The Best Places to Advertise Your Law Firm Online

Key Takeaways:

• Advertising your law firm is a critical component to building your business.
• Knowing where and how to advertise can help you save time and money while achieving the desired results.
• We have assembled our list of the best advertising tools for lawyers.
• Array Digital can help craft a highly effective, on-target online marketing plan to help you reach your goals.

So, you want to start advertising your law firm online? Awesome! But where do you start? How do you know which platforms will give you the best results as a professional attorney? What about strategies that help you stand out from other attorneys in your area?

Well, you came to the right place. Here is your all-in-one guide to getting started in the online advertising world for law firms. We will walk you through a simple but meaty approach to online advertising for law firms, showing you the best ways to use online advertising, the best platforms, and the best strategies to leverage what they have to offer.

What are the four major types of digital marketing?

There are four main types of digital marketing that law firms can (and should) use:

• Content marketing build awareness of your firm through crafted content. It builds relationships between prospective clients and your firm, serving as a starting point for all of your inbound marketing efforts.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) uses organic strategies designed to encourage search engines to position your website higher on the search engine results page (SERPs), making it more likely that someone will click on it.
• Search engine marketing (SEM) focuses on a paid strategy for leveraging leads, including paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Here, you’re paying to market to your audience.
• Social media marketing (SMM) uses social media sites to attract traffic and attention to your website. For attorneys, this often starts with LinkedIn and Facebook.

Benefits of digital advertising vs. traditional advertising

Digital advertising and traditional advertising are two different strategies for reaching people.

Digital advertising focuses heavily on connecting with people online by drawing them in, starting conversations, and building brand awareness.

Traditional advertising is more of a blanket statement that you provide a legal service, and anyone who needs it should come to you. It’s less personalized and far less innovative.

In traditional marketing, you employ a spray-and-pray tactic, hoping that your advertising will be seen by people who are interested in your product or service.

In many cases, online advertising is the most cost-effective way to capture customers just entering the market. With online advertising, you can filter your targeting by intent in ways traditional marketing can’t. Here’s what you should know:

• Search ads allow you to use specific words (called keywords) to help prospective clients find you when they are looking for an attorney.
• Online advertising doesn’t just provide a way to reach new customers. It also lets you stay top of mind while they are in the buying process.
• Once you’ve used online advertising to make your prospects aware of your brand, you can keep your offer in front of them while they consider their options. This is called retargeting.

How to choose the best digital marketing platform

There are several key steps to take to choose the best digital marketing platform and maximize ROI for your law firm:

• Determine your goals, such as building new leads, helping people learn about your brand, or providing updates about your firm.
• Define your target client. This type of client will most likely need and use your legal services. When structuring your ad campaigns, consider their needs and wants.
• Set a budget. You can spend thousands of dollars a month or a year. The key is to have a realistic budget that allows you to build out your marketing approach.
• Consider features to enhance your site. Consider any tools that could help enhance your site’s connectivity. Ensure your site’s platform lets you easily integrate any tools you use.
• Know what the other guy is doing. You need to understand and analyze the competition to find gaps in their marketing that you can use to your advantage.

Best online advertising for lawyers

Consider the following advertising methods for attorneys and when you should use them:

Google Search Ads (PPC)

Google Search Ads are possibly the most well-known form of online advertising. They work well for larger law firms that want to dominate their practice areas and locations, while smaller firms can target smaller or more niche locations and practices.

• Target local keywords: Including geographical keywords is a great way to narrow down your targeting. This includes using city names you service. Location is a significant ranking factor for Google, so you are more likely to find your target audience if you focus locally.
• Target long tail keywords: Typically, the simpler the keyword, the higher the cost per click you’ll likely encounter. There is often less competition for longer, more specific keywords, meaning more clicks for your budget and consistently better targeting.
• Competitor targeting: Borrow from competitors’ brand capital to identify more prospects for yourself. Not everyone feels the same way about this tactic, but it is popular because it works. You don’t want to trick people into clicking your ad by pretending you are your competitor, but you are presenting them with another option!

Bing Search Ads

Our team uses Google Ads in combination with Bing Ads to consistently get your company into the top rankings of major search engines. Bing, which Microsoft owns, has three search engines — Bing, Yahoo, and AOL — so when you advertise on one platform, your ad is actually seen on all three.

• Bing ads can be up to 70% cheaper than Google Ads and reach an additional 63 million searchers that Google Ads does not.
• Another major factor driving our clients’ advertising on Bing Ads is the older and more educated audience. Almost half of Bing searchers have a household income above $75k, and nearly three-quarters of Bing searchers are over the age of 35.

