Your time is valuable. Marketing for lawyers is not rocket science, but it does take a bit of guts. Make sure your digital marketing efforts are working for you.
As a partner, owner, or marketing director in a successful law firm, you’ve probably honed in on your skill set and spend 90% of your time there – making the firm money. If you’re working on cases, the question is how to keep clients coming in the door. What if old school marketing techniques like networking, billboards, and sponsoring the morning traffic report on your local radio station just isn’t working anymore? You know you should shift to digital marketing, but how?
And the other big question is will you be left behind if you choose to ignore the digital trend?
Today, we’re giving you 15 tangible ways to shift your focus to digital and attract the clients that you want.
Make sure your website is up-to-date – and responsive
Your website works for you 24/7, and it is the gateway to your brand online. Make sure it is telling the story of your brand with images, video, content, and user experience. More than half of users who access the internet do so from a mobile device. If your website isn’t responsive, not only do you get penalized by Google with a lower SEO rank, users will most likely bounce off within a few seconds.
Install a Facebook Pixel on Your Website
A Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that you can get from Facebook and insert it on the backend of your website. It allows you to re-target people who visit your website. This can increase fans on Facebook and help build your referral business. Learn how to install a Facebook pixel here.
Know your audience
What do the demographics of your clientele look like? Who are your BEST clients? Knowing this can help determine ad placement strategies and messaging and attract those clients to you versus hoping the right people see your billboard or hear your radio ad.
Know your brand
Knowing your audience helps to know your brand. How do you communicate with potential clientele? How do you portray that online? These are important questions you need to ask to tell a consistent and compelling story online.
Create consistent messaging
Consistent messaging creates brand awareness, which leads to engagement and interactions, which leads to conversions. To be consistent, you don’t have to post the same thing every day but you DO have to decide how you want to tell your story. Will you be helpful and informative? Sensitive and compassionate? Funny and Sarcastic…we don’t recommend this one, but it works for some companies! Also, think about phrases that you want to use often to drive the message home to potential clients.
Improve SEO by writing content/blogs relevant to your audience
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is determined by the keywords on your website, among other things. The more relevant information you have on your website, the better your SEO will be. The content should speak to both the search robots and humans. Make sure images have alt tags, meta descriptions are clear, concise, and unique to each page, and that your contact page is optimized for local searchers. When people use Google (the robots) to search for you, SEO tactics will give you the visibility over your competition.
Use Facebook Ads
Did you know that 80% of all internet users get on Facebook daily? If you think Facebook is irrelevant, think again. Facebook ads can help you reach your current audience and new audience groups, and with good targeting, help convert new customers.
Don’t you ever touch that “boost post” button
If Facebook tells you to “boost a post”, just ignore it. The boost post button will not help you gain anything besides more likes on a post. Our experience tells us that creating an audience group in Facebook Business Manager is the best way to go because you can optimize ads for engagement, likes, or conversions.
Beat Facebook advertising standards
Facebook will flag content (and possible ban you from advertising!) that is graphic in nature, like car accident images. If you don’t want to get flagged, make sure your content gets the point across without being graphic. One way to do this is through quote graphics using toys cars.
Use social media management tools to post
Posting tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, or Coschedule can help keep you organized. Nobody wants to manually post things on social platforms daily. Schedule it all out on these platforms and have them do the work!
Instagram accounts are fantastic resources.
Not many lawyers have Instagram accounts, and we think there is a HUGE opportunity for those law firms who take the plunge into Instagram. The platform can show the more personal, relational side of your law firm. “Business as usual” doesn’t have to be unappealing or indifferent. Branch out and engage with your audience in a new way using Instagram. See what we are doing for our client as an example.
Keep records for reporting purposes
You can only improve what you are tracking. For social media in general, track which pieces of content get the most engagement, and do more of that type of post. For paid ads, know where your conversions are coming from. Whether it’s from billboards, radio, or digital spending, track your leads. If you find that certain tactics are more successful than others, then allocate more of your budget to those things.
Adwords is your friend
Google AdWords allows for bidding on search engine results. You can specify which keywords you want to target, what time of day you want to target, and whether you want to target mobile or desktop users. Of course, there are more variables to take into account, but these are just a few. Having AdWords setup for certain search terms can help direct traffic and lower conversion costs from paid advertising from $200-$600 per lead to under $20. We’ve done it.
Email list for conversions and referrals
Having an email list for referrals, contests, and news related to your firm is a good asset. Even inviting past clients to a client appreciation party can be done with a well-maintained email list. Helping maintain those relationships is pivotal for referral based businesses.
Give Parachute Media a shot
We have the data. We have the creativity. We have the experience.
See what we can do for your firm by requesting a FREE evaluation of your firm’s current online strategy.
