Law Firm Marketing Trends: Attorney Marketing Guide

Why Online Marketing for Law Firms is Competitive?

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing for Law Firms

• Lack of interaction with the targeted audience
• Cost is usually high compared to digital marketing
• Inaccuracy of ROI measurement
• Lack of customer feedbacks
• Poor conversion rate
• Lack of personalization
• No long-term benefits

What is Legal or Attorney Marketing?

Law Firm Marketing is all about utilizing all the online marketing channels to brand your legal services achieving your goals in terms of website traffic, engagement and lead generation.

Digital Marketing Objectives

• Conversions or lead generation
• Increase website traffic and engagement
• Brand awareness
• Community building

Competitive Analysis

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

• Which law firms are performing well on which digital marketing channel?
• How to prioritize your digital marketing activities?
• How an ideal law firm website should look like?
• Where your brand is currently standing and how much time will it take to get an edge?
• What are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
• How to allot your marketing budget among different channels?

How Competitive Analysis can be done?

Execution Plan a.k.a  Marketing Plan

Rise of AI-powered marketing

First party data

Video marketing domination

Demonstrating legal purpose and responsibility

Privacy centric legal marketing

UX Design Trends for Law Firm

Law Firm User Experience Design refers to a process of designing a platform where attorneys cater the users’ problems by offering them best-in-class online experience.

Source: Profitworks.ca

Characteristics of a Marketing Centric Website

Mobile Optimized

After the Google’s Mobile-First Indexing update, mobile websites have become a center point of attraction for the business owners. According to which, the mobile version of your website will be given the priority over the desktop while indexing by the Google. So make sure that your mobile’s website structure is user and search engine friendly.

Additionally, the mobile traffic of the website in most of the niches is increasing drastically. According to a data by Stone Temple, Legal Services or Law Firm niche is among the most mobile-centric industries.

Accessibility

Having a creative website containing captivating visuals does not consider as a user-friendly website. Accessibility is one of a major factor of user-friendly website. Your website design should be capable to cater users’ problem within the matter of milliseconds. According to a study, a user takes 50 milliseconds to make an opinion about a website. So considering the fact that the first impression of a user is a crucial one since it will decide that whether or not he/she is willing to proceed the journey.

While designing a law firm website, you need to follow certain rules of accessibility. The best way is to consider the ADA Compliant Website checklist which will give you an exact idea on what needs to be done in order to make it accessible for all sorts of audience.

Conversion Centered

A website without conversion centric elements is like a product without a manual. It actually helps customers in a positive ending of their journey. According to HubSpot, following are 7 principles of a conversion centered web design:

Now let’s take a look how these principles could be implemented on your law firm website.

Encapsulation

This technique is mainly used to bring the attention of a user to a certain spot of the website where your CTA is placed. It could be done via using contrast colors or dynamic shapes.

One lawyer website, WACHP.com did a really good work with the encapsulation technique. Main tagline along with a CTA is being placed on the torn part of the box.

Contrast and Color

It simply refers to playing with contrast colors. When you use a totally different color on your call-to-action button compared with its background color, it will automatically bring the user’s attention. Here is another great example of a law firm website, “Malman Law”, who played around the contrast and color strategy.

Directional Cues

It refers to visual indicators which are normally used to direct a user towards a certain call-to-action button.

YLaw Group is doing really well with this technique. As shown in the above screenshot that the dog ear is in contrast color and is pointing towards a call-to-action button to generate more phone call leads.

White Space

White is a color that can make any color pop up. When it comes to CTA placement white spaces usually help them in making them stand out. Take Bighorn Law as an example and see how they utilized their white spaces in their website design.

Urgent and Scarcity

This rule is mainly used for e-commerce or SaaS business. But it could be done in several ways, like:

• Offer free consultation for a certain period of time
• Download a free resource i.e. e-book and whitepaper

Try Before You Buy

Offering a free trial to your clients can even generate massive leads for your law firm. So, if you are looking to expand the growth canvas then this is something that can surely bring an impact. West Coast Trial Lawyers are really doing well with this free trial strategy.

