Law Firm Internet Marketing
What Smart Lawyers Do
To Increase Qualified Leads
Learn How Digital Marketing Services Can Help Law Firms Grow
Most attorneys don’t know where to start when it comes to law firm internet marketing.
Some are confused about what forms of internet marketing are the best investment. Others put some digital marketing programs in place, but then fail to achieve any real results.
What about your law practice?
How can you choose the right digital marketing channels that create the best ROI for law firms?
Let eProphet Media help. We empower busy attorneys like you to clearly understand what successful law firm internet marketing involves.
Let us provide a full breakdown of different types of internet marketing. We’ll include their advantages and disadvantages, average costs, ROI, and what results you can expect from each one.
Why you need digital marketing for your law firm
Most law firms know that online marketing is an effective way to acquire leads. In fact, a recent study found that 65% of law firms spend the majority of their marketing budget on internet marketing.
So what separates internet marketing from all other channels?
Unlike every other way a law firm acquires clients, internet marketing puts you in control of who sees you and where. This lets you attract clients in search of your unique practice area(s).
However, new leads are just one benefit of what internet marketing accomplishes for your law firm.
Some of the benefits of effective internet marketing:
Provides a steady increase in clients by improving your law firm’s internet
Identifies and filters the qualified leads that you’re looking for from others that don’t fit your firm
Distinguishes and elevates your law firm from other law firms in your market
Provides the best ROI of your marketing dollars
Let’s begin with the most important step of an effective law firm internet marketing approach:
creating a great website for your practice.
Your Website: The Most Important Law Firm Internet Marketing Investment
Every effort you make to market your law firm online will lead people to your website.
Think about how important your practice’s website is:
- When you appear in search engines results, the user gets directed to your website
- When you run ads, anyone who clicks on them gets sent to your website
- When someone hears about you from your referral network or a past client, they will go to your website to learn about you and make a first impression
The truth is that every potential client will judge your practice based on your website.
It’s what will create that crucial first impression for your firm and all of your legal services, and will either motivate visitors to contact you or make them look somewhere else.
Knowing this, your highest priority with your internet marketing efforts should be to invest in your website/digital presence. This will both help shape each how visitors view your law practice and complement every single internet marketing effort.
What your law firm’s website needs to generate qualified leads
HIGHLY VISIBLE IN INTERNET SEARCHES
Your law firm’s site needs to have good SEO to appear in the top few Google search results in orderto be effective. Users typically do not look beyond the first page of organic search results.
VISUALLY APPEALING
Eye-catching visuals and appealing elements are necessary for readers to trust a lawyer with their legal issues. In fact, research shows our minds prefer good website visuals: the human brain has been found to process visual data many thousands of times faster than it can process text, with 90% of the information processed by the human brain coming from visual sources.
That means the visual impression your site makes is instantaneous, and will have a tremendous influence on the success of your marketing efforts.
FAST LOADING
People don’t want to waste time waiting for a poorly-designed website to load. Not only that, but search engines penalize slow-loading websites as well, placing them further down in their results pages. Optimizing your site for fast loading on desktop and mobile devices is a must for an effective law practice website.
AUTHORITATIVE AND HELPFUL
You may know how successful your practice is in the courtroom, but your future clients likely don’t. That’s why an attorney website needs to inspire confidence in the reader, reassuring them that your law firm is an authority in your field and that you deserve the client’s trust.
This can be accomplished by using the website’s content to show that your knowledge, experience, and past legal victories will enable you to successfully handle their case and motivate potential clients to contact you.
ACCESSIBILITY FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Over 60 percent of online searches in the U.S. are done on mobile devices, such as tablets or smartphones. However, not all webpages can be viewed on mobile devices. Rather, they need to first be mobile-friendly to be of viewed on these devices. To make a law firm web page mobile-ready, it needs to automatically resize and reformat the text, images, and design elements to be easily viewed on a mobile device.
Once your law firm’s website has all of the necessary elements, you can now market your law firm online in other ways.
Organic Law Firm Leads From SEO
When it comes to generating leads, SEO provides the best law firm internet marketing ROI. But what is SEO exactly?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the practice of aligning your law firm’s website with Google’s standards in order to appear at the top of search engine results (SERP). In other words, having good website SEO means it will appear first on search engines like Google, leading to an increase in both the quantity and quality of website visitors.
However, as SEO best practices and search engine algorithms change, a law firm’s SEO strategy must be updated to maintain its visibility in the search engines and continue attracting potential clients.
When a website’s SEO strategy is working, though, the investment is always worth it. Effective law firm SEO will generate the highest amount of qualified leads for the least amount of money. In fact, our legal clients report that 90% of the leads they receive from our SEO efforts are qualified, which means they are being contacted by a person looking for the exact legal services the firm provides in a market they serve.
Not only that, but our clients report that more leads are generated without any increase to their marketing cost as their SEO strategy is properly implemented and refined. That means a lower and lower cost per lead and increase in ROI as time goes on, since the investment costs of SEO law firm internet marketing stays the same.
