The Best Law Firm Marketing Strategies: Legal SEO Content Marketing Services to Get More Clients
Content optimized for search is the most effective strategy to increase traffic to your website, qualify site visitors, and convert new customers for law firms. Cost-per-click (CPC) prices in AdWords for the legal industry are among the highest and the terms “lawyer” and “attorney” rank in the top ten most expensive keywords in search engines.
Although the average cost per click in AdWords for the legal industry is $6.75, some keywords can cost upwards of $150 a click! That means if only seven people click on your PPC ad for a term like “Atlanta personal injury lawyer,” you would have to pay more than a thousand dollars.
Since most people are averse to clicking on PPC ads and paid results only receive 2.8 clicks per 100 searches (1/20 of what organic results get), investing in organic content optimized for search is the most practical and cost-effective marketing solution for lawyers.
Learn more about great marketing strategies for lawyers, SEO tips for law firms, and why content marketing is the most effective way to get more clients.
How to Get New Clients for a Law Firm
Although word of mouth is a great way to get clients, it is not a predictable model for generating new leads. To get your brand and your services in front of your ideal clients, you need visibility. Social media and PPC advertising will allow your brand to achieve guaranteed reach to your audience. However, you will have to pay for every person you reach.
As mentioned earlier, PPC costs for lawyers are expensive, and the unfortunate truth of social media advertising for law firms is that simply people do not want to be hit with ads on their Facebook or Instagram feeds to book a consultation with a law firm. Would you?
When people visit their favorite social media platforms, they want to check out their friend’s posts or watch funny videos. It is an inappropriate time to introduce your brand to potential visitors, and although you pay for visibility, it is not the best way to build rapport with your audience.
The best way to make a connection with your audience is to let them find you when they are in an active mindset to find a law firm that fits their needs. In the modern digital age of the internet, that means appearing in Google search. When someone enters a “personal injury law firm in Atlanta” into a search engine, the user is actively hunting for a law firm that matches their search. If you publish in-depth content that aligns with their keyword terms, you have a chance to rank organically for matching queries.
If you have a website page that aligns with the user’s search, you have a better chance to appear in the search results for their query. If they click on your link, that is free traffic to your site. Instead of paying more than a hundred dollars per click, you will generate consistent traffic to your website. Furthermore, a useful piece of optimized content for search will rank for multiple valuable keywords for more organic traffic and qualified leads for your website.
For instance, a blog I wrote for a client at a previous agency ranks for 452 keywords and brings an estimated $15,700 of organic traffic in terms of PPC value. This blog consistently drives traffic to the client’s site month over month, so they do not have to reinvest for visibility.
Creative Marketing and Advertising Ideas for Law Firms
Instead of investing in expensive PPC campaigns, there are many alternative strategies law firms can use to increase their brand visibility and attract new audiences. Most people in need of legal counsel first have to learn about their situation.
For instance, if a worker slips on the job and cracks their leg due to negligent work conditions, he or she has to first learn about their options for legal action. Since legal terminology is often complicated for a typical civilian, a law firm can gain substantial value by first providing value to their audience. Learn some great strategies your firm can implement with their marketing strategy.
Video
Video is perhaps one of the most overlooked but most beneficial strategies a law firm can implement. Most firms use the same approaches to develop their websites, from the type of images, content, and services. However, most do not provide any video content for their audience to watch. Video is on the rise, and mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year, and shockingly, by 2022, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be online videos.
People prefer to watch video content, so publishing video content for your firm will pay dividends in many ways. First, it is an excellent way to build rapport with your audience. People considering working with you will be able to see you, hear you, and understand your services. It is a much more effective way to build a connection.
Secondly, it is an excellent time to show value to your audience and explain your services clearly and concisely to your audience. Law terminology is commonly confusing for regular civilians but by producing informative content that helps them understand complicated concepts, you help your audience understand the benefits of your services.
A video, you can breakdown common types of lawsuits in your practice in simple terms for your audience to comprehend. The more a potential audience understands their situation and how your legal team can help, the more likely they will want to hire your practice.
Learn more about our affordable video marketing services in Atlanta and start your online video presence.
Blogging
Content marketing, especially blogs, is a pivotal strategy to increase web traffic to your site. The main goal of effective blog writing is to create content around common queries in your industry and establishing a case that your law firm provides a solution.
For instance, if an individual suffered an injury from a motorcycle accident due to a negligent driver, he or she will have many questions on how to approach the situation. Since they are unfamiliar with exactly how to approach from a legal standpoint, they will most likely start learning about what to do using Google. They will ask questions like “What do I tell my insurance provider after I’ve been in a motorcycle accident” or “I was injured in a motorcycle accident, but I wasn't wearing a helmet. Can I still recover damages from the other driver?”
By providing a blog that addresses these questions, you not only offer that reader value, but you also increase your chances to rank for search terms around the common queries. As you sufficiently answer common questions around motorcycle accidents, you can also plug how your law firm helps individuals settle motorcycle accident claims. It’s a simple funnel. A user finds your law firm from a Google search, you help them understand their options, and then you explain how your law firm can help them and offer a free consultation.
Infographics
An infographic is an engaging graphic representation of data or information. Infographics are a fantastic way to advertise your law firm’s services, explain legal terminology, and display informative statistics around a topic.
Since many legal topics are hard to comprehend for people without advanced legal training, infographics can help breakdown legal subjects in layman’s terms for your audience to understand. It is an effective way to explain legislative jargon or display compelling statistics.
90% of information sent to our brain is through visual mediums, but more importantly, content with engaging images receive 94% more views than content without it. Utilize infographics in blog posts, and you can also repurpose them for social media accounts to share with your audience.
