Lawyers: Land More Clients With These 5 Marketing Strategies

Marketing psychology applies to all businesses, including lawyers. However, most clients have immediate needs and can’t be put through a traditional sales funnel.

Most clients searching the internet for a lawyer are already in trouble and need to connect with an attorney immediately. For these clients, a traditional sales funnel won’t work; there’s no time for a lead magnet, email sequence, and nurturing. If you can’t get leads to call you the moment they land on your website, they’ll move on to your competition.

When you’re trying to generate leads, the following digital marketing strategies will help you land more clients in a shorter period of time.

1. Take advantage of local search optimization

Ranking your website for competitive global search terms isn’t easy or cheap. The good news is, ranking for global terms doesn’t matter when you can rank your site for local search.

Your potential leads need a local lawyer, and if you can get your site ranked in Google’s local listing section that appears at the top of all other search results, you won’t need to rank for global terms.

Local search results are highly targeted

Ranking for global search phrases won’t do you much good because if you’re a lawyer in Chicago, you don’t want leads from far-away cities or other states. Local search results target users within your practice area. Google identifies a user by zip code (when logged into a Google account) and will return local results based on that zip code.

Start with a Google My Business listing

The foundation for local search optimization is setting up a Google My Business listing. All local results are generated from Google My Business listings. If your business listing exists already, make sure to claim it so you have control over the listing. Otherwise, create your listing and provide accurate and complete details including:

• Your law firm’s name (don’t abbreviate here)
• Your main area of practice
• Your office hours
• A local phone number (don’t include an 800 number here)
• An email address derived from your website’s domain name
• Pictures of you, your staff, and your office
• A description of what you do that includes the keywords and phrases you want to rank for (for example, “car accident attorney” or “dog bite lawyer)

For detailed instructions on getting your listing to the top of Google’s local search results, head over to Moz.com and look up their Google My Business Optimization guide. Their guide covers the basics along with how to get started with Google My Business posts, how to take advantage of Google’s booking and instant messaging features, and how to use the Questions & Answers feature to publicize more information for potential leads to view. The guide also covers how to request reviews without violating Google’s TOS.

2. Hammer down on content marketing

There is no better way for your law firm to rank in the search engines than by implementing content marketing. Don’t worry, you don’t need to write your own content. Unless writing is your second passion next to practicing law, it’s advisable to hire content writers. With a team of content writers working for you, your content will be produced quickly and professionally.

The best approach to content marketing is to incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy. All posts should be published on a committed, regular schedule, and the content should be optimized for SEO.

There are different schools of thought regarding short and long-form content. However, the debate is subjective. Sometimes shorter articles are best; other times, long articles are the optimal choice.

Headings are crucial for short and long articles

As a general rule, your content should utilize frequent subheadings. Visitors tend to scroll and scan headings instead of reading all the content from the top of the page. Make sure both long and short articles have informative subheadings in place so readers can find the information they’re looking for.

3. Use testimonials

Testimonials are powerful. Every business should display testimonials on their website – even lawyers. However, how you display testimonials matters. While a retail business might benefit from displaying testimonials on the home page above the fold in a carousel, that’s not optimal for lawyers.

How to incorporate testimonials into your layout

Your potential clients likely want a free consultation as quickly as possible and they’re going to call the first law firm they find. Testimonials are crucial, but that’s not the first thing your leads need to see. When potential clients land on your website, your phone number should be the first thing they see. Testimonials should be incorporated into your content below the fold.

To publish testimonials in a way that supports your intentions to generate leads, you can use the following placement methods:

• Push a group of testimonials far down below the fold. Testimonials are important, but they should be placed well below content like practice areas, sample settlement amounts, and pivotal cases you’ve won.
  
  One way to display testimonials is in a group. A perfect example of group placement below the fold can be seen on Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C.’s website. Like all good attorney websites, their phone number is visible at the top followed by settlement amounts, recent blog posts, practice areas, and finally, testimonials.
• Incorporate testimonials throughout your site. With this method, you’d integrate client testimonials into your content wherever relevant. For example, you’d place car accident case testimonials within or surrounding content addressing car accidents.
  
  You can also distribute testimonials throughout your site using dynamic widgets that display testimonials according to a random algorithm.

Anytime you publish testimonials on your website, be sure to include a photograph of each person. Photos increase the credibility of each testimonial by providing a face with each name.

4. If you take cases on a contingency fee basis, publish that information

Many of your potential clients are specifically looking for a lawyer who will work on a contingency fee basis and won’t call you unless that’s obvious. By publishing your willingness to work on a contingency, you’re automatically increasing the number of leads who will pick up the phone and call you.

Keep in mind that potential leads might be searching for keyword phrases like “contingency lawyers near me” or “contingency lawyers in (city).” If you do take cases on a contingency, be sure to optimize your Google My Business listing and your website with those phrases.

If you don’t work on a contingency, that’s understandable. Not every attorney wants to risk putting in time and effort they may not get paid for.

5. Use paid search (PPC ads)

Paid search is one of the most effective ways to generate leads. If you’re not using paid search, it’s time to launch your first campaign.

PPC ads will display your ad at the top of search engine results when people search for relevant keywords. This bypasses the need to do the hard work to rank in organic search results. With PPC ads, you have total control over what people see including the text. You can also control your target demographics. For instance, you can target people only in Chicago or in specific zip codes.

Tips for a successful PPC ad campaign

To run a successful PPC ad campaign, you need to know your market, bid on the right keywords, advertise across multiple markets, and monitor your results.

Since PPC ads are complex, it’s best to hire a marketing agency to run your campaign. The benefits are vast. Marketing agencies have plenty of experience and expertise running ads and understand exactly how results indicate when it’s necessary to make small changes.

For example, say you bid $1.15 on the keyword phrase “dog bite attorney” because that term has a high number of searches per month. If the highest bid for that phrase is $7.25, your bid is too low. Biding lower than the lowest bid means you won’t appear in searches. A professional PPC expert will notice this right away and increase the bid. If you’re not an expert, you might think your low bid is saving you money, when it’s really only preventing your ads from being seen.

Consider retargeting carefully

The aspect of PPC ads you may want to avoid is retargeting/remarketing. Remarketing shows people specific ads after they’ve already seen or interacted with your first ad. The idea is to lure people back to your website. However, someone in need of a lawyer isn’t going to waste any time. Chances are, by the time a lead is shown a second ad for your services, they’ve already found a lawyer.

Quality leads make quality clients

Using these 5 digital marketing strategies will help you increase the amount of quality leads you get on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Qualified leads have a high potential to turn into quality clients who need your services fast.