How to Attract Online Customers to Your Law Firm

Your firm is not garnering enough traffic and attention. Simply put, nobody can find you. Leads are important to law firms because they turn into potential customers, but if your firm’s presence does not have established topical relevancy, how are customers expected to find it, especially with the high volume of access to social media and the internet? Stop waiting for a customer to land on your doorsteps. Go out and find them. Utilize Array Digital’s proven digital marketing strategies that help customers find your firm online.

How Do Lawyers Get Found Online?

There are many ways that new customers and clients can find your law firm online. When potential customers are looking specifically for a law firm, they head to a search engine like Google or Bing and input information about what they are looking for specifically. Just like an e-commerce business, when a person wants to buy something, they look at the results from the search engine, determine which one seems like a good fit, and then visit that website. In this case, search engine optimization (SEO) works to help websites land on that search results page, so the client clicks on it.

Yet, there is much more to your marketing strategy than just creating a website and ranking well (though that is the foundation of being found online). For example, social media is a part of the process. You do not have an online store to sell your products. Rather, you need to convince would-be clients who are within your customer base that you are the right person for the job. Once you know your demographic (the target audience or typical client you want to work with), you can then use social media to help you.

Having a social media presence and profiles set up on various local directories, including law directories, is a very important part of this process. To find a law firm, many people head to social media with the goal of requesting information from friends or family. They may turn to strangers in a Facebook group to ask for recommendations. That means you need to have a presence on social networks. If you don’t use social media platforms for your firm, it’s hard for a person to find out if you are the right person for their needs.

You may know that business owners of all types create websites and social media platform profiles that showcase who they are. It is a type of branding. A person recognizes the brand, talks about that brand with friends, and trusts it for their needs. As a law firm, it’s just as important for you to have a presence online that creates a positive first impression. Social media marketing helps make that possible.

With it, your small business creates quality content through blog posts and social media content to share on social media. Over time, your followers on these sites learn about who you are and what you have to offer. Unlike an e-commerce business, you do not have new products to sell, but you have a breadth of information to share. That could include insights into recent cases, information about a person’s legal rights, or thought leadership about topics that are so important in the industry. Social media allows you to build your presence online in a positive way.

Why Establishing a Social Media Presence Is Important for Your Firm

Social media is not something just for teenagers and young adults. It is one of the most important tools you have for reaching a large audience of adults, people who need your services and want to work with you. Pew Research Center found that in 2005, just 5% of U.S. adults were using social media and present on one site. By 2011, that number was 50% of all U.S. adults. Today, it is about 72% of all U.S. adults. Considering this, it’s clear that this is where your target audience of people who need your legal services are spending their time. If you are not there, where they are, you cannot create an important connection with them and tap into this lead stream.

There are various ways that social media can help your law firm:

• It builds brand awareness: The use of social media allows people to learn about your law firm that they would not otherwise learn of it. They may find your page on social media, receive a referral from a friend, or find your ad on the site.
• It showcases you as an authority: It can also help to showcase you, as an attorney, and your law firm as a whole, as an authority in key practice areas you serve.
• It aids in driving traffic to your website: Just relying on word of mouth referrals won’t cut it anymore. You still need people to visit your website. New business comes to your website with the hopes of learning something and finding a solution. They may get to know you on social media channels, but then they visit your website to take action.

Social media is one of the most important types of marketing campaigns you can do to build your new business and online presence.

With social media accounts, you create a way to engage with and provide for the needs of your would-be clients. You do not provide legal advice on social media. Rather, you educate and inform people about their rights and the opportunities to get help. This allows you to position yourself and your law firm as a solution to them. Good information leads curious traffic to your website.

Does Website Quality Matter to Customers?

A quality website is a very important part of the sales process for law firms. You may not have product photos to display or special offers to provide customers. However, you do have the ability to answer their questions, tell them how to take action, and get them the help they need to solve their problems. This can only happen if your website provides them with this type of quality information and insight.