Social media Ads and Webinars
Webinars are an excellent tool to use for your law practice, primarily if used as a gated asset for a social media campaign. A gated asset is simply a reward that a business can give to an audience if they provide their contact information. For instance, if you have an enticing webinar that explains five tips small business owners should use to get better tax benefits, run a social media campaign that advertises your webinar. Once a user clicks on the ad, drive them to a landing page that requires the user to enter their contact information. Once they do, the user will be redirected to the page that contains the webinar.
Use your webinar as an asset to capture the contact information of qualified leads in your audience. More importantly, use your webinar to plug your services and offer more enticing reasons the web visitor would want to work with you.
How to Get More Personal Injury Clients
There are several actions you can take to get more personal injury clients. The first most essential strategy is to grow your organic traffic coming to your site, and the best way to do that is through effective content marketing.
Create informative content that answers the questions your audience wants to know. Write blogs around common problems that a person would search for in Google. Reverse engineer and utilize keyword research to identify these queries and visit online forums such as Quora to discover common personal injury questions.
If your content is reliable and provides value to your audience, your keyword rankings will increase if Google confirms the strength of your online content. Instead of bidding on expensive keywords in PPC campaigns, try to rank for them organically. Create video content, social media posts, and give your audience what they want, information! Begin to build your content on your website and focus on a long-term strategy rather than try to invest in expensive paid campaigns unless they are aiming to capture contact information for qualified leads.
Also, publish testimonials, reviews, and case studies showcasing your firm's work. Let your happy customers sell your services for you. Promptly follow up qualified leads from online forms on your site or users requesting a free consultation. Research shows that you are 100x more likely to successfully contact a lead if you respond within 5 minutes and 21x more likely to qualify that lead the closer you contact them based on their initial inquiry. Do not let hot leads turn cold due to lack of prompt responses.
Social Media Strategy for Attorneys
Law firms can leverage social media to help them gain new clients and create an engaged online following. Organic posts simply mean publishing on your various social media channels without allocating an additional budget to increase reach (the number of people who will see the posts).
Facebook and other social media platforms have continued to make it more and more difficult for businesses to reach audiences only through organic means. The organic reach on Facebook continues to plummet year over year, and in 2018, the average organic reach was only 6.4% of its page likes.
To connect with your audience and maximize the value of your social media strategy, attorneys should utilize a brand, share, sell plan for their organic posts.
Brand posts are focused on sharing team members and creating a positive association around your brand. Get creative and try to be genuinely funny and post something that you would like if you were scrolling through your news feed. Let’s face it. People don’t want to follow a law firm on social media. Why would they? Well, if the law firm posted entertaining and amusing material, I would follow. Try your hand at memes that resonate with the law community. Shoot a quick video on your iPhone and publish it.
A great strategy is to host a live Q&A inviting your audience to ask various law questions. Answer their queries and add value to their lives. More importantly, begin to build a bond with each user that tunes into the live stream. The viewers may not sign up for your services, but they could surely recommend you to a friend, one of the most influential referrals you can earn.
Share posts are articles, case studies, or news relevant to your industry. For instance, if your firm focuses on personal injury, share a recent news study on an increase in injuries in the workplace. Include a caption highlighting a significant statistic and subtly plug your services. Share posts are a great way to inform your audience on news or stories that help validate how you can help your audience.
Finally, sell posts focus on conversions. Do you offer a time-sensitive discount? A free consultation? Let the people know why they should work with you but more importantly, sweeten the pot with an offer that would make them want to take action today! Boost sell posts if you have the additional budget in your marketing plan to reach a wider audience.
Law Firm SEO Tips
What are SEO articles? To rank well for valuable search terms in your industry, you need to make sure you follow best SEO practices. Some of the most important tips include:
Optimize title tags for higher click-through rates: Utilize LSI keywords (use Google’s “related searches” and note any new keywords or use LSI Graph). Organic CTR is crucial for ranking.
Add emotion to title tags. A study by CoSchedule found that an emotional score of 40 gets around 1,000 more shares.
Use brackets in the title tag. A study from Hubspot found titles with brackets perform 33 percent better than titles without.
Utilize powerful words in title tag: (EG: insane, effective, fast, case study, proven, best, definitive guide, scientifically).
Add numbers and statistics to your titles. Numbers in titles highlighting percentages from research or a certain amount of days can have a significant impact on your content’s CTR.
Use emotion in the meta description. Say the problem and then say how the content will solve the problem. Don’t be afraid to highlight the benefits or the supporting data to help entice the user to click.
Look at the paid ads and steal the recurring words or phrases. (Use “ROI”). Companies spend thousands of dollars to run daily PPC campaigns, so capitalize on their marketing investment.
Add primary keyword close to the beginning of the meta description.
Reduce the bounce rate and dwell time: The average dwell time of a top 10 Google result is three minutes and ten seconds. People want a question answered immediately, so make sure to put content above the fold. Get content front and center and add a picture later. Make a highly engaging introduction. Persuasive introduction: Hook, Transition, and Thesis.
Develop longer, more in-depth content. Long-form content also increases your backlink portfolio.
Optimize for mobile search.
Compress images on your site to help with faster load times.
Marketing Plans for Lawyers: Law Firm Consultants
Every law firm is different, and to create the most effective marketing plan, you need a personalized strategy that fits your objectives and business goals. Contact us to schedule a free site audit where we will identify ways to improve your website. More importantly, we will develop a successful strategy to increase your clientele.
We will discuss our findings during a 30-minute consultation to develop a game plan to help your online presence grow and gain new customers. Since SEO and content are long-term strategies, the sooner you start to publish new material on the site, the sooner you will see results.