Legal Marketing Strategies to Grow your Law Firm in 2020

1. Build a Brand
   
2. Leverage Expertise and Improve Credibility
   
3. Work on your SEO
   
4. Create a Google Adwords Campaign
   
5. Build Landing Pages
   
6. Increase your Presence in Legal Directories
   
7. Show Who is Behind your Law Firm
   
8. Optimize your Website for Mobile
   
9. Launch Inbound Marketing Campaigns
   
10. Add live chat to your Law Firm’s Website
    
11. Invest in Digital Media Outreach
    
12. Leverage your Social Media Marketing
    
13. Write Blog Posts and Articles
    
14. Set Up Email Marketing Campaigns
    
15. Configure a CRM Solution
    

• Build a brand

Building a brand is the main part of our overall messaging and positioning strategies.One of the biggest challenges we see at p.Xel Digital Agency on an ongoing basis with new and even more established law firms is a lack of a developed value proposition that communicates the need they are truly solving. The following steps will guide not only to grab the attention of media and market influencers but also will give you a competitive advantage above the rest in your playing field.

Step 1: Identify your customer’s needs
Step 2: Turn Service Features into customer benefits
Step 3: For each segment, you have defined, develop individual customer value propositions
Step 4: Communicate your value proposition
Step 5: Measure the effect of your value proposition

For instance, Clyde & Co their value proposition is challenging the traditional way of doing law and build resilience. It clearly stands out who are they targeting and what they trying to achieve.

Is your law firm branding clear? Are you highlighting why your clients should select your law firm and is your value proposition helping to differentiate your law firm from others?
Once you have defined your brand, unique value proposition and messaging style you can include it in all your marketing assets: website, social media, professional networks, articles and other marketing channels.

• Leverage your expertise and improve credibility

To build a solid brand, law firms should showcase their achievements from previous clients, law firm awards, testimonials and case studies. They prove that a law firm is credible and demonstrate its expertise.  Remember that 76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. So do not forget to tell your customers to leave a review each time you provide them with a service.

Awards your Law Firm Won

An example of a law firm showcasing their awards is Birds & Birds. They feature a list of all the awards and recognitions the firm has achieved along with the years.

Client Reviews

When installing Google My Business for your law firm you make it easy for previous and current customers to rate your law firm online. An example of that is Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. This leading international law firm has been accumulating reviews from individuals or businesses who have worked with them.

Case Studies to showcase knowledge and law firm expertise

Case Studies are a great way to show your client which are your areas of expertise and what cases has your firm been able to win. From a practical point of view telling a story is always easier than going through technical details to explain the solutions a law firm is providing.

For example, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has classified their areas of expertise, therefore showing how they helped their clients in almost each one of their expertise areas.

• Work on your SEO

Once your website is fully optimized, the work does not stop there. You need to develop a content strategy as well. An SEO strategy is not limited to articles and blog posts, but it is definitely a great place to start. Great content paired with a great SEO strategy is everything your law firm needs to start increasing their traffic online and getting more customers. When someone is searching for your law firm you want it to be displayed on the 1st page in Google. This requires a well-planned SEO strategy accompanied by a Google Adwords campaign.

• Create a Google Adwords Campaign

Google Adwords is a powerful tool that you can use to increase the number of leads coming to your law firm. Through keyword targeting, Google displays your ads only to those searching for your legal services. Therefore is an effective source of quality traffic and leads.
Google Adwords campaigns can be very effective when done correctly but they will not work if:
1. There is high competition for the same keywords you are targeting. In that case, a PPC campaign can become a money trap instead of bringing benefits to your firm.
2. Having a non-professional approach and not enough knowledge.
When optimized and prepared correctly a Google Adwords campaign can place you in the first 3 positions on Google. For example, if you search for “tax lawyers in London UK” the first 4 options that appear are law firms investing in Advertisement to buy their position:

• Build Landing pages

A landing page is a page where you want to redirect a potential client after they clicked on one of your ads. Imagine someone searching for the same tax lawyer in London that clicks on one of the first options and they are redirected to a firm’s homepage. In this scenario, the client will feel lost and unhappy because now he/she has to search again for the services related to tax law. Instead, you want to build a landing page that redirects the user to the services they are looking for. For instance, Cartwright King Solicitors redirects their users to HMRC Tax Investigations page when someone is searching for “tax lawyers in London UK” creating a unique experience.

Landing pages should be optimized and inspire a specific action to help convert website visitors into potential leads.

• Increase your presence in legal directories

Being listed on Search Engines not only help you become visible for visitors searching for lawyers in these directories but also helps your law firm get traffic. There are different types of business directories: International, national or local. An example of an international directory is the European Law Firm Directory:

• Show who is behind your law firm

According to recent research from Hubspot 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support, not to mention the fact that 88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI obtained from a video. We are experiencing an increase in demand for more video content.
How can you use video marketing for your law firm?

