It shouldn’t come as any sort of revelation to learn that your clients are the lifeblood of your firm. Attracting new clients (and retaining your existing ones) will be your primary method of paying the bills and continuing to grow as a business. Simple enough to understand, right?
But attracting new clients isn’t as simple as we would all like it to be. Placing your firm in front of the right audience at the right time usually requires a combination of meticulous planning, careful resource management and marketing know-how.
So, where do you start if you aren’t a professional marketer? That’s where this blog post should come in handy!
In this post, we’ll be helping to clarify how marketing can help your law firm to attract a wider pool of high-quality clients. Whether you’re a legal professional, a marketer that is just getting started or a marketer with years of experience behind you, the pointers below should help to put you on the right track.
Local SEO for Law Firms
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is fairly self-explanatory when you break it down. Generally speaking, it’s the process of improving your website so that it’s as visible as possible when your prospective clients are using Google and other search engines.
As you might expect, the better your firm’s online visibility, the more likely it is that you will be able to reach your audience and convert them into paying clients.
Drilling into this further, local SEO involves increasing your presence for specific location-based search enquiries. If, for example, you’re a firm that exclusively operates in a small area, you’re going to want to find suitable clients who live or work close by. It is much easier to rank well on Google for a specific search term that involves a location (e.g. “conveyancing solicitors in Bristol”), rather than a general search term (e.g. “conveyancing solicitors”).
We have discussed the importance of SEO for your law firm in our previous blogs, including this general guide which you can use for additional pointers.
Legal Directories
If you aren’t doing so already, pursuing a legal directory ranking is an extremely worthwhile marketing investment. Directories involve catalogues of leading lawyers, teams and firms who exhibit high levels of experience, expertise and client care.
Directories such as the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners provide an independent and unbiased analysis. Naturally, your wider marketing efforts will be focused on promoting your firm’s skills, but it’s important to be able to support this with external evidence.
If your firm, or individuals within your firm, feature in legal directories, this is objective proof that can be used to support your marketing plan.
It also means that prospective clients may navigate to your firm via the directory itself, providing you with a different marketing angle that you will not have to directly manage.
FAQs
Think about how you search on Google. How do you phrase your enquiries? You use plenty of questions, right? And, if you’re anything like me, not being able to find a quick and easy answer to your question can be extremely frustrating.
So, why not incorporate this into your marketing efforts across the board? The general public has a million and one questions when it comes to specific legal matters, all of which you’ll no doubt have the answers to.
Using FAQs is a very effective way of bringing clients to your site in the first instance, as well as being a great way of demonstrating your knowledge. If you combine your use of FAQs with good SEO, then you could be on to a winner in no time.
Referrals and Reviews
Referrals and reviews are a vital cog in any marketing machine. No matter what the service or product on offer may be, potential clients who have their wits about them will always use a review as a deciding factor when deciding whether to take the next step.
And, to make matters more pressing, legitimate reviews are permanent. This means both the good and bad reviews will feature on your Google profile and have a substantial impact on your wider reputation.
Search Marketing Manager Chris Mundy has previously delved into the realm of reviews for law firms, providing a clear guide on some of most important tips you should be keeping in mind.
Quality Law Firm Website Content
Writing content for a law firm’s website can be an intimidating prospect, especially at first. You’re going to need to combine a range of elements, all of which need to contribute to a cohesive piece of text that convinces a reader that they will want to work with you.
When we talk about ‘quality content’, this refers to text that is produced with SEO in mind, strikes a clear and consistent tone of voice, is easy to understand and points a user towards getting in touch with your firm.
There’s a lot to consider, which is why it may take a bit of time to secure the best results for your content. Our Search Marketing Manager Matt Nicholls has written a helpful blog post on the secret to writing the best SEO copy which you can take a look at for further inspiration.
Website Backlinks
A backlink is a URL that points back towards your website. In a nutshell, the more high-quality backlinks your website receives, the better. There are a number of ways in which you can achieve backlinks, including via strategic PR campaigns and outreach blogging.
Backlinks can help to boost your firm’s website’s authority and, in turn, can help you to rank higher for any keywords you may be targeting as a part of your wider marketing and SEO campaigns.
You can find out more about backlinks and Digital PR strategies in this blog post from our outreach and PR executive Megan Gibbs.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a paid advertising platform, where your law firm pays for every click or impression on a digital ad. It often proves to be an effective method of driving a high level of quality traffic to your site, especially as ads can be targeted towards anyone who is searching for a relevant service.
If a Google Ads campaign is effectively implemented, you can boost your website traffic and receive more enquiries.
With larger budgets advertising on Bing might be relevant and now you can even advertise on Netflix as they have an ‘ad supported’ subscription service which is powered by Microsoft Advertising.
Does your law firm need help with its marketing?
What next then? After all, everything we have discussed in this post is a lot to take in, especially if you are yet to start any marketing campaigns for your law firm.
That’s where our legal marketing experts can step in to lend their support! At Conscious, we provide a wide range of services to help your marketing efforts, ranging from designing and building websites to SEO, digital PR and PPC.
If you want to find out more about our marketing services, call 0117 325 0200 or email sales@conscious.co.uk.