Did you know that over 90% of prospective clients search online to seek legal assistance? Gone are the days when you had to attend networking events in order to obtain clients. In this new world, attorneys will need to create a comprehensive marketing strategy in order to grow their firm’s client base. But, establishing a growth strategy isn’t something that you can achieve in one day. You will need to track many aspects of your business on a monthly basis and build a cadence that works for your firm.
In this article, we’re going to show you 7 proven result-driven steps that have helped our legal clientele grow their law firms.
STEP 1: Develop a Team of experts
Not all legal marketing strategies are built the same. Best practices and strategies change constantly, and law firms need support from professionals and experts that have extensive knowledge of legal marketing in order to grow their business. It’s often difficult to determine whether you should do your law firm’s marketing in-house, or whether you should hire a digital marketing agency. Although the best case scenario is to have both – it may not always be financially viable.
In our experience, digital marketing agencies are able to show better results because their team is made up of professionals that specialize in different areas of digital marketing: SEO Specialists, content writers, web developers, online marketing specialists, just to name a few. By having a team dedicated to supporting your professional digital marketing needs, agencies can tailor a strategy and assign specialists to your firm to fulfill and meet your goals.
STEP 2: Create a strong brand presence
People will pay more for a brand that they trust. As mentioned above, the majority of prospective clients look for law firms online and your website is the greatest and first impression of who you are. Your brand, including the voice, colour, imagery and testimonials that you pick for your site should represent your firm as well as your area of practice. Your website’s aesthetics need to be aligned with who you are targeting and the ultimate goal is to convert your visitors to leads and eventually, your clients.
It’s also very important to include a CTA (call to action) with your contact information on every page within your site. A potential client that found you on Google might not land on your home page but rather a contact page, or about us page; which is why you need to make it easy for your visitors to find the information they need in order to contact you.
For more website best practices, here are 10 proven web design tips if you would like to learn more: Web Design Best Practices for Law Firms
STEP 3: Develop a File Acquisition Plan
Time is money, and we only have so much time to invest in new clients. Therefore, it’s vital to create a File Acquisition Plan to determine who your ideal clients are. Establishing an acquisition strategy helps your law firm grow and the plan helps your firm acquire the right customers in a cost effective way.
In order to create a basic File Acquisition Plan, you will need to identify who your quality potential clients are. This also plays an important role in determining your digital marketing strategy – since marketing specialists can tailor your marketing plan in order to seek out these clients. As your marketing plan begins to show results, your firm will then need to qualify the lead using various industry methods to determine whether you will be representing the prospective client or not.
Finally, it’s important to track how much you’re spending to acquire these clients. You can determine the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) by dividing the total costs of acquisition by the total number of new clients within a certain time period – we recommend monthly. This is a vital piece of information that every law firm should know, alongside another piece of important information: the total value of your customers.
STEP 4: Drive Traffic
There are many different sources to attract potential clients. Some well known online traffic sources are Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Google My Business
By creating a Google My Business Profile, you are able to connect with potential clients across Google Search and Maps, in addition to managing a business listing on Google. Google My Business is a free tool that gives you the opportunity to promote your Business Profile and website on Google. You can add your business address, hours, phone number and quality pictures to make your business unique, and give another way for your visitors to find you. Your marketing agency can also run search ads on Google to promote your business based on user search queries.
Facebook for Business
By building your presence on Facebook Pages (or other social platforms – Instagram Business Profiles or WhatsApp business profiles), you are able to add your address, business hours and contact information for your visitors. Even thought all these features are free, you can also run ads and boost your posts to reach even more people
LinkedIn for Business
LinkedIn for Business allows you to build credibility, connect with your potential clients and gain insider expertise from other experts in your area of practice. There are more than 30 million companies that use LinkedIn for Business, and you shouldn’t be an exception. LinkedIn offers a variety of marketing tools available for every business type and size. Start by creating a LinkedIn Page, create your profile and add your company logo as a profile picture. Make sure you add your address, and description telling people your vision, mission, and values.
After all these platforms have been created, make sure you connect them to your website to promote more organic engagement.
STEP 5: Capture Leads
Leads are people looking for more information, but are not ready to commit. They may call for more information or subscribe to an email list for one-way communication. In order to determine where your leads are coming from and to target your ideal audience, it’s important to create dedicated sales landing pages and implement lead capture technology.
Dedicated Sales Landing Pages
Statistics show that by using landing pages, your campaign traffic can increase in conversion rate by roughly 25%. Having headlines, or one unique selling proposition, captures the attention of the viewer that’s looking specifically for your area of practice. Landing pages can directly cater to the business goal you are trying to achieve. When you use a landing page for a specific campaign, you will often see what channels are bringing in the most leads. Tracking these trends provide valuable insight and can help you redefine your campaign strategies and improve its effectiveness overtime.
Lead Capture Technology
Lead capture is a system in which your lead’s information is recorded and stored in order to convert the lead to a paying client. This can be done in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or for smaller businesses; as simple as a Google spreadsheet. Either way, it’s important to track your clientele and make sure no valuable lead is lost or ignored.
STEP 6: Nurture Prospects
Sales prospects are ready for two-way communication with a brand, either through emails, phone calls or in-person meetings. This is the time to build trust and engagement.
A resource center can be stored on your website and a content writer can create articles with valuable information about your law firm and area of practice. By consistently outputting resources on your website, you are encouraging engagement with your site’s content and this will also help to improve your organic ranking on search engines. These resources can also be sent to your prospects in a carefully tailored email campaign, or sent to a particular prospect that is interested in the information you have to provide. By doing so, you are setting yourself up for success, and letting your prospects know that you are the experts in your area of practice.
STEP 7: Know your Numbers
Now that you know where your leads and prospects are coming from, it is time to create a simple reporting framework. This reporting framework is an overview of all the digital marketing efforts. Tracked on a weekly or monthly basis, the report should have the following information:
- Your marketing investments amount
- The number of website visitors
- The number of leads captured
- Your cost per lead
- The conversion rate (the number of visitors that turns into leads)
- The number of consultations booked with your law firm
- The cost per consultation
- The number of new clients that you will be representing
- The consultation to close rate percentage
- The number of revenue generated
- The return on investment
These key performance indicators (KPIs) provide your law firm with measurable values that demonstrate how effective your strategy is in achieving new business. By maintaining this reporting framework, you will be able to evaluate your progress towards reaching your targets for growing your law firm.
Are you a Lawyer who needs help growing your Law Firm?
Soulpepper Legal Marketing has helped numerous law firms of different sizes and budgets succeed, and we look forward to helping you grow your firm. Give us a call or get in touch via our contact form to see what we can do for you.