Digital Strategy for Law Firms: How to Make Your Practice Stand Out
Lawyers are no strangers to the concept of strategizing. These professionals work so hard on their cases that, come trial time, they’re in a position to never ask a question they don’t know the answer to. Research, numbers, proof—it’s the language of the courtroom.
However, when we move away from the world of affidavits and appeals, it’s time to call in a different type of co-counsel—the marketing experts. Luckily, just because we’re talking about marketing strategy for law firms does not mean lawyers need to be the ones behind the drawing board.
You can rely on us to guide you through the basics of crafting a world-class strategy. Get in touch with Digital Authority Partners today to begin reaping the benefits of working with an experienced legal marketing agency.
Why is Digital Strategy Important for Law Firms?
Digital strategy for law firms has become more important than ever. Creating the right digital strategy and appropriately employing available online tools is critical for any organization to drive new business. Most consumers research a business online before contacting that business or making the decision to purchase a product or service, and this is especially true for lawyers and legal services.
The online digital marketing space is more crowded than ever. An effective legal digital strategy must, therefore, be unique, engaging, and stand out in the crowd. For law firms, such practices go a step beyond just purchase intent, though. Law firms must curate the right digital reputation to attract new clients.
If your law firm’s digital strategy is not being executed correctly (or worse, is completely nonexistent), your firm could be missing out on a huge swath of potential clients. Since people rarely scroll past the first page to look at results, you’ll want to be first in your class over colleagues’ sites. But how?
Importance of Website Design for Law Firms
A website is the digital version of a business card but with even more importance and purpose. It allows potential clients to connect with you any time of the day or night and get crucial information at the exact moment they need a lawyer. It also projects the image you want people to have of your firm.
Any great structure needs a solid foundation. In law, if you don’t have a great foundation of legal knowledge, you likely won’t become a great lawyer. If you don’t have a foundation of great lawyers, you likely won’t become a great law firm. In digital marketing, if you don’t have a great website as the foundation for everything else you do, you definitely won’t create a successful digital marketing strategy.
Two essential parts of world-class digital design include user experience and taxonomy:
User Experience (UX)
Focusing on the overall user experience of your site is critical. Many companies, including law firms, focus on what their sites can do for them, but the best way to think about a site is through the eyes of new users and what they need.
When developing a website, ask yourself questions that someone visiting the site for the first time would ask themselves. Does the site offer clear, easy-to-understand navigation, or is it complicated to get around? Does the site give users a consistent experience both from page to page and every time they come back? Is the site optimized for mobile use so that it works smoothly from any device?
If you’re not quite sure (or don’t have time to learn HTML in your 80-hour work week), a UX agency can help out.
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is closely related to UX and refers to how things are classified on your site. Good taxonomy organizes your site in a way that makes sense to the user and allows them to find what they seek with ease. This serves the dual purpose of making the site more user-friendly and helping you drive business to the right areas.
Each of your core services should have a detailed landing page that is well-indexed and easy to find. Your landing pages should be at least 3,000 words (if not longer) and offer a comprehensive explanation of your services.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy for a Law Firm
The importance of a digital strategy for law firms cannot be understated. Below, we’ll go over specific digital strategies lawyers any firm can implement.
Identify Your Law Firm’s Target Audience
Digital marketing is meant to connect with your target audience on a deep, personal level. Whether you are a leading law firm or an emerging solo practice, knowing your audience is one of the most important factors of digital marketing.
Creating a consumer profile can help you better position your firm to meet your clients’ needs. For example, a well-crafted consumer profile takes into account demographics as well as psychographics and can target different behavioral traits or clients in specific locations, as many law firms are limited in where they can practice.
Generate Cost-Effective Leads
Once you have a great website and begin crafting a digital strategy, one large remaining factor is to ensure your law firm’s website is set up to convert the traffic you bring to the site into qualified leads and, ultimately, actual new paying clients.
Tools you can use to help optimize your site so that it turns traffic into leads include, but are not limited to:
- Calls to action (CTAs) in the content so that users know the next step.
- Analytics tracking provides data that can help point you in the right direction on why or why not leads don’t convert.
- Website heat maps like Microsoft Clarity offer clues as to how people interact with your site and where the UX could be improved.
- Chatbots can also help push conversion with live answers to real questions from your target audience.
Ideally, everything should work together to propel users through the site and sales funnel, ultimately landing as a viable lead. For more information on how to get a full strategy up and running (or refine the one you have), talk to a Fractional law firm CMO.
Set Goals
You likely put in a lot of hours to claim that “Esquire/attorney-at-law” title at the end of your name, so you’re no stranger to setting goals and following through. We know setting intentions is one of the best ways to actually make goals happen.
The theory also applies when it comes to digital marketing. Set actionable goals (like SMART goals) that allow you to monitor and reassess when needed.
Measure Success
Having analytics in place is a critical piece of a law firm’s digital strategy. This data lets you know how your audience is behaving on your website, what is working for you (and, more importantly) what isn’t and needs to be changed. Data-driven decision-making is one of the factors that sets successful digital marketing apart from the rest.