Social Proof

It basically refers to showing a crowd around your brand in order to build trust among the customers that other people are engaged with your business. This could be done by showing certain numbers, statistics and demographics of users who are currently engaged with your business or may have hired your services in the past. This is how you can also do it with your law firm website.

Pay Per Click Marketing Trends for Law Firm

Before digging into the pay per marketing strategies for attorney’s website, it is important to know the basic function of different paid campaigns for sure success:

When investing into the PPC, you need to be very careful since its one of an expensive niches. According to an infographic found on WordStream, law industry has the highest average cost per click in the search ads.

So here are some core pay per click marketing techniques that can help you make an effective paid campaign:

Ruling Locally with a Proper Geo-Location Targeting

Law firm marketing is mainly dependent on the local keywords so it is mandatory that you are targeting the right region in your campaigns. Around 36% of the Google searches belong to certain region/location. This seems to be a very basic factor but still many of the law firms avoid it and as a result they ruin their PPC budget.

It is a fact that if your business is mainly designed to cater the local audience then your marketing efforts need to be focused towards generating local leads. It doesn’t even matter how much you are specialized in your industry, a person belonging to another region won’t come to ask for your services. Set the radius where you can actually serve your audience.

Understanding Search Intent with respect to Budget

Search intent is now becoming a very crucial part of both organic and paid marketing. Search Intent refers to understanding the core intention of a user’s query. Before proceeding with this discussion let’s learn the common search intent types:

• Branded Keywords: These are the queries when you are very much in the market and users are aware of your brand name.
• Informative Keywords: These are also known for problem solving queries. When a user seeks information using search query on Google.
• Transactional Keywords: These are actually money making keywords helping you generate more qualified leads for your business.

qualified leads for your business.

Transactional keywords like “injury lawyer Sanford” are commonly used in most of the law firm PPC campaigns. However, informative keywords could be used as well depending on the budget. Informative keywords have long-lasting impact on your business sales. Assume that a user is landing on a blog post or resource page containing in-depth guide through a keyword like “how to find the best divorce attorney”. Solve the problem of that user through your content and convert them through powerful call-to-actions.

Magnetizing your Ad Copies

Your ad copy actually decides whether users will continue their journey with your website or choose an alternate one. Consider following these ad copywriting techniques for an optimum quality score:

• Keep it relevant with the targeted keywords and landing page content
• Personalize your ad copies by serving 2nd person instead of 1st person
• Include facts and figures to gain the trust i.e law case winning numbers or number of clients, etc…
• Interrogative headlines sometimes do wonders in terms of increasing CTR
• Discuss the users’ benefits like ‘Free of Cost Consultation’
• Play around the ego-bait technique to grab the user’s trust and attention

Keeping your Audience Near to your Brand with Near Me Keywords

Adding near me to your main service based keywords is now becoming a trend in the online marketing industry. It is actually getting hype and businesses are making dollars out of it. Here is a 5 years comparison of near me related keywords in the law firm industry:

As you can see that near me related user searches are increasing over the span of last five years. Make sure that your pay per click strategy contains near me related keywords.

Optimizing your Landing Pages Efficiently

Here we need to understand a fact that PPC landing pages are different from regular service/product pages. Once a user lands on your website’s landing page, make sure to display only that content which is relevant to his/her search query. Following are some crucial factors:

• Avoid using unnecessary menus in the header navigation that can lead users to other pages
• Add a video which can help grabbing users’ trust either it could be testimonials, service overview, success stories, etc…
• Content relevant to the targeted keywords along with attractive visuals
• Add elements that indicate social proof around your brand
• Include phone number, email address, live chat and contact form for an ease to contact
• Mobile design should be user-friendly

Social Media Marketing Trends for Law Firm

Attorney at Work conducted a social media marketing survey and got responses from 406 legal professionals, including 183 lawyers. 85% of lawyers believes that social media is a part of their marketing strategy. Social media marketing not just helps you in branding your legal services but also helps you in bringing more potential clients for your business.

