Why Internet Marketing Can Be Effective
Why Internet Marketing Can Be Effective
for Even Small Law Firms
Discover the Power of Online Lawyer Marketing and How Your Practice Can Use it to Grow
The fact that you’re reading this from a web browser on your computer, tablet, or smartphone is just one example of how nearly everything now takes place online–including lawyer marketing.
So how can your law firm take advantage of our society’s shift to an online world? And how can you use digital marketing strategies to ensure your practice remains profitable and competitive in any economy?
For over 15 years, eProphet Media has helped lawyers and law firms like yours utilize digital marketing to generate qualified leads and grow their client base. Let us show how the internet can take your law firm’s marketing to the next level.
The Difference Lawyer Marketing Made During the COVID-19 Pandemic
To highlight the importance of your digital lawyer marketing efforts, take a moment to examine the impact it had on attorneys just a few years ago.
If you were an attorney who wasn’t using online marketing to attract new leads, then March 2020 marked the beginning of the end for your practice as COVID slammed the door shut on almost all leads that weren’t sourced from digital marketing.
People weren’t getting together, so the majority of word-of-mouth referrals dropped. Anyone depending on business referral groups for leads was in trouble. And attorneys who relied on marketing like billboards had almost no car or foot traffic to see their ads.
Yet, the vast majority of those who already had an effective digital marketing plan in place continued to have a steady influx of leads or even a major increase in leads as the pandemic gave the entire world a digital push online.
So what is the best way to digitally market your law firm today?
A high-quality law firm without high-quality marketing will struggle to attract new customers.
A New, Digital World
While the pandemic proved that law firms need to be consistent with their online marketing, how they should market their practice continues to change. This is thanks toan improved understanding of how a law practice captures qualified leads and grows all from a robust digital presence.
Not long ago, marketing your law firm meant two things: maintaining client satisfaction (which would lead to word-of-mouth referrals) and purchasing targeted mailers, Yellow Pages advertisements, and other print media ads.
However, these traditional marketing methods will no longer set you apart from the competition. Why not? Because people’s attention has shifted to what they read, see, and hear on the internet.
For example, think about how many smartphones even existed a decade and a half ago. Now, try and name five people that don’t have a smartphone, a social media account, etc. In fact, mobile devices now far outnumber humans, with 14 billion in use worldwide.
This drastic shift towards an online society has led to people turning to digital information sources such as Google as their primary means to find exactly what they’re looking for.
What Digital Lawyer Marketing Means Today
An online-focused world has led many lawyers to direct their marketing efforts towards internet search visibility. Afterall, 93% of the US prefers searching online to find businesses, which is why harnessing the power of online search engines like Google is such an effective way to attract qualified leads. This practice of aligning a lawyer’s online presence to what a person is searching for via Search Engine Optimization (SEO) lets law practices of all sizes generate qualified leads in their market.
But when some lawyers think of increasing visibility on search engines, they mistakenly assume their limited budget means they can’t compete with the big firms. This, however, is not true, since even solo practitioners can properly utilize digital marketing strategies to steal business from even much larger rivals.
Solo practitioners or smaller practices need to remember that Google doesn’t care about the size or your firm or its marketing budget—all it cares about is delivering the best results that match what a person is searching for.
So when a small practice is able to provide Google what it needs, even a solo practitioner on a tight budget can achieve greater search visibility than a big firm.
Other smaller firms assume they need to beat the dozens of other practices in their area by ranking at the top of Google for “family law attorney” or “employment law”. What they don’t realize is there are strategies to increase search visibility for their practice areas by focusing on a specific niche that puts them at the top of the search engine results page.
For example, a family lawyer can increase search visibility on Google for such terms as “divorces” or “second-parent adoptions”. Or an employment lawyer can be visible for “non-compete agreements” or “wage theft” to help attract clients looking for the specific services they offer.
For over 15 years, eProphet Media has directed this type of digital lawyer marketing to produce consistent, qualified leads for our clients—not to mention an ROI that only improves over time. How?
It all centers around our digital marketing strategies that we develop and execute for our clients, allowing us to help law practices of all types and sizes maximize their brand exposure and generate a growing number of qualified leads month after month. By creating and executing a customized digital lawyer marketing strategy, we put attorneys directly in front of their ideal potential clients.
