What changes would you like to see in your law firm’s marketing strategy? 

Are you trying to get more clients, or position your law firm above your competitors? 

Trick question! Of course, you want both, and developing your law firm’s marketing strategy will get you there.

The problem is, many law firms (new and old) don’t have a dedicated marketing department. This likely means the important online marketing work is the responsibility of a junior partner or administrative assistant with already too much on their plate.

At Kaleidico, we’ve been working for over 15 years in online marketing, since the birth of Google Ads. We’ll gladly share our secrets with you to kickstart your law firm marketing strategy. 

Once you start to see the results coming in, you may want to hire an experienced digital marketing agency to help you truly optimize your results.

Until then, check out our complete guide to help your law firm establish a strong online presence. 

The sooner you start, the sooner you will see the results.

What is a Law Firm Marketing Strategy?

Your law firm’s marketing strategy is the game plan that spells out exactly how your company will reach prospective clients online and convert them into paying clients.

Your plan needs to include specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based (SMART) goals, such as: 

• Increase conversions by X%
• Double web traffic in X amount of time
• Generate X% more leads
• Adding X amount of backlinks to the website 
• Improve Google Rank by X%
• Get X amount of clients per month from website and ads

As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” 

Don’t be like Alice. Have a clear road map to exactly where you’re trying to go and the results you want to see. Only then can you know if you were successful or not in your attempt.

The Ultimate Goal of Marketing Strategy — More Leads and More Business

For the sake of clarity, when we mention marketing strategy in this article, we’re referring mostly to online marketing. Physical and direct marketing have their place, but online marketing will get you better and longer-lasting results.

What’s the ultimate goal of your law firm marketing strategy? To grow your business and get more clients.

But, in order to attract high-quality leads who convert into paying clients, you’ll first need to define:

• Who your target audience and demographic is
• The “pain points” or problems of your audience 
• Where your audience spends their time online
• What search terms or queries they are actively searching for
• Who your competitors are

What are the Components of Law Firm Marketing?

Your law firm’s website will act as the main hub that all of your marketing components enhance or funnel into. Once there, you can encourage visitors to fill out a contact form to fuel your business.

To have a successful website and web presence, you’ll need to focus on these key components:

Branding

Your branding is the visual representation of your company’s values and authority.

If you have outdated branding, your audience may think your company is stuck in the past, which can be disconcerting for somebody looking for up-to-date legal advice.

Branding is more than just designing a logo, but also choosing your own distinctive typeface, colors, and wording that can make a strong impression on your audience in less than a second after viewing.

Web Design

I’m sorry to say this, but most legal websites’ web design is not great. 

Many are clunky, filled with useless sliding header images, too many pop-up ads, and are not mobile-friendly at all (half of Google’s searches are done on mobile phones).

Your website is another visual representation of your company’s values and competency. 

If your website is thoughtfully designed and crafted, your audience will assume your firm is equally thoughtful and they will stay on your website, and potentially fill out a form.

But if your website is outdated, unattractive, or just doesn’t work, your visitors will leave your page immediately, and probably never return.

Content Marketing/Blogging

Publishing blogs regularly is the secret to getting more web traffic.

When people search for legal advice on Google, it’s the blog posts that appear in the search results that ultimately pull people farther down the rabbit hole. 

Here’s a tip: write blogs related to your law firm’s practice areas. Start with “how-to” articles, or explanatory articles that give your audience the answers they need — and then place a call-to-action at the bottom of your article saying “Contact us for more information.”

Better yet, make sure every page of your website has a contact form so your readers are reminded to fill out their contact info.

PPC

Don’t have time to wait for the blog posts to bring in web visitors? Give your marketing efforts some extra fuel by purchasing pay-per-click ads.

PPC ads allow you to bid on keywords, e.g. “malpractice law firm”, so that every time that term is searched, your website’s ad will appear at the top of Google’s search results.

Unlike blogs, which take a few weeks to be put into Google’s searches, PPC ads can bring in traffic immediately to your website.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) basically means making your website easy for Google to index (to put into their search results).

