-generation, then you could undermine your efforts and disrupt them before they ever get a chance to stabilize.

How do I Make my Law Firm Stand out?

In today’s digital landscape, many law firms are attempting to differentiate themselves from the crowd of other firms in their area. A law firm’s website is a crucial platform for potential clients to gather information and reassurance about the firm’s capabilities and services. Here are some important content tips so that you know how to better capture the audience’s attention and convince them that you have something unique to offer compared to the competition:

• Choose a memorable, relevant tone when it comes to your online legal content. Decide whether you’d like to come across as formal or informal, for example, and change the tone of your language (for your legal content marketing efforts) to suit this established law firm brand. The tone that you choose should be based on your practice areas and target demographic.
• Focus on your litigation experience in various practice areas. Having experience litigating cases similar to the prospective client’s current dispute can help ease their mind. They want to know that you have the expertise necessary to effectively handle their dispute when things get complicated and new challenges arise.
• Include case results and testimonials where possible. Though you should be aware of various marketing restrictions that are unique to each state, including case results on your law firm website can be an excellent tool for convincing prospective clients that you do, in fact, have the ability to secure substantial compensation on their behalf.
• Describe your approach to handling clients. Prospective clients are looking for firms that respect their time, and that are willing to “work up” their claims to the maximum possible extent. Client-oriented representation can be an important facet of a firm’s identity, and you should market it heavily.
• Talk about any other special elements that define your firm’s engagement with the world around it. Community outreach programs, for example, can help humanize your team for audiences so that they understand that you aren’t isolated from the broader community of non-attorneys.
• And more!

Measuring and Optimizing Law Firm Marketing

Measuring and optimizing your law firm marketing efforts is essential to ensure that you are getting the best possible return on investment (ROI). Various metrics can be used to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, including website traffic, social media engagement, and lead generation. Regularly reviewing these metrics allows you to identify what is working and what needs improvement. Based on this analysis, you can make data-driven adjustments to your marketing plan. This might involve tweaking your content marketing strategy, adjusting your social media advertising budget, or exploring new marketing channels. By continuously optimizing your marketing efforts, you can ensure that your law firm remains competitive and continues to attract and retain clients.

Building Relationships and Reputation

Building strong relationships and a positive reputation is critical for law firms looking to attract and retain clients. Providing excellent customer service, responding promptly to inquiries, and offering valuable advice and guidance are fundamental ways to build relationships with potential clients. Additionally, establishing your firm as a thought leader in your practice areas can significantly enhance your reputation. This can be achieved by publishing high-quality content, engaging with your audience on social media, and participating in community outreach programs. By building strong relationships and a positive reputation, your law firm can increase its visibility, credibility, and trust with potential clients, ultimately driving more leads and conversions.

Joining an Attorney Network can get you Actionable Leads and Grow your Firm Business Without the Hassle of Legal Marketing

When you join an attorney network (like one of the various sub-brand attorney networks that we operate here at Walker Advertising), you are able to avoid the many hassles, distractions, costs, and uncertainties involved in building out your online legal marketing efforts so that you can secure more clients. Partnering with a law firm marketing agency can help you navigate the complexities of digital marketing and achieve better results.

How does it work? Let’s go over some of the basics, using our team here at Walker as an example.

Those who operate attorney networks — like our team here at Walker Advertising — use substantial resources and expertise to execute comprehensive legal marketing efforts. These include SEO-optimized written content for websites, social media content, email marketing, traditional media advertising, and targeted online advertising.

By utilizing a multi-pronged approach to legal marketing, we are able to generate an enormous number of call-ins for claims in relevant practice areas. We then qualify these initial leads. All in all, about 50 percent of inbound calls become qualified leads. These are then packaged and sold to attorneys who have signed up to the network (and to that “type” of lead).

So, for example, you might sign up for a package where you purchase a bundle of “x” number of qualified car accident leads per month. You’ll be connected to inbound leads that qualify and can provide a consultation to those prospective clients so that you can evaluate whether or not you’d like to take on their case.

Contact Walker Advertising for Help Growing Your Firm’s Client Base

Whether you’re a solo lawyer or are part of a larger firm with plans for expansion, it’s important to grow your client base in order to hit your revenue goals. Here at Walker Advertising, we can help. We operate a number of popular attorney networks — including our Los Defensores and 1-800-THE-LAW2 brands — through which firms are able to access leads for various legal claims. Successful law firm marketing involves a strategic and multifaceted approach tailored to the specific needs of a law firm.

The leads we acquire through our various online marketing efforts — from social media marketing to targeted web ads — have been pre-qualified by our team so that you aren’t hassled by a flood of leads that are simply not relevant or actionable for your purposes. By accessing these quality leads, you’ll be well-equipped to select the best ones to grow your firm business.

Contact Walker Advertising today to connect to a member of our team who can explain how our legal networks can help your firm business thrive in this ever-changing digital marketing landscape.

We look forward to assisting you.