What does that mean for your law practice? As your SEO strategy is implemented and refined over time, the number of qualified leads will increase each month. In fact, your law firm internet marketing plan from eProphet Media is designed to do this from the start.
In other words, your level of investment does not increase, even though you benefit from a lower cost per lead and an increasing ROI as time passes. This is one reason why many of eProphet Media’s law firm clients have been with us 7 years or more.
Paid Ads For Law Firm Leads
Paid online ads, also called Pay-Per-Click ads, can be also an effective internet marketing tool for attorneys to gain more leads. These can be executed on a number of platforms, such as Google Ads or Meta (Facebook) Ads.
However, there are two important points to remember regarding paid ads:
1. They are expensive. Depending on your area of practice and your market, each click can cost between $5 and $300 or more just to get a visitor to click on your ad. And on average only 4% of those who click on an ad contact the attorney whose website they have clicked on, known as a conversion.
2. Running ads only works to convert leads if your law firm website is ready for them. Your site needs to already have all the necessary signals and optimization to prompt a visitor to contact you once they land on your website.
This doesn’t mean that paid ads don’t have their place. When carried out effectively, a well-organized ad campaign can still create instant visibility in the search engines for your practice to generate both visitor traffic and client leads.
Coordinating ads between different sites and ad spaces that prospective clients visit is one effective approach to online advertising. Placing your ad in multiple locations also increases your visibility and helps viewers remember your brand and message.
For more information on paid ads, visit our page that spells out the pros and cons of paid ads.
A Cultivated Digital Presence For Qualified Law Firm Leads
Not every aspect of internet marketing takes a direct, “contact us” approach. Sometimes you need to show people who you are and what you are all about to build your brand, create a presence in your community, and establish yourself as a trustworthy local practice. Here are a few ways you can do that:
Social Media
Law firms can use a tailored social media presence to give people a sense of who you are on a personal level, which will increase their trust in you and in your ability to help them as their attorney.
You can post information about you and your firm’s participation in civic, charitable, and community events, as well as other socially-relevant activities.
Having a social presence can also help market your law practice by:
- Increasing your firm’s online visitor traffic
- Increasing your brand’s visibility and recognition
- Widening your content distribution
- Lengthening the lifespan of your content
For an in-depth look, check out our page all about social media for law firms.
Google My Business/Google Business Profile
Setting up your Google My Business listing is a simple technique you can use for local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to help local prospects find your firm.
To take full advantage of this Google feature, your practice can claim and optimize your listings. Optimized listings often include high-quality photos and other branding elements for your practice. Make sure your office locations display in Google’s local search results for your firm’s services in your market area.
Attorney Directories / Digital Networks
In addition to optimizing your Google My Business profile, you should also make sure your law practice is listed in prominent online legal directories and all the associated information is correct. These include:
- Lawyers.com
- FindLaw
- Avvo
- Lawyers US Legal
- Super Lawyers
- Law Guru
- Justia
- Best Lawyers
- Law Info
- Nolo
It’s important to note, however, that some of these offer paid listings in order to put your firm higher on the list. Depending on your specific market and competition, this may either be a viable marketing option or may be too expensive for an effective ROI.
Email Marketing to Stay Top Of Mind
Email marketing is an effective, affordable way for a law practice to remain top of mind while building loyalty to your brand.
Opt-in email marketing programs are among the most efficient of all ways to maintain contact with both current clients and prospective leads. With email being used by over 90 percent of adults in the U.S., it’s also among the easiest and most cost-effective vehicles for law firm advertising.
Still Overwhelmed? Get Help With Online Law Firm Marketing From eProphet Media
For 15 years, eProphet Media has made lead generation easy for attorneys and law offices like yours. We’ll help you evaluate your market and come up with an effective internet marketing approach to consistently grow qualified leads in the fastest, most effective ways possible.
Our websites are purpose-built to grow qualified leads for law firms, no matter how large or small the practice may be. We design them from the beginning to perform well in Google and other search engines to maximize your ROI. Let us help you take control of lead-generation for your practice.
See how we attained a 300% increase in leads within one month for Family Law Attorney Wendy Alton
“Within a few weeks, I had a brand-new website and marketing that tripled the number of cases I would previously sign within the first month”
– Wendy Alton
Wendy Alton Family Law & Mediation
Online Law Office Marketing That Works
Anyone can claim they help lawyers get leads. But eProphet Media proves it.
Our 3rd-party data demonstrates we know exactly how to target the ideal clients for law offices in their specific market, increasing search visibility, traffic, and conversions.
Let us show you what’s possible for your law office. We’re ready to develop strategic online marketing that will give your practice an edge on your competition and consistently grow leads.
Let us prove to you that we’ll give you an edge on your competition and consistently grow leads with strategic online marketing for your law office.
Get Proven Results From Law Firm Internet Marketing
eProphet Media knows exactly how to harness the best online marketing methods to help you increase your qualified leads in as little as a few weeks—all without having to sign a long-term contract.
For additional information about online marketing for your law firm, contact eProphet Media at (248) 923-4590 to speak to one of our law firm marketing professionals.