March 18, 2021

2021 Digital Marketing Strategies for Law Firms

The marketing landscape for the legal industry in 2021 is heavily dependent on digital marketing. Instead of primarily campaigning on television, radio, and newspapers, most law firms and independent lawyers rely on the internet to attract and gain new clients.

Let’s review the latest techniques and strategies in helping your law firm reach your target audience through online marketing.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is an integral pillar of today’s digital marketing, designed to drive leads to you, instead of cold-calling out for potential business. For law firms, inbound marketing dictates that you focus on positioning yourself as a helpful and valuable resource throughout each stage of your client’s buying journey.

Here are a few stats that you support the importance of inbound marketing for your firm:

• Around 96% of prospects seek legal advice using the internet first. These prospects commonly rely on ratings and reviews to determine which firm they will contact.
• Around 70% of these prospects contact the firm after visiting their website.
• Most of those prospects looking for legal consultation and services earn more than $150,000 annually on average.

The major shift here is to focus on your website’s brand positioning and SEO content strategy. Let’s take a look at these components more in-depth.

Brand Positioning

Your website isn’t just a business card. It should do more than display your business’ contact information with your law firm’s services. It should position yourself as an expert in your practice, more so than your competitors.

When creating content for your website, make your content distinct, clear, specific, and desirable. This allows you to distinguish yourself from the field.

To effectively position your brand on your website, follow these steps:

1. Identify your business’ current standing in the market.
2. Research the standing of your competitors.
3. Find what makes your law firm unique.
4. Write out your unique selling propositions or USPs.
5. Make your brand message clear.

Properly establishing your brand position allows you to:

• Stand out in the market.
• Demand higher prices or have a flexible pricing strategy.
• Gain an advantage against your direct competitors.
• Improve your reputation.

SEO and Content Strategy

All your inbound marketing efforts will be for naught if you don’t apply search engine optimization (SEO) and follow a working content strategy. You need sound SEO principles applied to your site in order to successfully run an inbound campaign.

Search engine optimization is a set of processes and methods to allow your website and its content to be easily searchable in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!

Its goal is to “influence” the algorithm of those search engines to bring up your website and its pages on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) when a prospect searches a keyword related to your services.

Here are some basic SEO principles to apply to your website and content:

1. Publish fresh, helpful, and winning content
2. Create backlinks (or links directing to your site) on other websites
3. Insert links in your content directing to authority websites
4. Improve your website’s performance (i.e., loading speed)
5. Track and analyze your website’s KPIs

Social Media Marketing

Social media has evolved from simple communications platforms to a full-fledged advertising market. It’s streamlined going from new law firm to market in a few clicks. With proper utilization and a campaign-focused approach, you can use this platform to your firm’s advantage.

The legal industry is behind the times on this marketing channel. However, that’s slowly changing. Most independent attorneys are exploring social media and finding ways they can stand out.

Follow these guidelines to effectively use social media for your law business:

1. Choose the best platform for your firm: Each social media website caters to specific demographics. For example, Facebook is popular with adults aged 18–49, while Instagram is popular with teens aged 13–17. If your firm specializes in juvenile court cases, it might be smart to learn how to market a law firm on Instagram.
2. Share infographics and stats: These content types perform well with most social media users. Including these kinds of visuals in your posts provide easy to understand stats and information. Plus, your followers can expose your firm to other people whenever they hit the share button.
3. Track your conversions: Gauge your social media marketing efforts’ effectiveness by determining if your clients found you or saw you in their social media accounts.
4. Post informative posts: Presenting a law firm on social media can be limiting. After all, the kind of posts you can make must maintain your brand image and reputation. Most firms stick to maintaining a professional image. Turn this disadvantage into an advantage by leveraging the perception that law firms can be reliable sources of information or take a more personal approach.
5. Engage with your followers: Talking, reacting, and starting conversations with your followers can improve your presence on social media as well as your overall reputation as a thought leader in your space.

Video Marketing

There’s a reason many firms and lawyers have spent a lot of money on television ads in the past few decades. They work. Especially in this day and age, more users rely on video to consume and learn.

Creating “how to” educational videos or ones that answer common questions potential clients are asking is an effective strategy. You can attract potential clients on video platforms like YouTube and even Facebook. Add these videos to your website to increase your reach on Google search results as well.

Paid Media

The internet has paved the way for multiple new forms of advertising. And compared to traditional ads, paid online media ads are often cheaper and have greater reach.

As a law firm, you have a lot of options to choose from. You can advertise on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, just to name a few. Unlike inbound marketing that takes time and usually requires more effort before it shows results, using paid media advertising generates results fast, if done the right way.

However, most law firms are into paid media as it has been the legal industry’s primary choice of digital marketing for years. It’s currently highly competitive, and you should position yourself well and find a platform that will work well with your firm before you start shelling out tons of ad dollars.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has been a powerful digital marketing method to bring in new customers and retain old ones. This marketing channel is low-cost and can be considered more conventional when it comes to law firms.

Compared to social media marketing, email marketing is more direct, personal, and targeted. It has a high conversion rate, and if you know your target audience well, you can maintain a steady flow of clients with email marketing.

To ensure that your email marketing works, you should focus on three things:

1. Build a solid email list
2. Use email automation
3. Learn about the different types of email campaigns and strategies

Public Relations

Lastly, you have public relations (PR). Utilizing a strategic PR campaign can help you grow your firm. You know well that compared to other industries, the legal industry relies heavily on trust and confidence.

PR campaigns can help you build credibility by placing you on major publications, TV, and radio channels. It can also assist you in building a reliable online presence by earning valuable backlinks back to your site. However, know that your PR campaign’s effectiveness heavily depends on how good your PR people are. When choosing a company for your PR campaign, be sure that they satisfy the following:

• They can position your firm as an authoritative entity.
• They can make reviewers notice your firm’s existence.
• They can generate expert articles about you and further elevate your reputation.

Start Your Digital Marketing Campaign ASAP

Getting new leads for your law firm can be challenging if you rely on traditional marketing. You must modernize your approach and embrace digital marketing as one of the key ways to get new clients.

The strategies mentioned here are the core processes involved in a successful digital marketing campaign. However, this article has just barely scratched the surface. Each of these strategies deserves to be expounded in full-length posts.

The biggest hurdle in digital marketing is its ever-changing nature. And for a company that already focuses on the complicated world of law, it can be quite difficult to keep up with the constant changes in digital marketing. Because of that, you should rely on a digital marketer to help you out in generating leads and navigating the intricacies of marketing your firm online.