It’s important for every law firm to have a process around lead generation. Unfortunately, they don’t teach these concepts in law school, and it can seem pretty foreign if you don’t have a basic understanding of a reliable lead generation pipeline. By developing a procedure around lead generation for your law firm’s business development strategy, you’ll greatly increase your flow of quality, reliable leads and also contribute to your cash flow, financial health and growth of your firm.
Let’s dive in and take a closer look at what strong lead generation processes should look like and the tools that you can use to grow your law firm and stay on top of your competitors.
What is Lead Generation for Law Firms?
In digital marketing, lead generation is an initiation between the law firm and their potential clients. This is considered the first step in your sales cycle and first point of contact is usually through marketing, attempting to generate interest from leads (people that are interested in paying for your legal services). The way that lawyers have traditionally marketed themselves in the past; such as handing out business cards, are now being done digitally. In a digital world, where smartphones and the web is part of everything in life for most people, a whole array of lead generation opportunities have opened up.
So, how can you successfully take advantage of online marketing through lead generation in order to grow your law firm?
Develop a Sales Funnel for Your Law Firm
A Legal Sales Funnel is the visual representation of a system that converts cold prospects into hot leads, and into paying clients. Establishing a great sales funnel gives your team an insight into your potential customer’s thought process, challenges and decision.
Picture a funnel, which is the widest at the top and most narrow at the bottom. You can separate this funnel into four main parts: Awareness, Research, Decision and Action.
Awareness
This is the first step of the funnel. During this phase, your goal is to introduce your area of practice and your services to the lead. You want your leads to discover your firm and arrive at your website, either through organic or paid advertising. At this time, your leads are looking for more information and resources.
Research
In this second phase, your leads have now defined their problem and are looking into available solutions such as your services. Once your leads are aware of your firm, it’s time to capture their interest. Your leads may have ended up on your landing page, or website and are now interested in what your Law Firm can offer them.
From a digital marketing perspective, they want information and content that will guide them through topics that are of interest to them, including FAQs, articles, and case studies.
Decision
Once your lead has identified their issue, are actively looking for a solution and have found your law firm’s landing page or website, it is time to provide them with services and knowledge that will convince them to work with you. At this point, it will be your responsibility to capture the attention of your lead and to show them how much they’ll benefit from working with your firm.
Action
At this end of the funnel, the goal is for your potential clients to submit their contact information to your Firm so that you can contact them. This can be done through several different calls-to-action (CTAs), such as a phone call, form fill or an email. For some law firms, the action stage of the process could also extend to scheduling a consultation with your firm.
The Lawyer Lead Generation Process
Every area of practice in the legal sector is highly competitive. So it’s important that you create a digital marketing strategy that’ll make you stand out above the rest of your competitors.
Once you’ve implemented a campaign to generate leads, you need to manage, qualify, assess, and nurture them through the process until they’re ready to convert into a paying client. Mismanaging a lead is almost worse than not generating a lead at all.
In order to optimize and get the most out of your lead generation campaign, you should create a system that’ll allow you to smoothly manage your leads as efficiently as possible. This can be done through a simple spreadsheet, database or if you’re a larger firm, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The solution you decide to go with should be dictated by the size of your firm, your operating budget, and how many leads you intend to generate.
Your goal should be to develop processes where your audience can complete the following steps:
- Discover your firm through one of your campaigns or marketing channels
- Click and visit your landing page(s)
- Click on your call-to-action (CTA)
- Provide you with their contact information
- Receive useful information that is compelling and tailored to their interests
To learn more insightful tips in creating a systematic lead management process, read this guide about Lead Management Best Practices that every Law Firm should follow
How to Generate Leads for Your Law Firm
There are several things you can do to generate more leads for your law firm and maximize your successes:
Create a compelling Online Presence through Your Website
Your website should offer detailed information about your area of practice and explain what you do, how you do it and how it could benefit your clients.
People make decisions online, and your website is often your clients’ first point of contact with your law firm. If you don’t have a compelling online presence, your potential clients will pick lawyers who do. Your page should be informative and easy to navigate. Most importantly, it should urge your website visitors to book a consultation with your firm and make it easy for them to reach out to you right when they make that decision.