Google Display ads

When you’re clicking around the internet, you’ve probably seen ads from companies with whom you’ve recently interacted or similar competitors. This is the power of Google’s Display Ad network.

• Cost-effective: A successful display ad likely has a click-through rate (CTR) far below that of a successful search ad. But that doesn’t tell you the most important stat: cost per click (CPC).
• Better brand awareness: Display Ads also encourage better brand awareness.

At the end of the day, your goal is the most traffic for the lowest cost, and Google’s Display Ads deliver!

Video advertising platforms

Youtube (via Google Ads)

Starting a YouTube channel to build brand awareness can be an excellent strategy for growing your brand and pulling in new leads. You can grow your YouTube channel by running Google Ads and using Digital Display Ads.

Retargeting website visitors

The internet is more crowded than ever, with competitors all vying for attention. (Some of them are likely advertising too!) The odds are that unless your web design and brand are remarkable, there’s a good chance they’ll get distracted by the slew of options.

Retargeting is a great way to re-engage those people. You can use platforms like Facebook and Google’s Display network to show your clients ads that build on your messaging.

The sales funnel is not a straightforward path for most consumers. They will research and look around before choosing what law firm to hire. When someone comes to your website but is not yet convinced to work with you, there is one question you need to ask.

“What else would encourage them to work with us?”

When you retarget, you place yourself in front of that prospective lead again, remind them of your practice, and encourage them to circle back to you when they are ready to choose.

To retarget website visitors on Facebook, you need to add what’s called a “pixel” to the web page you want to retarget. A pixel is a small line of code, not visible or distracting to your visitors, that registers who visits your site.

The pixel will feed that information in real time over to your advertising campaign to let your ads responsively target website traffic immediately after they leave your site.

Implementing specialized retargeting

Get creative with your retargeting! You aren’t limited to throwing your home page visitors into a target pool.

If you are running ads targeting new customer acquisition, like we discussed above, you should direct them to a landing page.

If you have enough traffic going to your ads, try retargeting just those who clicked on the ad and went to the landing page! That way, you can create ultra-personalized ads specific to the people interested in what the first ad offers. With personalized retargeting, you can further segment the interests of the people seeing your ads based on their behavior.

Google & Facebook: Superior digital marketing platforms for attorneys

Google and Facebook are superior digital marketing platforms, according to a recent survey. That survey found that 87% of marketers use both Google and Facebook and get higher ROIs when they do so. Why is this? High-intent moments and relevant content directed at people where they are.

Pro tips for nailing Facebook advertising

Customize your audience by uploading your custom audience in a CSV file with a list of emails. This would be great if you already have a list of prospective clients.

Another option is to use generic targeting by choosing from a long list of factors related to your target audience, such as using the lookalike feature to find people with similar interests as your target audience.

If your current following comprises people who have either been your customers in the past or are likely to be returning customers, a lookalike audience can be a great strategy. Facebook will find people with similar demographics, interests, associations, and friend groups and include them as an easy way to potentially improve your targeting efficiency.

How do I measure the ROI of my digital marketing efforts?

Measuring return on investment (ROI) is always good business. There are several methods to consider when calculating your marketing ROI. There are calculators that will help you follow this process:

• Subtract all of your investment dollars from the total revenue earned.
• Divide that number by the investment total.
• Then, multiply this by 100 to get an ROI percentage.

The average is 5:1, though anything above that is even better.

Why law firms partner with Array Digital

At Array Digital, we create custom strategies for clients, enhancing law firm website advertising and improving the ROI of every campaign launched. We focus on creating the most effective ad campaign to bring in leads at the lowest cost-per-click possible. We have highly affordable marketing plans suited for smaller law firms looking to grow.

Testimonials

“Array Digital has been great for my law firm. The support and attention to detail has been incredible. They created a new website for me and I’m continuing to work with them on advertising and SEO content. Kevin and his team have been professional and passionate about helping me begin to achieve the goals I have for my law firm! Highly recommend.” — Andrew D.

“Kevin and the Array Digital team are exceptional at what they do! If you are looking to grow your law firm, look no further. Array is the expert team that you need to take the complexities of digital marketing off of your plate and bring customers that need you to your doorstep.” — Greg T.

Ready to elevate your law firm’s online presence?

At Array Digital, we believe in delivering quality work to our clients. We are constantly adapting our strategies as the internet changes, looking for ways to increase your leads without increasing costs. Discover proven advertising strategies with Array’s expert digital marketing services. Reach us through our contact page or call 757-333-3021 today.