At Digital Authority Partners, we’re obsessed with data. We set data-driven, research-backed goals. Next, we establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and track them on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. This allows us to re-adjust if needed in the service of a projected return on investment (ROI).
A/B and multivariate testing can also help improve your law firm’s digital marketing. This is a process that involves testing multiple versions of a piece of a digital strategy to see which gets the best response. This type of testing can be used in many aspects of digital strategy, from website layout to brand colors to calls to action to content or email marketing headlines. The more you test, the better your results will be. After testing, you can identify areas of potential improvement and end up with the best option possible.
Top Digital Strategy Ideas for Law Firms
Are you ready for the next stage in your law firm’s digital transformation? If so, read on. Let’s talk about the best marketing strategies for law firms.
Social Media Strategy for Law Firms
A law firm’s digital strategy should include a vibrant, well-maintained social presence for marketing your business. What you publish on social media should be consistent and thoughtful. Social media is a great way to amplify the reach of your core content and publish supporting content that drives users to your core content, such as your practice area landing pages.
Supporting your content marketing efforts with social media is a key factor in elevating your law firm’s brand visibility, so make sure it is part of your overall digital marketing strategy. When you use social media to drive traffic to your site through content clicks, search algorithms see that as providing valuable and useful content to customers, ultimately leading to higher rankings on the Google search engine results page (SERP).
Make sure your law firm is active on social media and interacts with your followers. Social media is a great way to put a human face to your practice. Being inconsistent or not posting with a purpose can be a major social media mistake.
LinkedIn, home of job posters, job hunters, and like-minded professionals, is a great place to showcase your law firm's expertise. There, you can connect with colleagues and potential clients alike. When it comes to LinkedIn marketing, the major theme is "thought leader." Craft insightful legal content, from case studies to industry updates, to position your firm as a thought leader. The goal is to make meaningful contributions to legal-centric discussions.
Facebook has an expansive reach. Not only is it wildly popular, but it also has users across a wide range of ages, from teens to retirees. Share legal tips, client testimonials, and informative videos in a friendly yet professional way.
Additionally, Facebook Ads can help you target specific demographics and retarget potential clients. Encouraging interactions in the comments section boosts user trust and can help bring your posts to others' feeds.
X (Twitter)
X (Twitter) is unique in its ability to encourage people to communicate in real time. Create a community with legal insights, news updates from your local area, and relevant case studies—your wins—to relay your expertise. Hashtags can extend the reach and help your posts infiltrate legal discussions. Engage with followers, respond promptly to inquiries, and don't forget about ads.
SEO Strategy for Law Firms
We can’t talk about digital strategy for law firms without mentioning one of the biggest players in the game: SEO.
Local SEO
Although there are exceptions, the majority of law firms get the bulk of their business locally, from their towns, cities, and states. When this is true of a practice, local SEO becomes incredibly important. Local SEO (as opposed to SEM) can help you rank higher organically, without paying, in local search results for prospective clients searching for legal services in their area.
Searches including “near me” or “close by” have increased enormously—just under 50% of all Google searches are for local information. However, over 90% of people will pick local businesses on the first page of the search results. These stats should drive home how important local SEO is for law firms.
To win at local SEO, find and implement the right keywords into your content. Use an SEO research tool such as Ahrefs or Moz to find out what the monthly search volume is for potential target keywords. Compare that to your domain authority. The higher the domain authority, the better chance there is at ranking for your ideal keywords.
Check keyword volume to see if it’s worth your time to produce content around certain keywords. You also want to look at the competition to rank. If your direct competitors hold the top spots and it is relatively easy to outrank them, go for it. If the top spots are held by prestigious outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal or a .gov site, you might want to move on to another set of keywords.
To rank for any local keywords, you need to set up your website’s pages appropriately. Let’s say you want to rank for “personal injury attorney in Chicago.” In this case, you will need a locations page plus individual pages for each specific service. In this example, the page’s URL would look like this: locations/Chicago/personal-injury-attorney.
These elements mean the difference between local SEO failure and success. When set up correctly, you can dominate the local keywords in your area and be front and center when potential clients search for your legal services.
National SEO
Unlike local SEO, national SEO targets far beyond your town or state. National SEO is particularly popular with large firms that span across several states.
To harness those national SEO wins, triple-check that your website is optimized, do heavy research into relevant keywords, and make sure your backlink strategy is flawless. This broader reach increases brand recognition and drives organic traffic, which is vital for sustained growth.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to all the technical aspects of your site that allow it to be crawled and indexed by search engines. If your site has bad technical SEO, Google and other search engines will likely not put your site, or the content on it, at the top of their search results page. This could cost you a lot of business.
Half of all searchers only click on the top two organic search results. It's imperative to show up high on a Google search page. Don’t let bad technical SEO (i.e., pages that aren’t optimized for mobile devices or pages that load too slowly) get in your way.
For example, if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, many mobile users will abandon the page. Other technical SEO issues, such as dead links, no internal linking, or a lack of meta tags, can kill your rankings.
