Are you looking to get more customers for your legal firm? Check out our top 10 lawyer marketing strategies for 2023!
We are going to go through the “top 10 lawyer marketing strategies” to help you grow your firm right now! There are thousands of different guides out there but we will try to keep this as straightforward as possible with only the most effective methods.
*First thing first there are a number of legal challenges you will likely already know about, but if you are an agency looking for strategies make sure you get legal advice before running any campaigns.
1. Build Your Lawyer Marketing Plan
Who are your clients? What is your goal? Where would you be happy with the business being in 12 months? What will you budget for these activities?
Mission Statement
Get new clients? Open a new office? Get higher net worth clients?
Strategies
How do you plan to kick these goals? What channels will you use? Note: this can change through the year but without a basic outline you might as well close your eyes and prey.
Metrics / KPIs
How will you determine if you have achieved your goals? Hint: this is the most important part!
Theses are some really important KPIs that we generally use:
- Leads (anybody who engages with your business)
- Cost Per Lead
- Customers (anybody who engages your service)
- Cost Per Customer
- Average Customer Order
- Lifetime Customer Value
- Revenue
- Profit
2. Google My Business (GMB) / Local SEO
The Google My Business (GMB) is a free listing from Google which can drive business to you right now! The 3 or 4 pack can drive more business than almost any strategy on this list pretty easily, anything you can do to improve your ranking you absolutely should! Best part is, it’s not really that hard!
Setting Up & Optimising Your Legal Firm GMB:
- Create a GMB for your lawyer business Google My Business.
- Important to note you will need ownership information to verify the listing. This is generally:
- Google account
- ASIC registration
- Complete every single section within the profile. This includes primary and secondary categories.
- Add at least 10 photos (real photos of the people within the business).
- You have finished optimising your profile, that’s almost all there is in terms of local SEO.
- GET POSITIVE REVIEWS & DON’T GET NEGATIVE REVIEWS
3. Get On Online Directories
This works better if you have a website because it will provide a boost for your SEO with that said assuming you have an active GMB profile (because you followed step 2) you should see a boost.
To make things even easier we have created an extensive list of all the local Australian directories over here: List Of FREE Australian SEO Directories For Citations To Help Your SEO.
4. Build A Website (The Right Way)
Everyone knows what a website is these days and the importance of having one (which at the very least should look professional). The website should act as an extension of your brand and business. The best way to think about it is like this, a website is similar to a window on a shop, it gives your potential customers a chance to look in and see what you’re about.
Here is where it gets tricky, a website can cost as little as $600 and as much as $2.5m depending on what the scope of work is. We’re not suggesting that you spend $2.5m on a website, but we are going to give you some of the critical things that will make the investment worth it in the long run.
Essentially features of a legal website:
- Loads quickly (ideally under 3 seconds)
- Easy to navigate
- Responsive (built for mobile first)
- Has several call to actions (things that engage with visitors & push them to contact the business and become a precious “Lead”). These will often be offers with a tigger so a visitor can execute like 15% off when you call now with a button to call or something like this:
- Has a phone number (the number of sites without this is shocking, especially when we all know phone leads are the best leads)
- High quality content (written by a professional copywriter who has experience working with legal companies due to the nuances around law in Australia). With the recent technological advancements it’s never been easier to create quality content, we highly recommend using an SEO tool to optimise the content as it’s created.
- Has a site structure that’s been built with search engine optimisation in mind. This means one page per service, one page per location, one page per lawyer, etc. Note having multiple pages creates a more complex site and you should be aiming for a MAX depth of 5 levels. For example:
- Homepage > All Services > Family Law > Property Settlement
- High quality images (hire a photographer to create content for the site, best part is you will need it later for thousands of other things and it’s always handy to have).
- SLS which is the https:// not the older http:// is essential today and it’s free so there is no reason you shouldn’t have the green padlock of approval.
- Blog (content can and should drive a large number of visitors to your site who are in the information seeking stage, there is no better way to showcase yourself than to have the highest quality content).
Don’t do this with your website:
- Beat around the bush in terms of providing what the visitor wants relative to their search. The attention span of humans has decreased to less than 2 seconds. “Give the people what they want, and quickly!”
- Not use a tool to ensure that your content is captivating and created correctly. We would recommend Surfer (not a paid affiliate link, it’s just that good!)
- Not design the website with mobile in mind (more than 60% of searches are on mobiles now).
- Cheap out on a copywriter (you will just end up re-doing it again later).
- Upload images that are 40 mb in size each. We recommend using an image compression tool and converting all your images to the latest format called “WebP”. This will drastically reduce load times.
- Use stock images.
5. Create Content For Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
We’re not going to go into what SEO is in this article because frankly it’s too big of a task to even begin to summarise. With that said we do have a number of other resources that you can reference to get some idea such as SEO Services, What Are Search Engines And How To Use Them To Your Advantage, along with lots more on our blog.
