Marketing your practice is getting harder and harder as human behavior is changing.
If you are not genuinely connecting with your clients and future clients, you can’t expect to grow your practice. Connecting digitally has never been easier (and confusing). According to CNN, we spend about 1 hour and 39 minutes consuming media on our smartphones every day! There’s no denying that this number touches people of all ages and walks of life. When your demographic is online, are they seeing your brand?
We see law firms that “dabble” in digital marketing, but there’s hesitation in diving in. As people are spending more and more time on their devices, it will become more important to reach them and engage with them digitally. You can build an audience and get clients through digital marketing done right.
Why is digital marketing important?
A billboard’s impressions are at the mercy of those driving by, and chances are only a small number of people who see the billboard are your perfect customer. Wasted money. Digital is important because it is targeted. In the digital space, your law firm can choose to show ads only on desktop users during work hours to those who live in a specific county. You can also set ads to show only on mobile devices over the weekend and only if they search specific keywords. The point is to research your audience, and show your ads (whether it’s through Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn) to the demographic that is most likely to call you.
Nobody knows when a car accident will happen or when a product defect will cause a catastrophic event. Your law firm needs to be the first company they think of when an event occurs.
The Parachute Media approach
Parachute Media takes a long-term approach to marketing your practice. We get to know your people, your brand, your audience, and your goals. Here’s a step-by-step look at how we operate:
Research – The first month of any retainer agreement is spent doing research. We find out who your biggest competitors are, your strengths and weaknesses as a brand, who your audience is, and what content themes we will use to reach that audience.
Creating content, scheduling, running ads – Content includes blogs, photoshoots, videos, copy writing for social media platforms, graphic design projects, etc.
Reporting – We hold ourselves accountable by providing robust reporting every quarter as well as phone calls at least every month to update clients. For example, we’ll show you every Facebook ad we ran and the results. We’ll tell you how we grew each social account, the best performing posts on each platform, how many conversions can be attributed to social media, and our goals for the next quarter. We’ll also show you every project we completed including videos, blog posts, emails, and graphic design projects.
Repeat – What we do is a never-ending cycle of creating and evaluating. We present new ideas based on data, try them out, then give you the results.
Parachute Media success on social media
Parachute Media understands human behavior and how to advertise your firm. Here are a few successes we have had in your industry.
Facebook success: In the first two months, Parachute Media took a Nashville-based injury attorney from 491 Facebook page likes to 731 likes. Fast forward 15 months, and the account now has 1,994 Facebook pages likes and is growing every month.
Instagram success: In this same 15 month period, Parachute Media has implemented an Instagram strategy and built the account from 0 followers to 1,091 followers to date.
Google AdWords success: We report on Google AdWords every quarter, and it’s fun to see the results trending in favor of the client. We implemented a Google AdWords strategy in the 3rd quarter of 2016, and since then have increased impressions, clicks and conversions while decreasing the cost per conversion consistently.
AdWords Impressions vs. Clicks
This chart shows impressions and clicks to the website rising. Even though there were fewer overall impressions in the first quarter of 2017, the website clicks continued to rise showing that we are honing in on our target audience.
AdWords Conversions
Let’s look at the conversions and cost per conversion (CPC) over the same time period. With every quarter, we see an increase in conversions while the cost per conversion decreases from $68.92 to $20.52. Through a series of tests, we have come up with a strategy to target their audience, which drove leads and cases.
To date, more than 22 cases have directly come from Adwords campaigns while over 176 have been referred to another attorney.
Successful posts
Creating content that is less sales-focused, easy to consume, and creates lasting impressions will help tremendously when your audience thinks of hiring a lawyer. When lawyers spend most of their time building trust and influence, conversions will come easier. Her are a few of our favorite engaging campaigns.
“There are some cases even we can’t win”
This particular video was created by Parachute Media as a piece of light engaging content. You think it will be about someone getting in a wreck, but it turns out that a breakup text with a cat emoji can be just as damaging! For this ad, we targeted fans, friends of fans, and users within 25 miles of Nashville that fit their specific demographic. The total ad spend was $406.09, and the video was viewed 34,235 times and shared 39 times. The video will stay on the Facebook page, and engagement will grow more and more over time without any further monetary investment.
While TV ads may have there place, you can’t say who can watch your commercial and who cannot, and you certainly can’t calculate a cost per engagement. We love advertising in the digital space because results are measured.
“Product recall video”
By giving your fans information that they need to keep their family safe, you are establishing yourself as an expert and someone who cares about your community. The caption encourages viewers to engage. As a result, this video was viewed 182,799 times and shared 712 times.
“Toy car series”
We loved creating this series! We had to think about how to portray accidents without having an image that was too graphic for Facebook (they flag images that they deem “too graphic”). We came up with the idea of using toy cars, paper cutouts, and solid backdrops to give life to the statistics. Content like this may not be not sending someone directly to a website or telling them to call a number, but these are valuable and cost effective impressions compared to other media spends, especially if you can measure engagements. See the entire series here.
How Parachute builds relationships for you digitally
Your digital presence makes you accessible. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and LinkedIn allow your clients to interact and communicate with you on a personal level. Making a point to like, acknowledge, and respond to messages and posts on your social pages gives the impression of a proactive firm who listens. You never know when a “friend of a fan” will see the interactions and decide to become a fan and engage with the brand because of what they saw.
Email is also a great way to stay in touch with your clients. Did you know you can set up an automation to wish your clients a happy birthday? What a personal touch!
Everyone wants more leads, more visibility, more cases, more $$ to reinvest into the business. Investing in personal relationships will pay dividends as referrals.
In conclusion, reaching new clients is a matter of figuring out who they are and how they do life. When you know who your best customer is and where they spend their time, you’ll know where to invest marketing dollars.
For a firm looking to conquer their market, expand the practice, and make a boatload this year, you have to market in a way that speaks to and reaches your clientele where they spend their time. Parachute knows how to do this for injury law attorneys.
