In a crowded legal space with stringent regulatory restrictions, stiff competition and fast changing technology, it is nearly impossible to boost a firm’s performance without identifying the right strategies to promote a law firm and get it from obscurity to visibility.
You might feel that with the level of competition in the industry, it is impossible to evolve a top tier law firm in terms of visibility but; with the right tools and insights, almost any lawyer can transform a firm from oblivion to authority and influence.
Having worked with a number of firms to reposition their brand for visibility, we have evolved a number of strategies that can deliver on results repeatedly, regardless of the specific goals. And in this guide, I’ll be sharing some of these strategies and how you can use them to promote your law firm online.
Create a Growth Goal
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Promoting a law firm requires a very intentional plan of action. And it is difficult to approach this without evolving a specific growth goal. This is regardless of whether you’ll be doing it by yourself or through a third party.
You need a clear growth goal that outlines the specific outcomes you plan to achieve with your law firm marketing. These growth goals will could involve things like expected online visibility over six months, website visits, brand mentions or even actual client acquisition over a specified period of time.
Having this in place does not merely guide your promotion strategies, it gives you a framework to measure your outcomes clearly and more accurately when the promotion is completely implemented.
Now, while creating your growth goal, it is important to build it around your overall goal as a firm. So if your goal as a firm is to reposition your brand as the leading law firm in a particular niche like technology law for example, you have to include this as a core part of your growth goal.
At the end of the day, you must bear in mind that the plan is not just to promote a law firm but to evolve a holistic plan to get your firm from where it is currently to where it can be.
Get a Website
A website is a powerful tool to build a strong online presence, gain new clients and of course new briefs. This is why you must get a website as a law firm, if you’re not already having one in place.
To promote a law firm using a website, you need a website that is not only easy to navigate for users but one that clearly outlines your brand, what makes it stand out, your services, clients and testimonials about your previous services.
Specifically, your law firm website should clearly list out your area of practice as pages on the website. For each of these pages, you want to use a compelling description to highlight your service, indicating why a potential lead should work with your firm.
For the home page, you’ll use a combination of sharp and captivating images, while using text that employs powerful adjectives to communicate your brand, services and practice areas holistically.
Additionally, to get the most out of website focused law firm marketing, make your website mobile friendly, easy to access from different devices and fast loading for all users.
Optimize for Visibility
While creating a website can serve as a pathway to build a strong online presence for a law firm, to actually achieve your online visibility potentials, you must take steps to optimize your website for visibility.
There are different ways to go about optimizing your website for search visibility which must involve the following:
- On Page Optimization: This is a search engine optimization that’s focused on optimizing the content and structure of your law firm website’s pages to show up more prominently on the search engine. Understanding and using your keywords strategically is very important for on-page optimization.
- Off Page Optimization: Off Page search engine optimization are external strategies aimed at building credibility and authority for your website using strategic link building procedures. It is an important strategy that will work effectively for your search engine optimization and brand positioning. It includes using mechanisms like Backlink Building, Guest Posting, and Social Media Engagement etc. to promote a law firm website across other platforms.
- Technical Optimization: Technical search engine optimization ensures that your website is technically prepared for search engine indexing, fast loading page delivery for users and easily compatible for mobile users while offering a seamless experience for users with other devices.
- Local Optimization: Local Search Optimization is a very important strategy that can get your website fully optimize to target clients looking for a specific legal services in a particular region or geographical area. This is even more important especially considering the jurisprudential nature of the law and its application.
Depending on your goals and status, there are a lot more areas to look into outside these, when it comes to search engine optimization. Having worked with a number of law firms to reposition their visibility, using these strategies, I always advise firms to start with a combination of these and a handful of other strategies to push organic visibility online.
Fix your Social Media
According to statistics, the social media has about 5 billion combined users globally. This staggering stats places the social media as a viable platform to promote a law firm either directly or indirectly. And a number of law form leads are keying into this.
There are so many was to promote your law firm on the social media. And just like the firms that are already using this approach, you can start with either of the following:
- Setting up a handle: Identify the social media platforms with the largest number of your target audience, set up a page with your brand name, logo, bio and other details on that platform. You don’t have to be on all platforms. Just a few platform is enough to get started.