But it’s not as easy as just typing “law firm” a million times on your home page. Google’s algorithms are more clever than that. 

However, with blogging (which is closely related to SEO), you can essentially add more of these keywords to your website in a legitimate way that improves your website’s Google ranking.

Email Marketing

Leads collected from your website’s forms can be added to your email marketing platform, such as MailChimp, so that every time you publish a new blog on your website, you can send out a mass email to your audience. 

Remember earlier how I was disparaging direct mailers? It’s because email marketing is so much more efficient, cheaper, and quicker. 

Steps for Marketing Your Law Firm

As I mentioned before, you must come up with specific goals you’re trying to reach before you start marketing. That’s the only way you can truly know if your tactics are successful.

That being said, if you’re looking to jumpstart change immediately within your company’s web presence, start with these steps.

Update Your Branding

If your company’s logo has a significant history, or is easily recognizable, then you may not want to scrap it. 

In these instances, a branding refresh could be useful. Making small tweaks here and there can modernize your logo to look fresh and current and stand out from your competitors.

Unsure of how people view your logo and branding? Survey your friends and colleagues to get their honest opinion.

Build Your Website

Study your competitors’ websites to see what you like and don’t like, and use that as a starting point. 

There are universal patterns all web users have become accustomed to, such as home pages, contact forms, drop-down menus, and mobile-responsive design.

If your goal is to generate more leads, then be sure to add clear calls-to-action and have progressive style forms accessible on every page to capture leads at any moment.

Find a Marketing Budget

How much are you willing to spend monthly on PPC ads or writing blogs? 

You may already know this, or not, but PPC legal keywords in Google are some of the most competitive and sought-after.

Your industry space, geographical location, and competition will help dictate the appropriate monthly budget based on your predetermined goals.

Whatever budget you start with, stick with it for at least a month so you can collect enough data as a starting point. Then feel free to make tweaks after that.

Create Content

Once you have a nice website, you’ll need to constantly fill it with new blog posts. That’s the real secret to getting more traffic. Write more blogs. Constantly. And be smart about choosing which keywords you’re targeting.

You may consider hiring SEO experts, or a digital marketing firm, who can study your competitors’ websites and PPC ads so you can see exactly which keywords they’re writing for, so you can see the keywords they’ve missed to get your competitive advantage.

Tools for Success

Your law firm’s marketing strategy comprises many software platforms, from website builders to analytics tools. The following are some of our favorite tools we use at Kaleidico.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a website tracking tool that tells you exactly how many people visited your website, how long they stayed on your website, which articles they read, and which search terms brought them to your website. 

This platform is vast, and probably gives you too much information, but that’s okay, because in time you’ll understand what the data is telling you.

WordPress

Building websites used to be really hard. Now it’s much simpler.

WordPress is the most commonly used web builder, and it’s basically a “drag and drop” type of website builder meant for beginners and has many templates available.

However, experienced web developers also use WordPress to customize websites to any design they like. 

At Kaleidico, all of our websites are built using WordPress, and we can’t recommend it enough.

MailChimp, Drip, and Other Email Marketing Platforms

You could use Gmail, Outlook, or whatever email service your law firm is currently using to send out mass emails, but it’s likely not going to have the features that MailChimp or Drip have.

Also, because MailChimp and Drip are used for sending bulk emails, it keeps your professional email account from getting flagged for spam. 

That’s the last thing you want — for your emails sent to automatically land in the spam folder of your recipients. 

Here’s a dirty secret: email marketing platforms tell you when somebody opened up your email. They also tell you how many times that email has been opened. 

Develop Marketing Strategy for Your Law Firm with Kaleidico

We gave you a lot of information today about marketing strategy for your law firm. It’s a lot to take in and even more to actually implement. Let Kaleidico help. 

Kaleidico is a lead generation agency for law firms, mortgage lenders, and fintech.

We and our partners specialize in branding, web design, content marketing, SEO, PPC, and email marketing.

Schedule a 15-30 minute discovery session to see how Kaleidico can help you achieve your marketing goals.

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