It’s an unfortunate fact that most businesses will struggle if they’re not actively promoting their services.
And, if you’re a law firm, it doesn’t matter how good your reputation is. Gone are the days when clients would look your firm up in a phone book – now, customers expect reputable companies to have a solid digital presence.
That’s why you need to make sure potential clients can find you easily by promoting your business online. Here are ten ways to do just that.
1. Develop a Personal Brand
Studies have shown that 85% of law firms find that customers who look them up online go to their bio pages. This makes sense when you know that clients aren’t looking to hire a law firm, but rather an individual lawyer. When a potential client has read a lawyer’s bio page and likes what they see, they will give the lawyer a call.
This is why it’s so important for all the lawyers in the firm to actively promote their personal brands online – it helps clients see them as individuals instead of part of a faceless company.
Improving Lawyer Bios
Because the bio pages on the law firm’s website receive the most traffic, you’ll need to make sure they are engaging and informative.
A good way to fill in the details is to ask each lawyer to provide vital information – like their work experience, credentials, licenses, and links to their social channels and publications. Each lawyer should also have a professional photo, and there should be a clear call-to-action on each page.
Don’t neglect SEO for lawyers on the bio pages – include relevant keywords in the bios to improve your website’s SEO rankings.
The Importance of LinkedIn Profiles
Each employee at your law firm should have a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is an invaluable social platform for business networking and connecting with clients and other industry professionals.
To get the most out of the business-oriented platform, ensure that each profile is complete with a professional photo and includes all previous work history. Each employee should also write a detailed description of themselves and their services, join groups related to their industry, and engage with other industry professionals.
2. Generate High-Quality, Evergreen Content
An excellent way to generate traffic to your law firm’s website is to create engaging, high-quality content. If more people visit your website, your law firm will establish itself as an industry leader and you’ll build brand awareness.
You can use an online tool like Semrush to research popular topics and generate evergreen content; just make sure it’s relevant to your industry or brand. You can also create a publishing schedule to plan your posts in advance.
3. Get Social
Encourage all employees at the law firm to be active on social media – everyone should have their own account. Additionally, set up business accounts for the law firm on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn to build a social media presence.
The major advantages of setting up social media accounts are connecting with more potential clients and getting a wider reach for your written content.
4. Take Advantage of Email Signature Marketing
Setting up and optimizing your email signature means that every email sent is another opportunity to promote your law firm.
A basic way to do this is to create an email signature with all your contact details, but you should do more than that. Make your email signature engaging and attractive, and Include social icons that link to your social media accounts. You can also try adding call-to-actions in your email signature.
5. Buy Ads Online
Most of your potential clients probably use Facebook – that’s why Facebook ads are a great way to promote your law firm to them. There are a few options when choosing Facebook ad campaigns, so familiarize yourself with the technical part of things so you can reach your intended audience.
Google Adwords is similar to Facebook ads, but it will promote your business in Google’s search results.
6. Create Video Content
Creating engaging videos is another excellent way to promote your law firm. YouTube is the second largest search engine online, and Google also owns it.
Creating a few industry-related videos for your website and uploading them to YouTube is a way to increase your reach and help your potential clients feel more engaged with your business.
7. Optimize Your Website
If you’re getting traffic to your website but you’re not getting new clients, chances are you need to optimize your website to generate more leads.
Set up a live chat feature, make your website mobile-friendly, and make sure you have call-to-actions on each page.
8. Get Involved in Local Events
Another way to reach more clients and promote your business is to participate in local events – offline and online. Hosting a webinar or sponsoring a local fundraising event will raise your brand awareness, especially when the people participating take photos and post them on social media.
When other people post pictures of your firm participating in events, make sure that your company account is tagged.
9. Monitor Your Reputation
There are online services that will notify you whenever your law firm is mentioned online – signing up is one of the best ways to monitor your levels of service delivery and online reputation. You can customize the service to notify you whenever your firm’s name is mentioned in a review or online discussion.
With a free tool like Talkwalker, you can discover what people are saying about your firm online. You can also decide whether to respond. This is extremely useful when you need to defend yourself from criticism or simply say “thank you” to someone for recommending your services.
10. Track Your Marketing Activities
Once you’ve implemented all the marketing strategies above, you’ll need to know whether they have paid off. The best way to monitor your marketing activities and traffic is to use Google Analytics.
Once you have this valuable data, you can see which strategies are working and which ones you need to work on. Social media networks also offer their own sets of tools to monitor the results of your marketing efforts.