- Creating and Posting: It is not enough to create a social media page for your law firm, you want to create and post content on the page at intervals, engage with your audience and build the page gradually. Your content must be relevant to your niche and the needs of your target audience.
- Sharing Content: At intervals, share and post links from your website content on your social media handles. Doing this will attract a better visibility to the post, new readers to your website and ultimately, engagement on your posts.
- Using Paid Advertising: Outside attracting organic visibility, different social media platforms have specific options for paid promotions. Using this option can attract followers and engagement to your pages while you’re gradually building it up for a larger audience. This can be very useful especially when you’re just starting out with social media marketing.
In addition to this, you must pay attention to understudying and reviewing your social media marketing outcomes at intervals so that you can proactively engage only the strategies that will deliver on your outcomes consistently.
Create Content
In digital marketing, content is currency. Regardless of its source, it is the universal language of the web and to create a remarkable footprint online, you need a content marketing strategy that will deliver on high quality content that makes your brand stand out.
Since the goal is to promote a law firm, your content strategy will be built around your area of practice, target audience interests and of course, the overall goal of the firm for the particular period. We can guide you on how to set this up if you reach out here.
Additionally, you must be big on quality. With the current clamp down on low value and AI generated content by the search engines, you want to get focused on creating highly valuable content aimed at addressing the needs of your target audience while positioning your brand as capable of solving the problem.
Furthermore, you want to amplify your content for visibility. This means you’ll take measures to use your keywords and search phrases strategically across the content, optimize the meta tags and description properly and also include all necessary internal and external links that will improve your search engine optimization positioning.
Finally, focus on adding value to your audience. Your content has to be either entertaining, informative, educational etc. to get the best outcomes. Also, you must take necessary measures to research before creating, edit and format before posting and promote and share after publishing.
Get on Paid Promotion
Paid promotion is a staple for easy visibility. Especially for law firms with the budget. And there are always a bouquet of options, platforms and strategies to choose from.
As a brand, you can get on paid advertising to promote a law firm, using any of the options below:
- Social Media Advertising: Different social media platforms do offer varying options for users to advertise and promote their services at a fee. Depending on your preferred platform, you can use one of these to promote your law firm. A good start could be advertising on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn but your ultimate choice will have to depend on your target audience.
- Search Engine Advertising: Search engine providers like Google, Bing etc. do offer a Pay Per Click Advertising option that enables brands to advertise on their platform. Since this is usually an intent based search, it potentially can generate a decent result however it can be pricey, depending on certain factors.
- Sponsored Advertising: This could involve advertising on specific platforms with a decent audience relevant to your target audience. Your adverts could be placed in the form of banners, content or sponsored programs etc. and this advertising could be placed on leading news websites, forums etc.
- Sponsored Content: With this option, sponsored content about your law firm, guest posts, or partnership content could be placed strategically on leading websites. This should be done in a way that is complaint with regulatory requirement for legal practitioner’s advertising.
One major advantage of paid advertising is that it can deliver on a decent amount of visibility and you can eventually build on this, leading to a faster growth, compared to building organic visibility from scratch.
Review, Rinse & Repeat
As you take on specific strategies to promote a law firm website online, you’ll find that sometimes you need to change your approach to get better outcomes.
This is why you have to take out time to review your strategies. Find out, are your methods delivering on your expected outcomes? This is an important step you must be taking at intervals.
Where a certain strategy is not delivering on results, you have to review and use a different strategy entirely. Where it does deliver on results, find better ways to make it even more effective.
You need to keep in mind that technology is very dynamic. Some ideas you used in promoting a firm two years ago may become outdated this year. This is why you must stay updated to ensure that your strategies are always delivering as expected.
Also, understudy the industry to find trends that can be beneficial. This will get your firm at par with other top performing law firms and with that in place, you stand a better chance at competing with them.
Final Words
Your law firm deserves to be seen. Smaller law firms have levelled up their presence to create remarkable visibility because they were able to pivot using strategic law firm marketing ideas that delivered. And you can do the same.
As a brand seeking to enjoy increased visibility, you do not only have to implement the strategies you just learned about today, you want to work with experienced legal technology experts like our team to ensure that your visibility goals are delivered as expected just as your brand is seen. Reach out to us here.
Now, it’s over to you. What are your major challenges when it comes to promoting a law firm online? Drop your comments below.
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