Simply having a website online is not enough for marketing your law firm. A website that no one is visiting is a waste of your time and resources. Additionally, a website where people visit but are not converted into clients is equally wasteful. In order to have a strong, productive web presence, your firm must be actively promoted online.
A lawyer must learn how to market a law firm to attract more clients and stand out from the competition.
Developing Your Personal Brand
Potential clients looking to file a lawsuit are searching for the right lawyer, not for a law firm. Because of this, most people who visit your website will head for the bio pages. They look at the individuals making up the firm before they ever place a call to your office.
This means that each of the lawyers in your firm needs to be actively promoting their own personal brand online. By doing so, they can come across as being very personable, reachable individuals instead of just being small dissonant pictures on a company’s website. The attorneys could enhance their bios by adding the following:
- A picture that is professional, yet pleasant
- Licenses, credentials, and accomplishments
- Past work experience
- Links for social channels and publications
- A definitive “call to action” giving clear directions
Actively Participate On Social Media
Have each attorney create an informative LinkedIn profile if they don’t have an account already. It is also a great idea for your law firm to create a business account on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. By having a presence on these social media platforms, you can connect with other legal professionals and potential clients. Furthermore, you can add links to these accounts that go back to articles appearing on your website.
LinkedIn was created to allow networking between industry professionals. It is a social platform that is business-oriented. For attorneys at your firm to fully benefit from such a valuable resource as LinkedIn, they each need to:
- Fully complete a personal LinkedIn profile
- Develop an appealing description of himself or herself, including areas of law practice and services provided
- Upload a picture
- Connect with industry-related groups and take part in discussions and communications involving other members of the group
The LinkedIn page will attract more attention if there is an eye-appealing banner and logo. Each of the firm’s attorneys should follow the page, and it should be updated frequently to include interesting articles from the firm’s website, plus other highly informative updates and news.
You will need to create a Twitter account to start following professional influencers and well-known attorneys. Twitter is a great platform to do real-time networking and to get information about competitors.
Many people who do not actively use LinkedIn or Twitter will commonly use Facebook. Your firm needs a business page on Facebook. Once the page is completed, send an email to friends and business contacts with an invitation to like your page. Here you will be able to place links to your website articles and start discussions about engaging topics of interest for your page visitors.
With more than 25 million companies using Instagram to promote their business, it is obvious why your law firm should be using this platform to communicate with users. Instagram is known to encourage more brand engagement because of its visual-first platform. While Facebook may have more users, Instagram has much more user engagement. Instagram is described as the best social media platform for visual branding by Forbes. This platform provides your law firm with many effective ways to promote your brand’s visual aesthetic. Business profiles also get special features such as call-to-action buttons.
Build Reviews Online
A great way to gain the trust of potential clients quickly is to ask former clients to create an online testimonial for you on LinkedIn, Google listing or through other review sites on the web. Create a testimonial section on your website to publish the reviews, while carefully guarding privacy.
You can sign up to be notified when the name of your firm is referenced online. The alerts can be customized to include each attorney’s name as well. When you see your name or the firm’s name mentioned in a review or a discussion online, you can choose whether to respond with appreciation for a compliment or vindication for criticism. You may also decide to respond to negative reviews by offering the reviewer an opportunity to speak with one of your team members to discuss their complaint.
Listings in Local Directories
Your law firm needs to show up in all industry directories and local business listings. Here are a few of the most popular places to start:
- FindLaw
- Avvo
- Lawyers.com
- Justia
- LawInfo
- HG.org
Email Marketing
Emails provide such an easy and quick way to market your firm’s services. One must be careful to only send a minimal amount of emails, though, to avoid pushing clients away. By including contact information and social media links beneath the closing and signature section, an attorney can optimize the time spent and the virtually free process of sending an email.
Newsletters
Highly informative newsletters sent periodically will help keep your name in front of current and prospective clients. Make the information current and insightful. Include links to some of the articles on your website.
Good SEO is a Must
When searching for legal representation, potential clients frequently use online search engines. With proper search engine optimization, a law firm’s website can appear in the top results shown to searchers. In the absence of practical access to such an individual, a lawyer may choose to instead elicit the services of a writer who specializes in SEO.
If an attorney decides to optimize the firm’s website personally, there are some best-practice instructions to follow. These include:
- Create excellent content to acquire backlinks organically
- Within your content, insert links to high-quality and reputable sites
- Carefully research keywords, then place relevant ones in your copy, as well as alt-text tags in photos
- Evaluate your page’s SEO potential by using a plugin program like Yoast SEO
Videos
By creating videos to put on your firm’s website, you can benefit from the Google search engine properties of Youtube to reveal your videos to prospective clients. Let the attorneys at the firm create concise videos that address topics related to their specialties. They can additionally answer common questions and give potential clients a sense of connection when the answers resonate with their very issue.
How to Connect With Signed Plaintiffs
By promoting your law firm online you will be able to reach more potential clients, however qualified plaintiffs are hard to come by. While you can learn how to market your law firm, your efforts will mean nothing unless you see results. Broughton Partners works to help personal injury law firms save time and resources by delivering signed claimants to our clients.
We provide not just lead generation, but what we call retained clients for law firms. Our team can ensure you receive signed claimants by going a step further. We will review potential plaintiffs for eligibility and quality before delivering the retained plaintiffs to your law firm.
Call us today for a free consultation or fill out an online form.