Effective Social Media Platforms for Law Firms

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the 3 top most preferred social media platforms in the marketing strategy. Most of the law firms underestimate the power of social networks because they are unaware of the hidden benefits of this medium. Let’s learn how to promote your business on various social channels.

Embracing LinkedIn for Lawyers

Since, LinkedIn itself is an entirely a professional network, it works both the way i.e. create a personal profile and create a business page.

Using Personal Profile for LinkedIn Marketing

I won’t dig into a general discussion by listing down steps to create a LinkedIn account. Let’s proceed on how to brand a law firm on the most lawyers’ preferred social media network.

Never let your LinkedIn profile be a resume by just listing your core skills, qualification and employer history. Instead make it look like profile of a thought leader by including the following elements:

• Add a professional profile photo and cover photo in order to grab optimum number of views. According to LinkedIn, a profile with a profile picture can have 21 times more views and up to 36 times more messages.
• Add all the niche related publications i.e. Blogs, E-Books and White Papers in your profile so that users can know the level of your expertise.
• Add your past achievements in your profile in order to retain the trust among the users.
• Get endorsements and recommendations from your clients and industry’s experts.

Start adding relevant and potentials users to your account. Use a LinkedIn search feature to discover lawyers with in your niche and location. You can also add different niche lawyer belonging to a different geographical area. It has numerous benefits including potential referrals, builds community which can actually support your content.

Once you are done with adding people of the same profession, then also consider adding people who could be a potential customer. Let’s say you are a Tax Lawyer then your potential users on LinkedIn could be CEOs, CFOs, Entrepreneurs and those who own any company within your geographical location.

Once you found that you have a decent number of potential users on your LinkedIn account, then proceed with sharing your knowledge and experience in the form of posts, articles, videos or even slideshares. It is considered as one of the finest content distribution channel.Try focusing on crafting some unique, in-depth guides, how-to’s and listicle posts. Here are some jaw breaking facts about content marketing on LinkedIn:

• 45% of the LinkedIn article readers are in top-level positions including managers, VPs, and Directors (Source: LinkedIn)
• Maximum number of shares are acquired by long form content. (Source: OkDork)
• Even influencers are adopting this distribution channel and according to statistics 30 most shared content of 2015 & 2016 on LinkedIn were composed by LinkedIn Influencers.

Using Company Page for LinkedIn Marketing

Make sure that your official LinkedIn page is active and contain fruitful content for your targeted audience instead of just promotional stuff. The content mentioned above could also be shared on your company page. Follow the valuable company page management techniques guided by LinkedIn .

Empowering Facebook Ads for Law Firm Marketing

Let’s talk about the 2nd most preferred social media channel among lawyers. It is a common misconception that Facebook ads are only for promoting your product and services. Most of the business owners focus on a user-group who are in the purchasing phase.

Source: Vendasta

Though, that particular group of users can definitely offer the best ROI but it could be further improved if users from the previous groups are also being served. In this regard, your Facebook ads could be run for the following purposes:

• Blog Ads: Write a blog post on a common problem being faced by the audience in your niche and promote it on Facebook.
• E-Book Ads: In-depth content in the form of an e-book or whitepaper could be a value added asset for your business. Bring engagements on your assets effective ads campaign.
• Free Consultation Ads: Offering something free of cost to your users could increase the chance of optimum conversions. It must be a part of your Facebook ads.
• Video Ads: Video content could help users in getting their problem solved with in a matter of a minute. So, it is recommended to boost it on your Facebook to empower your video marketing.
• Legal Form Ads: Once you feel like users are now under your trust, start promoting your services. Lead ads are usually expensive than the rest of the campaign types so you need to make sure that users have a strong belief on your business.
• Retargeting Ads: Users who had shown certain interest in your brand could be a greater prospect. Don’t forget to show your upcoming ads to them using ads retargeting.

