Digital Marketing Strategies for Law Firms

Transcription

1 Digital Marketing Strategies for Law Firms

2 Overview The purpose of digital marketing is to generate leads and raise brand awareness. Some strategies are more effective for a Law firms. This Ebook outlines digital marketing (a.k.a. lead generation) initiatives that works for the legal industry. These strategies have been implemented for Law firms throughout the US, generating positive ROI across multiple geographies and within a broad array of company sizes. Note: The results of these campaigns vary based on execution. This Ebook should act as a guide, empowering you to focus on the strategies that produce results.

3 Web Analytics You need to analyze your data in a web analytics tool, such as Google Analytics and set up proper conversion tracking to measure success. Web analytics answer questions like Where are people converting on your website? Which pages are better than others? How do visitors find your website? What is the referral source of the traffic that converts? Google s definition of web analytics: Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. Web analytics allows you to collect, analyze, and report online data, giving you insights into user behavior so you can optimize accordingly. For most Law firm websites, the intended purpose is to inform and produce qualified leads. Web analytics allows you to measure your advertising spend return on investment (ROI). Use actionable intelligence

4 based on web analytics to shift budget or to change creative. Without web analytics, how will you ever know whether or not your campaign is working? While it is great to know how many visits a page has gotten on your website or the bounce rate, you have to decide what to do with that data once you receive it. How are you going to make your data actionable? Conversion Goal Tracking Setting conversion goals is essential for every website, if you want to track the success of any marketing campaign. Without tracking conversion goals, it is impossible to measure ROI. We use two criteria for conversions. First, we look at contact form submissions, where a user fills out a contact form on your website. Every submission equals one conversion. Second, we look at phone calls. Call tracking is a great strategy for Law firms that receive a healthy flow of phone calls. There are many software-based solutions that allow you to track the source of every phone call.

5 Content Marketing Content is a key component of a successful digital marketing strategy. What is Content Marketing? Content marketing creates value for customers and prospects by creating and distributing unique, valuable, and relevant material to delight existing customers and attract new ones. A content marketing strategy includes everything from website content to press releases, blog posts, social media, newsletters, infographic, and much more. Through content, a user gains insight into your level of expertise. When implemented correctly, content marketing builds a relationship with your intended audience. Overtime this relationship is based on professional trust. When your audience trusts you, they ll be more willing to do business with you when they re ready to make a decision. Your content should attract the right people to your site, convert them into leads, and nurture those leads until they are converted into customers.

6 Local SEO Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essential to help your Law firm stand out from the crowd. Investing in Local SEO helps customers and prospects find you, by giving your business increased visibility on search engines and local directories. The on-page elements of SEO provide a stellar user experience for your website visitors. To optimize user experience, improve page speed loading time, set up ideal user paths, and write clear content that is relevant to your service offering with simple calls-to-action. The off-page elements of local SEO have to do with everything that is not on your website, including your social media channels and local business directory listings. Online reputation management is not only essential for branding and visibility, but it also helps your bottom line. Stellar reputation management makes your firm stickier for existing clients and attract new prospects. Getting great reviews and streamlining your business details are key for local SEO. Driving to an inaccurate location on Google Maps is a pain for anyone. Bad reviews on Google turn off prospective customers. Perception is reality online. Don t have users discredit your

7 business automatically due to bad reviews. Be proactive and start generating good reviews now for your business. Don t neglect Local SEO: provide a streamlined experience for your prospects and customers across your website and all other platforms. Google AdWords What is Google Adwords? Adwords is Google s paid advertising service. There are two types of AdWords ads: display ads, which have a rich visual format, and text ads which appear when customers search for relevant terms. Both formats get your business in front of your intended audience when they search for relevant information online. Law firms use Adwords as a means of driving traffic to their website.

