Today, a law firm has many places they can spend their marketing budget but are you wondering if you should be spending it on digital marketing and why it might be beneficial for your law firm?
Well, after understanding the goals you want to achieve there are many digital marketing strategies your law firm can adopt. For example, do you want to push more traffic to the website? If yes, then search engine optimisation (SEO) might be where you should invest your money. Or, do you want customers calling you right now? If yes, then you should invest in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Maybe, you want to increase brand awareness? Then social media and digital PR could be the strategies for your firm. Or is your firm’s goal to be a thought leader? Then you should spend time sending out a monthly email newsletter.
As you can see there are many strategies your firm could adopt and they all have many benefits. Read on to find out what your firm could be missing out on by not implementing digital marketing into its strategy.
Digital marketing can help build awareness of your firm so you can earn your clients' trust
A big part of digital marketing is helping you to build authority so potential clients believe you can do what you say you can do.
One way of doing this is gaining testimonials and online reviews, and adding them to your website. You could go one step further and use Law League to gather client satisfaction and feedback. Understanding and monitoring how your firm is viewed by clients and staff gives you a business advantage. You can also benchmark yourself against other law firms in the Law League platform.
A free way to gain client feedback, is by asking a client to consider leaving you Google Reviews at the end of a matter. People are starting to use Google Reviews like Trip Advisor and it’s becoming a very important part of the buying process and building trust in a customer. Think about how many times you’ve searched for reviews on Google before you made a purchase.
If you are worried about getting a bad review, don’t let it put you off. There are many ways to respond to a negative review, and if you can prove your firm is going to work on the issue then this could end up being a positive indicator. Take a look at our guide to getting Google Reviews here.
In 2020, the Content Marketing Institute said according to 75% of marketers, digital marketing tactics helped them to increase their company’s credibility and trust.
You won’t fall behind your competitors
Day in and day out we speak to law firms up and down the country that are investing in digital marketing. It’s likely the firm next door, or your main competitor is investing in digital marketing, so we would advise you to add this to your marketing strategy.
Why not look at how well you are currently performing against your competitors in terms of user experience, SEO, social media, directory listings and more by getting a free website health check and get a full comprehensive PDF report that one of the team would be happy to talk you through.
Investing in digital marketing will make sure you don’t fall behind your competitors.
Your law firm will see results
With the right strategy and execution, digital marketing can help your law firm increase website traffic, generate leads, and ultimately drive new business. The results will depend on several factors such as the target audience, market competition, and the quality of your marketing efforts. Different strategies take different lead times to get results but after continued effort and time, you should see results.
SEO is more of a long-term strategy but you will see results, according to Search Engine Journal, SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
Your firm can track its success
The best thing about digital marketing is you can easily track the success of your campaigns. Using Google Analytics, you can see how many visitors have come to your website via either SEO, paid search or social media activity.
This can also be supported by Google Search Console to see the number of times your website URLs appear in search results, this would be the number of impressions. You can also see post-click data which looks at site engagement. If you don’t currently have this set up on your website, speak to your agency.
With tools like Hootsuite, you can see the success of social media posts and easily schedule them. You can see what is getting engagement, when your audience is online and implement any necessary changes to reach potential clients.
By tracking your analytics and identifying your campaigns return on investment (ROI), you are ultimately showing partners the success of your campaigns, helping you gain more marketing budget. Have a look at our ROI calculator if you are finding measuring your ROI challenging.
Digital marketing can have a lower cost
Digital marketing doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg and it also doesn’t (even though we would love it if you did) involve paying for an agency to do the work. There are many parts of the strategy that your firm can itself using low-cost or sometimes free tools. This includes keyword research, social media scheduling and more.
One tool we love is Canva. Here you can create graphics and videos for social media, printed collateral and more. A tool for email newsletters and marketing lists is Mailchimp.
When writing blogs, you can use free tools like Answer the Public to discover what people are asking about and base your blog topics on this. Once you have written your blog, install the Yoast SEO Plugin (if you are using WordPress as your CMS) and it will tell you what improvements you need to make on the page to get more visitors. Google’s Keyword Planner can help you to identify the keywords you should be using in SEO and PPC, but there are plenty of other keyword research tools out there.
As mentioned, scheduling social media posts can be done through Hootsuite, Buffer or directly on some platforms. LinkedIn recently implemented the ability to be able to schedule posts directly through the platform. This means you can now tag personal accounts too.
Need stock images for social posts or to use on the website? Then Pikwizrd offers high-quality free images. Just make sure you reduce the file size before uploading to the website – why? Take a look at our blog post on stellar tips for editing your firm’s website.
Digital marketing is flexible
Another benefit to investing in digital marketing is that it’s flexible. Many aspects are easily changeable, if you want more work, you can ramp up your efforts by writing more copy, posting more on social media or increasing your ad spend.
Or maybe your law firm has too much work (wouldn’t that be nice!) or your firm is closing for the festive period, so you can be flexible and pause your paid advertising.
Your firm can get more engagement
Since the pandemic, clients are less confined to choosing law firms that are on the nearest high street. So a robust digital marketing strategy can help your firm to reach potential clients who aren’t based in your local area.
By creating compelling and informative content, optimising your website for search engines, and utilising targeted advertising, you can effectively reach and engage with your target audience and drive more business.
Does your law firm need support with its digital marketing?
Do all these benefits sound too good to miss out on? Then make sure you add a combination of these digital marketing strategies to your firm.
If you don’t know where to start or you need some extra support to understand where your firm can improve we are here to help. We have over 19 years of experience in helping law firms become more successful online.
Get in touch today, call us on 0117 325 0200 or email us sales@conscious.co.uk