Utilizing Twitter for Law Firm Marketing

When you talk about Twitter, it doesn’t even matter which industry your business falls in. It is a powerful source of branding, community building and lead generation for any business. Here are some quick tips to boost your law firm marketing using Twitter:

• Follow the right people: Most of the people just randomly start following accounts regardless of knowing the niche of that person. It is recommended to follow people from the same niche or could be with in the arena of law industry. Initiate by tweeting to them or responding to their tweets to build a relation. In a longer run, it will definitely pay you out with referrals.
• Law isn’t about being too formal: it’s a myth that law industry is a serious and formal niche. Most of the law firms twitter accounts seem to be boring. Don’t be too formal instead share memes, GIFs and videos which are relevant to the context. It actually helps in digesting the information easily than a dry content form.
• Participate in trending hashtags: When you find a trending hashtag in your specific niche, start tweeting and participating in it. These trending hashtags can assist you in sure-shot visibility on Twitter.
• Run a custom hashtag campaign: Make sure to run your own custom made hashtag campaign with time to time. Make sure that your hashtag contains your brand name.

Search Engine Optimization Trends for Law Firm

This is something where your major focus should be. It’s an ongoing process that offer long-lasting returns but you need to make sure that all aspect of your SEO campaign are properly aligned.

Most of the SEO agencies cater each project the same way regardless of knowing the trends in that specific niche. Such agencies are considered as Bunny-Bread agencies that tend to implement the same techniques on all niche projects. There are various aspects in law firm SEO where the techniques vary or are different compared with the rest of the niches.

What is Attorney SEO?

Attorney SEO refers to a process of bringing your website’s ranking on the first page of search engines by adopting search engine friendly techniques resulting in qualified organic traffic and conversions.

Effective SEO Strategies for Law Firm

Let’s dig in each of the aspect of law firm SEO in order bring qualified organic traffic and conversions for the website.

Keywords Research and Analysis

When we talk about keywords research, there are majorly 3 types of keywords:

• Primary Keywords
• Secondary Keywords
• Tertiary Keywords

But they could be further divided into the following:

The entire game of local SEO is based on the location based keywords in which you are actually targeting that specific user group who are at their conversion phase. When it comes to location specific keywords, it is recommended to include ‘near me’ and ‘around me’ related terms instead of just focusing on the main region. Such keywords should be majorly targeted on the home page of the website whereas all the buying intent keywords should be targeted on the inner or category pages of the website.

No doubt that these local and buying intent keywords are the money making machine for any law firm but at the same time the importance of long-tail keywords can’t be ignored. Did you know that 70% of the web searchesp are made via long-tail queries?

Source: Neil Patel

Now, here a question arises that how can someone explore the long-tail keywords? My simple opinion would be to strengthen your research skills and find commonly asked questions over the internet.

Here’s how you can do it!

Using keyword research tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs.

Using Google Search

BuzzSumo Question Analyzer

Discover QnA platforms like Quora.

Onsite SEO Strategies for Attorney Website

Following are some onsite SEO strategies that need to be adopted in order to make your website up to the search engine standards:

• Optimize your title tags by incorporating your targeted keywords in it. Don’t spam, make it more natural for the search engines and users.
• Follow the same rule of optimization for the heading tags as well.
• Compress your website’s images and attribute them with appropriate ALT text.
• Avoid using duplicate content on the website instead create unique content for your business website.
• Proper canonicalization structure needs to be followed.
• After the Mobile-First Indexing Update, Google is now primarily considering your mobile version of the website. Make sure your website is responsive and its content is similar compared with the desktop version.
• Build a proper internal linking structure on the entire website.
• Publish blog post on the website actively to not only generate traffic but revenue as well.

Technical SEO Techniques to Follow