But before any firm can enjoy an effective lawyer marketing strategy to capture qualified online leads, they need to first establish their marketing goals.
Law Firm Marketing Goals
Your marketing plan should include both universal goals and goals that are specific to your firm. As a general rule, the goals of law firm marketing include:
Market Penetration
• Measures how much of the
market your firm captures
• Results in an increase in the number
of cases your firm handles
Market penetration is the extent to which your individual firm captures the total legal market in your area. For example, if your firm handles 500 annual divorce cases in a county where 10,000 couples file for divorce each year, your market penetration is around 5 percent. By increasing your market penetration, you’ll directly increase the number of cases you’re asked to handle.
Improving your firm’s market penetration can often have a snowball effect when it comes to profitability. If you’re able to capture 10, 20, or even 50 percent of your local market, you’ll be able to maintain strong name recognition without having to increase your marketing investment.
Ensuring that your law firm is at the top of result pages after a Google search will give you the search visibility you need to continue to attract more clients.
Qualified Lead Generation
• Focuses on specific leads that are looking
for your type of legal services
• Attracts these clients at a lower cost per lead
In the past, law firms that didn’t want to send out advertisements to every address in their county could pay for mailing lists from private marketing firms. These lists often included the names of individuals who had recently come into an inheritance, suffered an auto accident or property damage, or who might otherwise need legal services.
Digital lawyer marketing has greatly improved this process, with lawyers now using their websites to generate these leads at a far lower cost. By including relevant information that specifically targets the leads they desire, they can attract clients in a certain area for a specific service or field of law.
Social Proof
• Uses unbiased reviews from past clients
• Increases trust in your practice for future clients
What other people say about your practice can speak volumes to potential clients. That’s why social proof like online reviews (especially Google Reviews) have become even more important in today’s digital era.
After all, many view these reviews as an unbiased source of information on your practice. So while negative online reviews may cost you potential clients, having a majority of positive reviews (along with a website that is highly visible in search results) may be the deciding factor with future leads choosing your law firm over the competition.
Brand Development
• Makes your practice appealing to
your specific type of client
• Demonstrates your value while separating
you from the competition
When it comes to attracting leads in a competitive market, brand development can provide your practice with an identity that appeals to the specific type of clients you serve without attracting the ones you don’t.
For example, one family law attorney may develop their brand to attract high-asset divorce cases that involve litigation, while another family law attorney may develop their brand around mediation work, prenups, or other cases that are settled out of court. So while these are both family law attorneys, the way they develop and represent their brand would be completely different.
A marketing firm like eProphet Media can help your practice with branding that’s clear, attention-grabbing, and effective at capturing what sets your practice apart in your market and attract the exact clients you want.
Our clients report that 90% of the leads our digital marketing work generates are qualified: people searching for the exact legal services they provide within their market.
Types of Digital Marketing
A strong digital marketing plan centers around a law firm’s brand and website. But before we get into what makes a great lawyer website, we’ll first describe various internet marketing channels available to attorneys.
Paid Ads
• Instant visibility and brand awareness
• Have to pay for each click, can have
a poor conversion rate
When lawyers need instant search visibility to generate leads, they can use paid ads to advertise their practice in strategic online locations. Often called Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, these ads allow a practice to receive instant visibility, brand awareness, and results.
However, there can also be significant drawbacks with paid ads—the biggest one being that you have to pay each time a searcher clicks on your ad. This cost per click can range anywhere from $5 up to $300 for various practice areas and markets.
On top of that heavy expense, there can also be a poor conversion rate—the percentage of people who contact you for your legal services—with paid ads. On average, only 4% of those who click on a paid ad will contact that lawyer and they may not be a qualified lead.
For further insights gathered over 15 years by a digital marketing professional, see our paid ads article.
Social Media
• Can improve brand awareness, improve client confidence
• May make your practice look less significant
An effective social media presence can help lawyers further develop a relationship with their future clients, promote trust and confidence in their practice, and help keep them at the top of their audience’s minds.
However, it should be noted that no social media presence is better than a weak social media presence. For example, if a practice only has a handful of followers and even fewer likes or shares of their posts, their pages will certainly fail to create a trustworthy, confidence-inspiring impression.
