There are a lot of legal restrictions that don’t allow lawyers to advertise themselves the way a marketer or plumber would.
Lawyers don’t have it easy when it comes to advertising their services. Due to the specifics of the profession, there are many restrictions on how lawyers can promote themselves both online and offline.
For example, lawyers can’t say there are experts in any legal domain unless you have been certified by a certifying institution.
They also have to be careful about how they describe their services — saying services are the best or the most affordable is a clear breach of law and can get them in trouble.
So how can you use digital marketing to reach more people in need of your legal services without breaking the law?
We are explaining possible ways in this article.
1. Use client testimonials
A client testimonial posted online can have a tremendous effect on people’s choice. When looking for a lawyer online, people often want to read in-depth reviews and check the average score of a law firm.
They often do it by going to a firm’s Google My Business account.
If you want to collect more testimonials, you have to remember about one thing. Providing any compensation for a positive testimonial is illegal, but no one told you can’t ask for a review (without offering a reward). So when is the best moment to ask for one?
It’s best to reach out to a client when they are satisfied with your work. Have you just won their case in court and they are excited about it? This is the time you clients are the most likely to provide positive testimonials.
You can collect reviews by writing an email with a request or even automate review collection with your CRM.
2. Rely on word of mouth
Experienced lawyers often rely on referrals and word of mouth. While it shouldn’t necessarily be your core channel for client acquisition, referrals can definitely be a significant one.
Choosing a lawyer is not like picking a restaurant to dine — it’s a much more important decision. That’s why people often rely on the referrals from friends or their close circle of acquaintances — this way, they reduce the risk of making the wrong decision.
Having people to refer your services for free is possible only if you deliver a lot of value for them. It often means winning their case in court and providing excellent service when helping with the case.
What does the latter mean? It means being available when your client needs you, answering all questions when they appear, being considerate, and nice during the whole process.
Whenever you get a referral from a client, don’t hesitate to thank them — a small sign of gratitude will reinforce their behavior and get them to refer your firm in the future.
But clients are not the only ones that can refer you. It’s also other lawyers who can bring you new clients. That’s why it’s worth working with the lawyers who have a different specialization than you do.
3. Build an optimized website
Your website is one of the ways to stand out among other law firms. You can use your website to describe your work process, company’s values, successful cases, and encourage clients to sign up for a discovery call.
However, launching a website won’t bring lots of traffic in the beginning, and will require a lot of effort, so it’s rational to hire dedicated web developers. Appearing in Google top page results requires extensive optimization of a newly created website. You have to follow the best SEO practices such as using long-tail keywords across pages or LSI keywords.
Long-tail keywords are longer than typical keywords you would pick for your page. For example, instead of a keyword “divorce lawyer”, you could use a long-term keyword “divorce lawyer in New York City”.
LSI keywords are semantically-related to the topic. Here are some examples of such keywords: “a lawyer dealing with divorce cases”, “divorce lawyer”, “divorce case lawyer”.
4. Set up your account on Google My Business
Creating an account on Google My Business helps reach clients locally. Imagine you were looking for intellectual rights lawyers in NYC. Type the phrase “intellectual rights lawyers New York City”.
In your Google My Business account, you can share your location and the area where you want your Google profile to be displayed. You can add images that present your firm or publish the most frequently asked questions.
Then it’s important to SEO optimize the lists with citation building and leverage local link building strategies to increase your chances of showing up in the top 3 of the local map pack.
Having a Google My Business account also lets your client publish public reviews about your firm.
5. Share your expertise on a blog
Content marketing can be a powerful tool in a lawyer’s hand that helps build trust with new potential clients.
You can cover topics that your clients usually search to get started with your content marketing strategy. The idea here is to provide people with the information they are looking for online when having a certain problem you can resolve as a lawyer.
Imagine you deal with family law and someone is looking for information about child custody . By covering the topics of custody in depth, you can attract the audience that is looking to research the topic and can potentially work with you to get their rights protected in the court.
When writing your articles, make sure you optimize your blog posts so they rank well on Google. There are various services that can help you integrate the most important keywords in your content, optimize images, and provide suggestions on article structure.
6. Increase your presence on Facebook
Many businesses can no longer benefit by creating a business page on Facebook and posting content there. The Facebook algorithms don’t give business posts significant reach. Guess what — they just want you to pay for the ads.
That’s why having a consistent social media strategy and posting new posts a few times per week might not pay off in the long run. But there is another way you can benefit from being on social media — groups.
Look for Facebook groups that bring together people around a specific problem that you solve.
Imagine you are a divorce lawyer. Look for groups where people discuss divorce questions. Monitor users’ posts and contribute with your expertise. Try to be as helpful as possible and provide value to group members.
This way, you can establish trust with the group audience. As a result, if they decide to hire a lawyer, they will also consider you as you provided help to them in the past.
7. Set up a PPC campaign on Google
It takes a lot of time to position your website so that you appear in the first position in the search results on Google. But here is a thing — you can do it much faster if you launch a Google Adwords campaign.
By creating high-quality ad texts and choosing the right keywords to target, your page will appear as number one on a specific user query in a matter of a few minutes.
All you have to do is set your daily budget, write ads that contain the right keywords, and choose the keywords on which you want your ads to appear. It’s that simple!
Wrapping up
Lawyers are limited in their choices for advertising their services. There are a lot of legal restrictions that don’t allow lawyers to advertise themselves the way a marketer or plumber would.
But there are still some ways available that can bring you plenty of clients. So here you go — you have read some tips on how to launch your successful marketing campaign for a law firm. It’s time to get down to action!
Join the conversation!