This is known as a marketing funnel – the client’s journey towards the purchase of a service. For lawyers, a good website is often a central component of the marketing funnel. As such, it’s pivotal to landing new files. A good website can make a big impact on your bottom line, so the importance of getting web design right should not be underestimated.
Most legal clients prefer visiting the firm’s site to get the information before handing over their case. You’ll want to make sure your website is easy to access. Some aspects you should check include:
- Your website is mobile-friendly
- Your website has a fast load speed
- Your website has good visibility on search engine results pages (this is done through implementing SEO strategies)
- Your site design and layout is appealing and easy to navigate through
To learn more about the process of creating a stronger website and to boost your online presence, read our 10 Law Firms Web Design Best Practices to learn tips and tricks in creating a strong website
Use Landing Pages to Capture Leads
Landing pages can be a great way to direct leads to a summary of the most important information about your firm, and make it more likely that they’ll engage with you. Sometimes your website contains too much information for someone’s first interaction with your firm, or for those attempting to quickly compare your firm to your competitors. When creating paid advertising campaigns, it’s often best to direct visitors to a landing page with tailored content, specifically built around getting the visitor to quickly make contact.
If you’re getting started and need to get more out of your campaign, here are some tips that you can follow to create the best paid advertising landing pages for your law firm.
Match your Message of your Landing Page to your Ad
A primary reason why you should be using landing pages in the first place is because you want to ensure that you’re sending your potential clients to a page that matches their interests and expectations. You want to ensure that your visitors have made a ‘good click’ by matching your landing page design to the ads you’re running on Google Search or your social platforms.
Keep Your Action Above The Fold
When we talk about the fold, we’re referring to the upper half of the front page and often describes what’s visible on the screen before scrolling down the page. It’s valuable real estate and you want to make the best out of it.
Keep your Loading Speed to a Minimum
If your page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, you’re going to lose out on as much as 70% of your potential visitors. Avoid weighing down your landing page with unnecessary assets that’ll slow it down. You can consider using Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to deliver pages at almost-instant speeds.
Test and Update your Landing Page
A/B testing your landing page is the best way to ensure that you are getting the best results and converting your visitors into leads as much as possible. Before you commit, test and your designs and landing page. This way, you’re making your decisions based on data instead of gut instincts.
Take Advantage of Social Media Marketing
Social media is a great tool to market your services and your expertise while building a stronger personal relationship with your audience and engaging in direct communication with current, past and future clients.
Any content that you post should be engaging and focused on visual appeal. Social media posts that have images or videos have a higher chance of engagement than simple text posts. Some popular platforms that you can take advantage of are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Be Consistent with Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is one of the most valuable tools you have in your lead generation portfolio. These marketing campaigns can include blog posts, articles, web content, downloadable guides or email newsletters. Basically any kind of written or visual content related to your services that your potential clients will find valuable and interesting.
All content that you create should be practical, useful and align with your company’s values. Do not post any content for the sake of needing to post something. If it’s not related to your firm and area of practice, it wastes your audience’s and your time.
Build a Strong Online Reputation with Online Reviews
Many potential legal clients look at reviews and referrals when considering which lawyer to work with. It’s safe to say that people will work with a law firm that has a strong reputation as opposed to one with no or negative reviews.
You can claim some free profiles on review sites such as Google My Business, and include reviews from your past clients on your website. You can also send a message to your past clients and encourage them to leave you a review. Make sure you take every opportunity to respond to these reviews as this will show your engagement and commitment to your past clients – who may seek legal assistance from you in the future.
Consider Free Initial Consultations
We understand that this may not always be a plausible solution for every firm. However, if you are able to offer free consultations, it can benefit you greatly and encourage leads to take action and contact you directly. This is a great way to get new clients through the door and build a personal connection with them in person or over video conferencing.
You should however, be mindful of the time that you will be investing as part of this. It might be necessary to conduct an initial qualifying consultation to see if the prospect is one that you should take the time to invest in.
For many Lawyers, lead generation can be a daunting and overwhelming task. However, with the right tools, strategies and the right team of legal digital marketing professionals, you will be able to set yourself up for success and grow your firm.
We’re a Legal Marketing Agency with Proven Results
Soulpepper has helped hundreds of legal professionals, lawyers, and law firms increase their engagement through leading digital marketing strategies and campaigns. We understand the importance of lead generation and marketing efforts should be consistent, and compelling.
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