What you do need to know is that content (and more specifically, high quality content) is the bread and butter when it comes to search engine optimisation. Having the best quality content means that you will be at the top of the magic list inside the search engines and it means when people “Google” stuff you will show up!
So I Need Legal Content To Get Ranked Higher In Google, Right?
Damn right you do! Here is the best part about it though, once you do rank you get so many great benefits such as:
- Consistent flow of leads to grow and scale your business.
- The leads are much cheaper (and higher quality).
- Your website has real value in case you ever wanted an exit strategy.
Okay Let’s Get Some Content Then And Rank For The Term “Lawyer Perth”
Slow down soldier if it was that easy everyone would be doing it. There are a few things you need to consider before embarking down this path (and you should embark down the path):
- SEO is slow (it often takes 3-6 months to see results depending on how competitive the term is).
- SEO can be complex (especially for legal firms).
- It’s expensive before it’s unbelievably cheap.
- You MUST be the best of the best to win.
- The best SEO is the best content and best (more simplistic but comprehensive answer to a query) in whatever form the visitor wants to see. These often include:
- Blogs (weekly and written by either a senior lawyer or a high quality copywriter which has then been overseen by a senior lawyer).
- Videos (created as often as blog articles and often published together).
- E-books (where appropriate).
- Infographics (great content bi-annually but make sure they are super good).
- Case studies (where appropriate).
- Guides (ideally 1 per service built with the site build and updated yearly).
- Charts (where appropriate).
- FAQ’s (with the site build and built into future content).
- Checklists (minimum of 1 per service).
What content should the legal firm create?
- Help people. Put yourself in their shoes as if you’re the one searching for information (we all do it).
- Create use cases for the services you provide. We did xyz for this client or we helped this client with xyz. Note: make sure you have the clients approval and are creating content that is within the legal regulations for the area you are targeting.
- Updates to laws and regulations associated with your area.
- Questions that are asked frequently.
6. Advertising For Your Law Firm Using Google Ads or Pay Per Click (PPC)
The quickest way to generate work for your legal firm is generally through PPC advertising. These are the paid or sponsored ads that you see at the top of the search results.
The paid section is generally the first 3 or 4 results and the last 3 or 4 results. PPC is fast, but can be expensive if it’s not set up correctly.
Some things to consider for legal PPC
- Always recommend running ads into a specifically designed landing page as opposed to the core website. This will ensure that the messaging matches the search query as closely as possible. The landing page will also decrease the bounce rate (where people click around get lost or confused and then exit the page).
- Have a really strong offer. This may sound counterintuitive because you’re spending money on getting them there and then spending more in terms of discounting the service or providing additional value but that’s what will set you apart from the competition.
- Clicks can be expensive to give you some perspective, the search term above “brisbane lawyer” has a cost per click of $7.78 (low range) and $27.98 (high range). When you think about a conversion rate of 10% click to booking (which is still quite high) that means you would need 10 clicks per booking. Assuming the cost per click is in the high range that would $279.80 per booking and you still need to close them as a customer. Assuming that the firm is able to close 75% of leads and turn them into customers (which is still relatively high) that would mean that each customer would cost approx. $349.75 to acquire.
- Aim to get at a minimum a conversion rate from landing page to “lead” of between 10% – 25%.
- Conversion rates from “lead” to “customer” from PPC will always be lower as the customers are very likely to click and book with more than one vendor.
We have a variety of content around conversion rate optimisation, bid strategies, PPC management in general and would highly recommend doing some additional research before attempting to do this alone as the learning curve can be quite steep.
If you would like to speak with one of our experts about how you can generate more customers through paid advertising please don’t hesitate to reach out.
7. Produce Videos & Webinars
Video has been the fastest growing medium for some time now, and with the newer short form content this has never been more true.
Creating video content is super important and can be as effective in lots of cases as ranking organically through SEO. The good news is that with changes in technology it’s never been easier to create video content. Some great ways you can do that are:
Create Educational Video Content
Seeing is believing and using video to convey complex concepts can be super helpful for potential customers looking to find the best lawyer they can. Another great aspect is that it opens new markets. Youtube for example is the second most popular search engine and the best part is that you can take content you post on Youtube and embed it on your website creating a double benefit effect!
Some tips to make sure that your video content is the best it can be:
- Create a formula for success. Study others and create a format that you will follow. It will take time to build your audience but if you keep at it it will come through.
- Invest in a ring light and drop screen. The ring light will ensure that the audience can see you clearly and the drop screen will create a neutral background which has proven to boost engagement.
- Using a newer style phone will produce content that is more than sufficient for the web.
- Get a high quality microphone to ensure that the audio quality is as good as possible.