There are a few core components that make a website effective like this. As a business owner, you need to be sure your website provides this type of connectivity with your clients. Your website can do this in various ways:

• It’s fast: When someone visits your website, they expect to move through it with ease. Delays hold people back from using the site, often preferring to back up to the search engine results and find someone that’s faster.
• Aesthetically pleasing: The website also has to be appealing to them. For law firms, this means choosing a color scheme that is professional and promising. It means fewer gimmicks and more authentic information. The use of infographics may offer some help and photos of the lawyers themselves. This helps people connect to the firm.
• It needs to be accessible: That includes being accessible to people with disabilities. At the same time, the website also has to be easy to use from mobile devices, as that is how a large number of your clients will search for your information.
• It has to be user-friendly: When someone visits your website, they need to easily be able to navigate it. That is, they need to find the information they are looking for and then have an easy way to fill out a form to contact you or have a phone number to call. It also has to have a navigation that makes sense to help them to learn as much as they want and need.

When you have a better quality website like this, it creates a better customer experience. That leads to higher conversions. They see what you have to offer and want to engage with you.

How to Optimize Your Website for More Traffic

Going back a bit, let’s consider SEO. To be found in search engines, websites need to have good search engine optimization. That is, the website needs built in such a way that the search engines find it, scroll through it, and then see the value of the content on the website. When this happens, it shows the search engines that people who need information like this can find it on this website.

For search engines like Google, their business is ensuring that the search results meet consumer needs. Google’s consumers are searchers. It is in the tech giant’s interest to ensure the highest quality websites are placed on the first pages of the search engine results. SEO is a tool that allows you to show search engines what your website has to offer and the quality of that content.

There are various digital marketing strategies that can contribute to this. Here’s a look at some of the most important components of this:

• SEO Strategy: A customized SEO strategy allows you to improve your chances of appearing in the organic search engine results. This is an overall game plan that takes into account the various components of SEO and describes how each will work together.
• Content: Content marketing involves the creation of high-quality content on your website that includes the necessary keywords needed to rank and answers relevant questions. What’s tricky is that this content needs to meet the expectations of a visitor to your website – it needs to solve their problem. At the same time, it also has to work to incorporate SEO strategies that pull in the search engines. Most content that lawyers write themselves never gets found on Google. Array Digital’s content strategy remediates this.
• Backlinks: Backlinks are links to your website on other websites. It signals to Google that your website is worth ranking because it contains high-quality content that is so useful, other websites are referencing it. Increased backlinks improve your domain authority, or the overall trustworthiness of the site.
• Technical SEO: On-page SEO incorporates keywords. Technical SEO focuses on building an XML sitemap and conducting server optimizations that allow Google to crawl all of the pages of the site and incorporate other components of backend support to the search engines.
• On-Page Optimization: Also called on-page SEO, it involves creating relevant titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and more that encourage better rankings in the search engines. This works hand-in-hand with content to create a website that meets your visitors’ needs.
• Local SEO: Local SEO is the focus on building your target audience based on where they are and where you provide services. For example, you may provide legal services in one metropolitan area. You want to communicate to the search engines that if a person is looking for your service within their geographical area, you are the ideal candidate for them. Law firms must have local SEO in place as it is a very local-based service. Array Digital can localize your firm’s SEO for your entire state or a specific city.

All of these components work together to provide your website with quality content that meets the website visitor’s needs while also ensuring that your website ranks well in the search engines. Good SEO helps you to get leads into your business. It helps build your online presence and ensures your law firm is reaching the people it should.

What Is Email Marketing, and How Can It Help?

Another component to building a successful online presence is using email marketing. Email marketing is a way of keeping a connection to your clients and prospective clients through the use of widespread email campaigns. When you send people interesting content that you know they have some interest in, that can help your business in various ways.

When someone comes to your website and fills out a form or otherwise provides their email to you, you can then send them emails as long as they continue to be interested in them. Why do this? What would a law firm need to do this for? Here are some examples.