•  Explain who is your team, which is the culture of your law firm, values, mission and why recently graduated lawyers should work for your firm.
• Define which are your services and who are you targeting. Who are you helping and provide as much information and insights about your work, clients and testimonials when possible?
• Provide insights and news regarding your law firm, what projects are dealing with and news from your area of expertise.

Backer McKenzie is an example of how they leveraged YouTube to provide more information regarding their law firm:

Video marketing for law firms is a great tool to make a human connection with potential customers and show them who is behind your law firm.

• Optimize your website for mobile

Google favours sites that are optimized across all device types (mobile, desktop and tablets). And so does the majority (57.6%) of internet users searching for lawyer firm services. According to Google’s user-centric performance metrics:
When a user navigates to a web page, they’re typically looking for visual feedback to reassure them that everything is going to work as expected.”

Therefore when you measure the performance of your law firm website you want to make sure the following aspects happen:

Consumers are changing their behaviour and using their smartphones or tablets when searching for a service, website or for a lawyer. If the page takes more than 3 seconds to load, the user experience is not smooth and easy they will immediately leave. These are aspects to take into account when designing your law firm’s website.

• Inbound marketing campaigns

Inbound methodologies are meant to attract, engage and delight potential customers and provide them value and build trust along the sales process. By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customer, you attract qualified prospects and build trust and credibility for your law firm. Some examples of content can be:
– Blog Articles
– Content Offers
– Social Media Content
– SEO
– Videos
– Ads
– Knowledge Base
– Press Releases
Baker McKenzie does it like this:

They differentiate between different sources of information: Insights, News, Blogs. Additionally, for each blog category, they have a separate landing page. This might be a more complex process and not necessary when marketing a small law firm. Nevertheless, you should take into account the different content formats when preparing an inbound marketing strategy for your law firm.

• Add live chat to your law firm website

Conversation marketing is all over the place nowadays and we are not surprised. By automating routinary task such as appointment booking, business text messaging or simply automating customer enquiries handling you can generate more leads with no effort. When all these processes are automated and integrated with your CRM you can automatically gather contact information and new leads.

By automating the information provided to customers you generate leads faster. Not only that, but you also get in touch with those visitors who actually have the interest to hire your services and are not only searching for information.

• Invest in digital media outreach

If there is something that a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses in the legal sector get confused with is the concept of media outreach. It is not clear what strategy it should follow, which are the benefits of a media outreach campaign and why should law firms implement it. Getting attention from the media can be quite difficult because of the huge competition. Nevertheless, with the right approach and a lot of effort, you will be surprised how successful your law firm can become.

Being mentioned in major publications, featured in other firm’s website or receiving 3rd party endorsements generates credibility for your law firm. Media coverage has been proven to have a higher ROI and bring better-qualified leads to the firm. 

Cleary Gottlieb is an example of receiving large media coverage. On their homepage, they showcase the latest mentions, awards and publications of the firm.

• Leverage social media marketing

Nowadays social media allows information to circulate faster and reach more people. Firms can showcase their unique expertise, services and engage with potential customers. To take advantage of these benefits a firm should have a clear strategy in mind and develop social media guidelines for processing and posting social media communications.

Social media usage by law firms has started to increase and lawyers are changing their attitudes towards digital marketing. Based on a study performed in 2018, 74% of the law firms were present on at least one social media channel.Being exposed to a firm’s name and its social media content creates a sense of familiarity with a firm and its services.

A great example of having a clear social media marketing strategy is Cuatrecases a Spanish Law Firm offering services at a global level. They are present on multiple social media channels and use all various content formats to delight their customers.

• Write blog posts and articles

We have been covering this topic already, but we need to mention it again. Not only is good for SEO to have a clear content strategy but also increases your credibility and establishes you as an expert in your practice area. Potential customers want to know to what extent they can trust your services, therefore by offering quality content and adding value before even being hired makes your law firm stand out. Additionally, you should always encourage your visitors to share the news. If that happens, visitors are considering your content as useful and engaging.

• Set up your email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is a very effective tool to generate new business or repeating business. According to Deloitte one of the challenges that law firms face is that a lot of them are not meeting today’s business needs and therefore they are being scrutinized by their clients. The majority (55%) of the participants have considered or will consider reviewing and changing if necessary their legal suppliers within the next 12 months. Taking into account this possible scenario you want to make sure you are constantly engaging with your customers and providing value.

• Configure a CRM Solution

With over three-quarters of law firms using a CRM in 2019, this shouldn’t be questioned whether is necessary or not.  Now we have mentioned a lot of automation when it comes to client-related processes. Having integrated all these tools from email marketing campaigns to lead generation tools it is imperative to save time while you are working on your clients’ cases. You can check our article reviewing the top 10 Legal Management Software solutions that you can start using immediately.