In this digital age, no matter the business or industry you’re in, having a great online marketing strategy is key to remaining competitive. For law firms, the same rule applies. Traditional word of mouth referrals are still useful, but alone are insufficient for keeping the wheels of your business rolling.

Creating a digital marketing plan for your law firm can make all the difference, not only to successfully promote your services to a wider audience, but to allow you to stand out from the crowd. If you’re looking to reach out to more clients or improve on existing marketing strategies, here are a few tips to help you successfully promote your law firm to potential clients without stretching your team too thin.

1. Optimize your website to convert leads

If you don’t have a website already, then you must build one. Even then, just having a website won’t do if you’re either getting too little traffic or failing to convert traffic into leads.

Always ensure your website is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and optimized for different layouts and devices. This means that if a first-time visitor views your website on either a mobile phone or a PC, they’ll be greeted with a layout that is tailored to their device.

Some common issues that can prevent you from converting leads are slow page loading times, annoying images or sounds, distorted page layouts, and poor or absent calls-to-action (CTAs). The goal should be to reduce the bounce rate (the percentage of users that click away from your site after looking at only one page) and keep your visitors engaged enough to get in touch with you.

2. Increase user engagement with dynamic CTAs

To fully optimize your website, you need strategically placed CTAs across different sections of your website. These are links with text that influences visitors to get in contact with you.

While CTAs were previously static for every person, website technology has evolved to the point that it can track every visitor’s unique behaviour and react accordingly. This data can be used in creating a personalized CTA for each visitor. According to research by HubSpot, dynamic CTAs have a 200 per cent success rate over regular CTAs.

3. Write unique content and upload them regularly

Building a website for your law firm and keeping it up to date with fresh, high-quality, and unique content is important for promoting your services, especially through SEO. However, if you have a lean marketing team, it’ll be better to outsource this to professionals. Companies like dNOVO Group can help your firm rank higher on Google when clients search for specific keywords like Toronto divorce lawyer or mortgage lawyer in Detroit.

Every law firm has its unique characteristics, and you should use this to your advantage when building content. Consider how you can take advantage of your site to share your experiences in winning cases and the tactical approach of your attorneys. If you’re allowed to disclose, what clients have you worked with on contracts, or what awards has your firm won? Simply including such information somewhere on the site gives you an edge over your competitors. Seek every opportunity to promote your firm’s strengths and accomplishments.

4. Take advantage of positive client reviews

Search engines like Google are important in marketing your firm’s services to a wider audience, but having a local SEO strategy is one of the best ways to boost your visibility and credibility.

Having your customer reviews not only visible on your website, but on search engines as well, will help guide prospective clients who are searching for a suitable law firm in their area. Ask satisfied clients to leave you a Google review after working with them. You can even screenshot good reviews, putting them on your website and promoting them on your social media pages.

5. Have an active social media page

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn have a large volume of active users who can easily be a pool for your next clientele base. Creating a business page on these sites will allow you to reach your target audience through organic posts or targeted ads that only display on the feeds of people who meet your specific criteria.

Be sure to interact with your followers and post content regularly to increase your reach and build your page engagement. This kind of marketing strategy doesn’t necessarily require money, but it does take time and dedication. At the same time, be careful not to get drawn into controversial debates that would lead to reputational damage for your business.

6. Build and nurture your email list

One way of building and maintaining a good relationship with leads and clients is through an automated email marketing campaign.

Email marketing helps with continuous top-of-mind awareness with both existing and prospective clients. Since many people who need legal services either consult the internet or family and friends, this can help you get a lot of referrals.

7. Create a digital lead contact form

Once you begin to get steady traffic on your website, it’s important to improve your conversion rate. An effective way to achieve that is with a digital lead contact form. This form can be embedded in strategic sections of your website or a dedicated landing page.

Aside from being a good way to streamline your lead generation process, a form or questionairre can save you some time in quickly identifying clients who are the right fit for your firm’s legal services.

8. Prioritize quality backlinking

Ideally, to draw more traffic to your website and improve your search engine visibility, getting quality backlinks is an essential strategy. However, you have to intentionally put in some effort into ensuring you build the right trust and geographical authority for your firm.

You can focus on building links from either authoritative sites with great domain ratings or niche websites with a substantial following. In any case, don’t be shy about contacting site owners to offer trading backlinks when appropriate.

9. Host a free webinar

This is a common yet effective way to market your firm’s legal services and attract quality leads. Choose a webinar topic that would be of great interest to your target audience and promote it through different channels, including your social media pages, paid advertising, and email marketing campaigns.

This is also an effective lead-generation tactic since you can require anyone registering to share their contact information. This will make the post-event follow up much easier.

10. Retargeting cold or warm leads

You may often find people who visit your website or engage with one or more of your marketing campaigns without filling out a form or converting. In such circumstances where there’s an interest without any follow up, they may simply not be ready to purchase your legal services. In such cases, it’s best to retarget these visitors through paid display advertising.

By using cookies, you can enable adds for your services to appear in the user’s other internet activity. This is a very effective way to ensure that these leads can convert easily whenever they need legal services as you’ll become the first firm they’ll be thinking of.