8 What is the cost associated with Adwords? Even though there no mandatory minimum budget, your budget determines how many impressions and clicks your ad receives. The pay-per-click cost will vary depending on a number of variables including bid, competition, ad quality score, geographic etc. AdWords gives you full control of ads, unlike traditional marketing and advertising platforms like TV and Radio. Advertisers can create thematic ad groups such as Corporate Law Firms, Intellectual Property Lawyers, Medical Malpractice Attorneys, and many other service-descriptive keyword phrases. You can throttle clicks based on the amount you want to spend per day. You can target specific geographic areas, as well as the day and time ads appear. The best aspect of AdWords is that you can track every dollar spent on paid ads to determine your cost per lead. Remarketing

9 Advertise.com stated that over 96% of your website s visitors will NOT convert on their first visit. What can you do to recapture those visitors? Target them again with Google remarketing ads. Remarketing is a powerful tool that allows companies to stay engaged with lost opportunities, keeping their brand top of mind. Remarketing is especially useful for companies with a longer sales funnel as it may take the user several visits to the website before converting. How Remarketing Works After someone visits your website they will be cookied (make sure that your privacy policy allows for this) and your ads will follow them around the web for a period of 30- days. It sounds creepy, but it works for Law firms! Remarketing is one of the most underutilized digital marketing strategy because companies do not know how to deploy it properly.

10 LinkedIn Paid Advertising Reach your ideal customer on the world s largest professional network LinkedIn advertising allows you to target a professional audience in a online professional environment. Advertisers can market to decision makers and executives in specific verticals. The unique benefit of LinkedIn advertising is its hyper-focused targeting criteria. LinkedIn allows you to target users by: Location Followers Age Groups Company Name Connections Seniority Degrees Company Size Job Title Experience Skills Industry Job Function School And More!

11 Whether your firm s goal is lead generation, brand awareness, event registrations, or recruitment, LinkedIn offers many different advertising options to meet your need. Gated Content What is Gated Content? Gated content is a downloadable PDF, guide, ebook, white paper, or similar offer that can only be read after submission of a form. A great example of a gated content piece is what you re currently reading. The purpose of gated content is to provide valuable content to a specific segmented user group that builds trust over time. When to Deploy Gated Content Some website visitors just starting their research phase, while others are ready to select a Law firm. The user who is collecting data is educating themselves on a specific topic, and is not ready to contact you. That is where gated content comes in, to reel in a visitor at a the earliest phase of the buying process.

12 Gated content captures the user s name, address, phone number, and whatever information you think will be valuable to market to them over time. The user can opt out of your communication at any time. Gated Content coupled with LinkedIn advertising is a powerful lead generation tool that we recommend for all Law firms. Marketing If marketing isn t working for you, then that means you are not doing it right. marketing is the best and most direct way for legal professionals to advertise to new and existing clients. Educate your clients and prospects by providing them with valuable information. The information can include the latest changes in the law, recent court rulings, tips on reducing liability to the company, and more.

13 Segment your List The key to running a successful strategy is to offer useful and relevant information that educates and spurs your clients to action. Make the s relevant to the users at the stage of the funnel that they are at. Marketing automation is a helpful tool to ensure that you send the right content to the right users at the right time. list segmentation and marketing automation campaigns avoid gaffes like sending divorce law articles to corporate clients. Inform subscribers of upcoming business law changes and important notices. Educate your users on important news topics that are relevant to them. Outline how you can help them. Use calls-to-action to provoke an action. No one wants to read paragraph after paragraph over use images to break up the content. Measure engagement to see which articles are spurring action and which ones fell on their face. Marketing Automation

14 Marketing automation software gives the tools to target the right audience and serve with the right message at the right time of their buying cycle. Marketing automation combines , content marketing, paid advertising, and search marketing converting more leads while saving time and money. Inbound Marketing Components Content Marketing Marketing Search Engine Optimization Lead Nurturing Paid Online Advertising Lead Scoring Social Media Conversion Optimization Automated Workflows Custom Reporting Law Firm Digital Marketing Agency Conversion Pipeline has helped Law firms build successful online campaigns that attract qualified leads. If you re interested in finding out more about how we can help grow your Law firm, we would love to discuss your goals