• Send information about legal changes. Perhaps they requested information about personal injury from you. The laws changed. Send an email to let them know about those legal changes.
• Inform them of the informational resources you are providing. Did you launch a new podcast? Did you publish a book or an ebook that may provide them with the information they need? Let them know through an email.
• Is your firm changing in some way? Perhaps you are a startup that branched off another firm, and you want your previous clients to come with you.
• You may just want to reach out and see if they need help. Advertising that your services are available is a viable reason to contact people on your email list, as long as you do not sell yourself too hard or make every email a promotional offer.

Email marketing allows you to create lead generation funnels. Perhaps a prospective client was not ready to secure your business before, but the information you provided to them in your emails, on your blog, and on your website has shown them that you can help. It also builds your brand awareness.

What Other Ways Can I Make Google Work for My Firm?

There are many tools available that can help your law firm’s website do well with Google. Remember, the more ways you can show Google how valuable your website and law firm are, the more leads this could help you to bring into your business.

Most of what’s been mentioned are tools you can use to create organic ranking in the search engines. It is also beneficial to consider paid advertising. Often referred to as pay-per-click (PPC), this type of marketing is a viable way to get very targeted leads to your website quickly. You can do this in various ways.

Google Ads (ppc)

Google Ads is one of those ways. Google allows you to create short ads that can include very specific keywords. If you provide family law in Florida, you’ll want to include keywords like this in your ad. Then, Google will place those ads in front of people who are looking for the services you are offering. Do a quick Google search now like this. You’ll see these ads pop up at the top of Google’s search engine pages.

With these types of ads, you only pay for them when a person clicks on them. That means you are not paying endlessly for them. While the cost structure is a bit more confusing in that you have to compete against others selling the same service (i.e., formulate and adjust your bidding structure frequently), this is a very good way to get highly qualified leads to your law firm in a short amount of time.

Facebook Ads

Ads are not just for Google, however. Facebook Ads are another viable tool. This is one of the best ways to reach people on this social platform. For example, if a person is looking for a car accident attorney in New York, they may be talking about it in their social groups or on their page. Facebook realizes this and places ads that relate to it on its Facebook page. If your law firm fits their need, your ad appears there. Again, you only pay for that ad when they click on it.

This type of ad structure is an excellent investment for many law firms. It provides a fantastic way for you to build your leads, coming in not just with anyone but with people who are looking for the specific services you offer. That’s key when it comes to marketing online. You do not want to spend money on ads that are not fitting to your needs. It often brings a solid ROI when it comes to legal marketing methods.

Are you overwhelmed yet?

It’s easy to start reading all of these things you could do to help your website to rank better and then feel like it is all too much. Don’t worry about the details too much. Array Digital is here to help you determine which methods to use and which are going to be best suited for your long-term outcome. We can do that because of our experience.

What Else Can Be Done to Get Your Law Firm Found?

Consider a few more ways that you could help to build your business’s presence online:

• Sponsorships: Sponsors are looking for solid metrics from blogs and websites. They will seek out partnerships with organizations that support their goals and, by working together, can help to draw in more leads. While this may be harder to do for a law firm, you could do this personally for your thought leadership posts
• Podcasts: Creating a podcast can help you to become a well-known thought leader in your legal area of expertise. You can host a podcast to talk about cases in the news or to discuss the legal rights your client base has. This can help your law firm to contribute to the community while also making it look as though you are a leader in the industry. Kevin and I have plenty of experience hosting podcasts, and we are happy to share our tips with you.
• Referrals: A referral is a valuable tool as well. People trust others they know and even a stranger online referring a service. Referrals also help you to stand out. They work like customer reviews in providing others with information that encourages them to take action and work with you.A modern-day referral is a Google Review. Encourage your current and past clients to leave you a positive review on your Google Business Profile so prospective clients can see it.

Each of these methods helps to get the word out that your business is available and ready to help people. As you can see, the most beneficial way to get your law firm found online is to use a variety of marketing tactics. The strategists at Array Digital will help you identify the best tactics to use to maximize your budget. All it takes is a quick phone call to get started.

Be Proactive in Establishing Your Online Presence

Build your business’s presence online. Contact Array Digital to learn more about what we can do for you. Request a free consultation by calling 757.333.3021 or complete the online contact form now, and we’ll call you. Let our experienced digital marketing experts help your law firm.