- Post on a regular schedule, ideally once a week or once a fortnight.
9. Reputation Management
With changes in technology it’s never been easier to integrate different platforms to collect reviews. Google is the king of search and we would recommend focusing most if not all of your effort on generating reviews through Google. The great news is that it’s super easy to do!
Zapier for legal automation
Depending on which system you use to manage your workflows and billables can determine if there are integrations. We almost always find a way to integrate and automate this process and it can be something as simple as sending an email 1 day after a case is marked as closed or completed.
If you’re unsure of how to do this the best thing to do would be reach out. Setting up and testing the automation correctly the first time can save hundreds if not thousands of hours and generate hundreds of reviews. As a rule of thumb we always recommend looking at the top 3 competitors for any market and taking the average of reviews they have and working towards getting that many (or more).
10. Social Media Marketing
No list would be complete mentioning the ever growing social media marketing strategies and how you can leverage them for your legal firm.
We’re finding that there are particular platforms that are really effective in terms of social media marketing for lawyers and we also find that there are specific ways to leverage those marketing strategies to drive more leads and more sales.
The platforms we are finding to be super effective right now and how we use them are:
Facebook
Facebook has been around for a while now and if you’re not sure what it is you’ve been living under a rock. Tapping into Facebook is less effective than it was previously (due to the iOS 14+ updates) however it’s still a platform with lots to give especially when it comes to lead generation and social signals.
Posting regular content on Facebook is a great way to signal to all of the search engines that you are a real brand. Using Facebook Ads to drive leads can also be super effective even if you are focusing on top of funnel activity as opposed to Google Ads which is generally targeting middle and bottom of funnel activity. All of those photo’s we said you should take earlier come in handy when creating high quality and eye-catching posts.
Youtube
We already mentioned Youtube above but really cannot stress the effectiveness of video content. Given that there is a follow and like button we personally believe that Youtube falls into both the search engine category and social media. Nonetheless creating content here can prove super valuable.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn has been considered for most a social platform for professionals and finding leads through LinkedIn especially in a legal sense has never been easier. We would not recommend advertising via paid ads through LinkedIn but we do recommend engaging as both a company page and through your personal network.
TikTok
The ever growing TikTok network has taken the world by storm. Short 10 – 30 seconds clips are perfect for a world of less and less focused people. We recommend chopping up some of the more popular content from your Youtube video content and repurposing it here. The trick to TikTok is engagement so make sure it’s attention grabbing and controversial if possible.
Legal Marketing FAQs
How much should law firms spend on marketing?
There is no right or wrong amount here, and we always like to take the business and marketing plan and reverse engineer it to meet the goals of the business. The truth is that when marketing is done right it’s an investment and anything to ensure that the billable ratio for staff is as high as possible is going to be good in the short, medium, and long term.
How much do law firms spend on google ads?
When considering legal firms you need to be aware that this is the most expensive and competitive area for Google PPC marketing. The reason is likely as it’s also the most lucrative.
With this in mind we would recommend you reverse engineer the requirements of your business to work out how much to budget. To explain this in more detail we have an example below:
- The average cost per click (CPC) for a legal keyword “lawyer near me” (commercial) is: $6.45 (low range) – $24.32 (high range) in Australia. Let’s call it an average $15.39 per click.
- Let’s assume your landing page is top notch and is converting at 12.5% (which is pretty high)
- That means it will take 8 clicks to get one sales qualified lead (SQL). It also means that it will cost $123.12 to generate that SQL.
- Let’s assume that the lawyers were able to convert 75% of the SQL’s into customers. This means that each customer would cost $164.16.
- Now finally let’s assume that there are 4 lawyers who can each take on 4 cases per day. This means if all the work was coming from Google Ads we would need. a daily budget of $2,626.56 and a monthly budget of $55,157.76 (assuming 21 working days).
On top of that there are costs associated with managing the campaign and most agencies will charge a percentage of media spend. We charge 12.5% to manage the campaign (which includes hosting dedicated landing pages, conversion rate optimisation, sessions recordings, protection against fake clicks) but most agencies often charge between 15% – 25%.
How much do legal firms spend on SEO?
Legal SEO is an investment into the long term success of a business. Whilst the packages generally vary depending on the goals of the business we generally find the following is a good outline:
- Basic Legal SEO – $2,499 package
- Moderate Legal SEO – $4,499 package
- Advanced Legal SEO – $6,499 package
- Custom Legal SEO – $6,499+ package
With each package comes different levels of deliverables in terms of content strategies, backlink strategies, technical SEO, and public relations (PR).
We hope that our top 10 lawyer marketing strategies helped you. If you’re still stuck with generating more leads for your legal firm then reach out for a 100% obligation free audit and consultation.
Click here to book in with our team that specialises in lawyer marketing today!