Social media can also be an effective branding tool to help followers understand who the law firm is, further cementing their position as a trusted source of legal help in a particular area.
For an in-depth look at the right way for lawyers to use social media, see our article all about social media for law firms.
Email Marketing
• Helps your practice remain top-of-mind for clients
• May not attract many new leads
Between your roster of current and former clients and the contact information input from those who visit your website, you may already have a ready-made email marketing list. Utilize this list to remain top-of-mind by sending out monthly, quarterly, or biennial emails.
You can include relevant information to your clients such as changes in the law or how you’ve helped others like them, always making sure to include a closing call-to-action that encourages them to contact you for more information.
Legal Directory Sites
• Can place your firm in front of thousands of viewers
• May be expensive, with a high cost-per-lead
Industry sites like Avvo, FindLaw, Martindale, and other online legal directories often appear whenever someone types in a broad phrase like “divorce lawyers near me.”
By paying to have your law practice appear at the top of these legal directory sites can put your name in front of thousands of website viewers each month.
However, there are pros and cons to paying for placement on these sites. While they may deliver increased visibility quickly, they can be also be costly. Not only that, but many lawyers struggle to choose which directory and categories are worth their time and marketing dollars. On top of this money and effort, these sites still don’t filter unqualified leads.
Website
• Elevates your brand and authority, filters out unqualified leads
• Compliments every other marketing effort
All of the above digital marketing methods will fall flat if there’s not a well-executed website for your law firm in place. Why?
No matter what your practice is, your end goal for every marketing effort is for qualified leads to contact you–which is going to take place via your website. It’s where search engines like Google will direct them, it’s what they will look up to see who you are and what you’re all about, and it’s what social media, email, affiliate advertising, etc. will all use to have viewers reach out to you.
What does an effective lawyer website look like?
It first needs to have a design and content that “converts”–that motivates readers to contact you via form submission, email, or phone. This will happen if the website visitor feels that you are the solution to their legal problem, which is why your website should establish your authority, understanding, and ability to provide clients like them with success.
An effective lawyer website must also be optimized to load and display correctly on multiple devices. This means that a client can easily view your content on their computer, tablet, or smartphone. It also needs to have a clear, intuitive design that allows users to easily navigate its pages.
SEO
• Most effective way to attract qualified leads
• Best ROI of any marketing channel
Not only should the design of a lawyer’s website encourage visitors to contact them, but it also must be highly visible in search engine results to attract qualified leads. After all, 87% of leads sign up with the first lawyer they contact, which is likely to be among the top few on the first search engine results page (SERP).
Because search engines are continuously refining their search algorithms, a lawyer website’s SEO strategy needs to be regularly updated to maintain search visibility and draw in new clients.
However, this SEO optimization—the practice of aligning a lawyer’s website with search engine standards to appear at the top of their results—is well worth it, providing the best ROI of any type of digital lawyer marketing. For example, clients of eProphet Media report that 90% of leads from our SEO efforts are qualified leads.
Get Experienced Help With Online Lawyer Marketing From eProphet Media
Since 2007, eProphet Media has been helping attorneys and law firms consistently generate qualified leads by creating and refining a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for each of our clients.
From day one, we take a research-based approach to target their unique market and increase search engine visibility. From there, we constantly monitor results and adjust our efforts, all while keeping in contact with our clients so they understand what’s going as we deliver the best ROI for their digital marketing investment.
Law Office Marketing That Works
Our goal is that each client receives a minimum 5x ROI from the amount they pay us to increase their qualified leads. How long does that take? Our clients often start to see a marked increase in qualified leads in just a few weeks, which they’re able to quickly monitor themselves thanks to our efforts help them understand what’s happening via third party tools and reporting that’s easy to understand.
See for yourself what our digital lawyer marketing strategies have accomplished for clients like. We’ve included third party data that demonstrates how we’ve helped our clients increase their signed clients by over 300% in their first month working with us.
Today, law firms are able to use their websites to generate these leads at a far lower cost.
Get the Marketing Results You Need to Keep Growing
We’ve helped lawyers and law firms of all shapes and sizes across the country grow their practice, and we want to help you too.
To see if our lawyer marketing experience is a good fit for your law practice, give us a call.