9 Ways Law Firms Can Leverage the Internet to Gain Clients

For most law firms, law firm marketing is something that is overlooked and underestimated.

However, boosting your online presence isn’t something that you should ignore. Prospective clients are doing most of their research online in whatever legal situation they’re in, and ultimately, find the law firm that they’ll engage.

Without a doubt, developing an online strategy takes a lot of time and energy. Results might even take longer.

But first and foremost, you need to have a healthy supply of high-quality leads. You also need excited clients that are more than willing to work with you.

But where exactly do you start? How do you get more clients to your law firm?

In this post, we’ll talk about the ways law firms can leverage the Internet to ultimately get more clients.

1) Build a Website

The website that you need to build must be more than just a homepage, contact us, or about page. It should also be an effective tool to convert prospective visitors into customers.

So when it comes to designing your site, ask yourself the following questions: What is my target audience looking for when searching for a law firm? How can I make my site the best legal resource out there?

Ideally, your website should:

• Have clear messaging and branding.
• Loads fast. most of your prospective clients who are looking for information want to find it immediately.
• Have easy navigation, no matter what device it’s being viewed on.

Also, if you think that an old website will do it for your firm, then you need to think again.

In fact, it only just takes two-tenths of a second for somebody to form a first impression the moment they land on your site. Because of that tight timeframe, making an excellent first impression should be one of the top priorities of your business.

If you turn up in an initial meeting with a client in a worn-out suit, you probably have a lesser chance of winning them over like you would if you dressed your best from head to toe.

The same principle applies to your website. If it looks like it belonged in 1997, you’re unlikely going to form a positive first impression with your audience.

So, would you describe your site as modern-looking, professionally designed, and aligned with what people expect from your site? If you’re not sure, then it’s time to make a change.

2) Practice Local SEO

When it comes to searching for information, people’s initial instincts nowadays is to look it up online and start with a search engine like Google.

So, if you want to generate more leads for your business, you need to improve your visibility through search results.

Keep in mind that before you begin your SEO efforts, make sure that you’re targeting the right keywords. Every page on your site should target about 1 to 3 keywords.

Also, you need to assess your keywords based on a local volume, relevance, and competitiveness.

If it’s not relevant enough, people won’t be clicking, and it’s quite hard to get on the top spot. If the keyword that you chose is too competitive, then you’ll be fighting a battle that you can’t win.

On that note, don’t target keywords that rarely search form as well.

As soon as you identified your keywords, it’s now time to optimize your site. Here are some on-page SEO tasks for law firms:

• For every segment, design a landing page. For instance, if you’re doing Family Law, then it should be shown on the top page. Additionally, you should also have subpages like Custody, Divorce, and Child Support.
• Image ALT tags and heading tags should be optimized and incorporated into the keywords of every page.
• There should be an internal linking structure. Let’s say, you specialize in Family Law. Therefore, there should be links to the “Divorce” and “Child Support” pages as well.
• There should be separate landing pages for every location. A lot of law firms have more than one office. So, there should have a location and contact page for each.
• Schema mark-up. This helps search engines understand various content.

3) Implement Content Marketing

According to Amaze Law, “Creating a strong content marketing strategy helps you create a positive online reputation, which is beneficial for your SEO efforts. An effective way to make this happen is to create credible backlinks. Make content on your site which points to other pages to serve as additional resources, like blog posts and press releases.”

Another effective way to add value is to contribute some of your content with other websites. Doing so helps drive traffic back to your site. It also provides your audience with helpful and relevant information. That way, you can simultaneously build trust with them.

4) Conduct A/B Testing

One of the most popular tactics used by online marketing teams is to A/B test their online marketing content. It usually serves two (or three) treatments of a web page to a relevant audience.

Then, it determines which of these treatments are effective and causes the majority of the target audience to take action.

Whether it’s watching a video, downloading a whitepaper, going to a webinar, and so on.

5) Ride in Trend Jacking

Despite its illegal sounding name, trend jacking is one of the most popular techniques that most content marketers have been using for years. All you have to do is to create content based on a trending topic.

You’d see this trend happening on social media, mostly on Twitter, where brand usually use a trending hashtag.

Keep in mind, though, that if you go this route, you should do your homework properly first. Or else, it could potentially backfire. Also, see to it that this trend perfectly suits your brand voice and demographic.

For instance, if you’re a lawyer that specializes in elderly care, would you opt to use the latest pop culture hashtag? Of course, not!

6) Develop a Solid Social Media Presence

Whether you want to gain more clients or gain credibility online as a lawyer, LinkedIn and Facebook are the two most vital social media channels that you need to develop a solid presence on.

Here are the types of content that you can use on social media:

• Sharing recent wins, positive reviews, and industry accolades: Reviews help a client decide whether they trust you enough to solve or handle their legal woes. Facebook and Google are considered credible review sources. Aside from that, you can share quotes from your previous clients on your newsfeed on social media.
• Sharing valuable content and useful information: Write your blog posts, and share them on social media to show how passionate and committed you are to the law.
• Show your commitment to give back to the local community: Social media is an excellent platform to show how dedicated you are with the local community.
• Answer FAQs that are related to your area of practice: This is a great way to start your blog and social media posts. You can even try out a Facebook Live interview.

7) Utilize PR Distribution

Depending on your expertise, there are many creative ways that you can show off knowledge in PR and get free backlinks.

For instance, you can sign up for HARO, which also stands for “Help a Reporter Out.” You’ll be getting daily blasts from reporters that are looking for credible sources. It’s an effective way to get your name out there, even if you don’t get a backlink in return.

Aside from that, you can also reach out to bloggers and other media who will use your legal expertise in their upcoming material, which can be an invaluable asset for you later on.

8) Engage Influencers

A lot of bloggers and journalists produce massive content for the audience that follows them and trusts their opinion. By engaging with these influencers, it can help establish yourself to a relevant set of audience.

But how can your firm make this possible? Well, you can utilize a third-party distribution service.

This platform supplies content to bloggers and journalists that comes from a credible source. You can also utilize platforms that get experts (example lawyers) and then quoted by these relevant influencers.

9) Refine Your Strategies to Boost Your Results

For any law firm marketing strategies, measurement is the key to success.

Analytics will help you understand bounce rates, click-through rates, and traffic sources. It could also help you delve deeper with your site navigation refinement.

Not to mention, Analytics gives you invaluable data about your paid and organic search campaigns. It helps you improve your marketing strategies by creating successful approaches while maximizing your budget.

Final Thoughts

The Internet is constantly changing. You can go on setting a campaign or strategy and then forget all about it.

Things will continuously change, that’s for sure. Even the best ranking law firms in the area aren’t immune to new competition.

That’s why you need to be proactive with your law firm marketing efforts. You always need to constantly work at it. Doing so not only helps you sustain your marketing tactics, but it will also generate positive results, in the long run.

Author Bio

[thrive_testimonial name=”” company=”” image=”https://dsim.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/bryan-mixon.png”]Bryan Mixon is the owner of Amaze Law, the website building for solo and small firm attorneys. Bryan has been building websites since 1999 and has spent his last four years helping companies like HubSpot, Mill33 and LivingSocial. Bryan knows first hand how difficult it can be for small business owners to get their digital marketing off the ground, so he built AmazeLaw as a super-simple place for solo attorneys to build their sites, collect leads and get on with their days of doing lawyerly things.[/thrive_testimonial]