SEO Best Practices
Following SEO best practices in your content marketing campaigns is a huge key to success. Here are a few to keep in mind for your law firm:
- Long-form content should be 3,000 words or more
- Keep paragraphs short
- Use images frequently
- Use a readable font size
- Use headers to get people to scroll
- Create a compelling, clickable title
Content Marketing for Law Firms
Content is a valuable asset. Statistics suggest excellent content (and content marketing strategies) can increase organic traffic by 300%.
Law firms need to create relevant content to engage audiences. For instance, you can create relevant thought leadership content like white papers that speak directly to the people you want to reach. People looking for lawyers are searching using specific online terms; you need to capitalize on those keywords. We explained above how to research the keywords you need.
Let’s talk more about keywords:
Keyword Optimization: What to Know
When you find keywords with good volume and reasonable difficulty, the next step is to start creating content that smartly uses these keywords. You want to create a long-form pillar page (3,000-plus words) that uses your main keywords, such as “intellectual property law firm.”
You don’t want to overuse your keywords, though—known as keyword stuffing. The best practice is to use the keywords naturally, every 200 to 400 words.
Online SEO tools can help you find the right secondary keywords, which should relate to your main keywords and help you rank in more than one search query. For example, if your main keywords are “estate planning lawyer,” your secondary keywords might be “lawyers for estate planning” and “estate planning attorneys.”
Need a helping hand? Check out our content marketing services.
Email Marketing for Lawyers
The first email was sent in 1971, but that doesn’t mean this mode of communication (and advertising) is outdated—far from it, in fact. Any five-star digital strategy for law firms likely includes an email campaign. It is still one of the most effective marketing tools that brings the most bang for your buck.
Implementing an effective email marketing campaign helps boost conversions. To create and manage a great email marketing list, your site must be set up to capture emails from leads who visit the site. Using tools such as banners, pop-ups prompting newsletter signups, and more, you can curate a list that you can then use to engage and build an audience.
Email marketing is also a perfect way to augment your content marketing strategy. You don’t want to send out emails only when you want to advertise something. A great email marketing strategy provides subscribers with useful content. This helps position your law firm as a thought leader and create brand ambassadors who feel like they are part of the team.
Google My Business
Another easy way to dominate local SEO is to take advantage of Google’s free and easy-to-use tool, Google My Business. This tool allows you to manage your law firm’s online presence on Google Search, Google Maps, Google Reviews, and more.
Google My Business allows law firm owners to verify their business, add an extra layer of trustworthiness, and make sure all the pertinent info people need is front and center. It is quick to set up and can have significant impacts.
Paid Ads and PPC
Law can be a very niche industry, which is why legal marketing in the past focused on niche marketing. Industry conferences, trade publications, and targeted ads are ways marketers in the industry find their target consumers. While there is nothing wrong with targeted marketing, only focusing on that can close doors to new clients (or whole communities of potential clients) you may have never even considered.
Good digital strategy for law firms can straddle the line between two types of marketing. It can be targeted enough to reach your key audience while being broad and useful enough to find its way to outside audiences. When your content does this, it can open doors you never knew existed and create new revenue streams to help grow your practice. A PPC agency can help set up paid ad campaigns and track KPIs so you can focus on your client list.
Digital Strategy for Law Firms: Frequently Asked Questions
What Software Do Law Firms Use for Marketing?
Law firms that value much-needed data for their campaigns will likely be familiar with tools like Google Analytics for tracking website performance, Salesforce, or HubSpot for their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) needs, and more.
How Do I Get My Website to Generate More Conversions?
To have a website that draws in new business, it needs to attract users, be easy to use, and inspire trust.
One of the main ways websites attract customers is by offering what they need in the form of content that is easy to find and valuable to site visitors. Finding this info must also be easy. When potential customers arrive at your law firm's website, it must be well-organized and user-friendly.
If your site is creating a bad experience or isn’t letting users easily find what they need, you will likely lose business. All the great content marketing in the world won’t make a difference if your site isn’t on point. Creating a great site is the foundation upon which all the other digital strategies for law firms are built. Start with that, and the rest can flow from there.
How Can a Law Firm Utilize Client Reviews and Testimonials?
Client reviews and testimonials can bolster a law firm's reputation and attract new clients. First, show off positive reviews on your website and social media platforms for social proof of expertise and trustworthiness.
Testimonials also work well when integrated into marketing materials, such as brochures or advertisements, to reinforce credibility. Actively encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews on prominent review sites like Google My Business or Yelp. This can boost your legal practice's online visibility and search engine rankings.
Get Help with Digital Strategy for Law Firms
Lawyers are generally competitive by nature, and the right digital marketing strategy can help you stay ahead of your online competitors. Law firms around the world are using digital strategies to open doors to new audiences, deal with changing buyer habits, and establish thought leadership and a trustworthy reputation. With the right strategies, you can do this, too—and do it better than the rest.
To make this work, know your audience, create a website that is a solid foundation for your digital strategy, and implement tools and techniques that help you stand out, such as local SEO, analytics and tracking, and content, email, and social media marketing.
If you are interested in learning more about any of these digital strategies for law firms, contact the digital marketing experts at Digital Authority Partners to find out how your law practice can truly stand out.
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