Why Attorneys Need a Strong Online Marketing Strategy

Understanding why attorneys need a strong online marketing strategy is crucial in today’s digital age. If you’ve been practicing law for some time, you might have overlooked the power of online marketing. However, digital marketing is no longer optional; it’s a necessity that can yield significant returns on your investment. While it’s true that the landscape is ever-changing, especially in the realm of social media, the benefits far outweigh the challenges.

Social media has evolved from a platform with potential drawbacks for professionals to a robust tool that law firms are now leveraging to their advantage. It offers a competitive edge over firms that haven’t yet embraced the digital world. The internet has revolutionized the way legal professionals can connect with clients from various backgrounds, making a compelling online marketing strategy indispensable for your law firm’s success.

Here are some of the benefits of creating a strategic attorney marketing strategy:

Attract local business

As with any business, transparency is important if you want clients to be able to find your firm. Generations are growing up in a world that is much more technically sophisticated, and because of this, they rely heavily on the internet. Digital marketing is essential in this digital world where everything is just a tap away. Having an online presence for your firm makes you much more available.

When someone types “law firms near me” into a search engine, you want your firm to pop up as one of the local locations on the first page of results. From there, prospective clients can navigate your website to find out more about your firm, its personnel, and the overall message your firm strives to achieve.

The advantage of using this kind of marketing is that it allows clients to search for your firm and find out more information about whom they potentially are eager to work with. This provides the client with a lot more choices, leaving them with a sense that they decided to choose the best professionals available to them.

Build awareness

The way to build a business is to instill trust between your firm and the client. The content you create for your firm’s website will be the foundation on which you build trust with clients who choose to research your firm digitally before making a commitment. The trusty method of treating clients with exceptional service and respect still holds true today. However, building trust to attract new customers comes down to your content.

The content on your website should have a significant influence on the people who visit it daily. Not only will this allow prospective clients to find out more about your firm, but it builds awareness for the firm itself, ultimately bringing in more clients.

Blogging and various other forms of social media allow firms to display their employee expertise, either through client testimonials or personal views written by the professionals themselves. This provides a personal touch, so the client can see beyond the screen about whom they could potentially work with. Blogging, along with social media, allows a lawyer to display expertise in their field before they have a chance to engage the client.

Being a seasoned attorney, you’ll want to showcase your expertise. There is no guidebook that says speaking at seminars can’t have the same effectiveness on an online platform.

Establish leadership

The benefits of creating a website for your law firm are lengthy, but that doesn’t mean you can just slap up a website and not update it. You’ll want to utilize social media to share valuable information that will aid your firm in featuring the expertise it possesses. Hopefully, this will lead to new business and further career opportunities.

Generating new content is a great way to attract new clients. Content is key to establishing your firm as a leader in the field of law. Clients want to feel like you know what you’re doing and that you’ll be able to help them, regardless of what the case may entail. Content is a considerable part of a good digital marketing strategy and shouldn’t be forgotten about in lieu of other items.

Having unique content is what really makes digital marketing successful and what could ultimately make your firm successful.

What about marketing costs?

Now that you understand some benefits of having a good digital-marketing strategy for your law firm’s online presence, it’s time to discuss cost. A marketing budget can be one of the most important, yet fluid, budgets for a company. Being very strategic with marketing services you’re paying for is really significant to ensure you are getting the most return for your investment.

So, is paying for attorney marketing services worth the cost?

After discussing the benefits of a strategic marketing approach, you probably understand that failing to showcase your law firm online is one of the biggest marketing mistakes in today’s internet-based world. After all, the United States saw almost 300 million internet users in 2016 alone. These users now have access to more than a billion websites at the touch of a button.

Furthermore, according to a study completed by LexisNexis, 76% of adult users go online at least once in their search for an attorney. This means that the competition for user traffic and engagement for any law website is very high.

This is why attorneys should hire professional marketing agencies that offer top-of-the-line digital-marketing services. They have the talent, experience, and scalability that is essential for growth. It’s never a good idea to juggle both your practice and marketing at the same time. Eventually, one or the other will fall short and to get the most out of your marketing investment, a professional is the key to success.

Here are 5 reasons that hiring out your attorney marketing services is worth the cost:

1. Saves time

Hiring a digital marketing agency means you’re paying for expertise. These professionals know the online business and can develop personalized yet effective campaigns to generate leads. Plus, they have enough bandwidth to handle everything themselves, so you can run your practice without having to wear multiple hats.

2. Experience

A lot of marketing companies have multi-industry experience, which means they bring more to the table than your in-house team. In-house teams can get too niche-focused while only reading industry related content, which hinders innovation. Digital marketing agencies successfully in other industries will understand your key audience and can come up with new ways to capture their attention. They’re filled with creative minds that are eager to experiment and explore new solutions. For instance, perhaps your website doesn’t have blogs.

An agency will know how important this is to online growth and will develop a great content strategy to get you started.

3. Strategy

Marketing is about the big picture. Attorneys typically focus on tasks and don’t have time to see the larger goals. Coming up with marketing campaigns takes time, creativity, brainstorming, research, testing, and measuring, which you probably don’t have time to accomplish. Hiring a knowledgeable marketing agency ensures your campaigns are organized and running at optimal levels. For example, maybe your website isn’t optimized enough.

A digital marketing agency will create a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan to get your website found by users.

4. Competitors

It’s easy to fall behind on industry trends, especially in the legal sphere. Marketing companies can stay ahead of the curve by checking out your competitors while conducting industry research about your audience. For instance, your audience might be more interested in learning more about a certain area of law.

Your marketing company will suggest you write informative blogs on the website to keep users engaged and interested. Plus, you’ll be recognized as a legitimate source of legal information.

Since digital marketing changes so often, they’ll help you keep your edge, so you can stay in the game.

5. Goals

If you’ve been haphazardly throwing your marketing strategies around without thinking about results, then hiring a marketing service will be a great investment. They’re interested in working with you toward achieving goals like retaining current clients, bringing in different cases, attracting new clients, and increasing revenue. A marketing agency can give you a fresh perspective on these campaigns and will deliver results.

While it’s tempting to try to market your firm in-house, the benefits of outsourcing attorney marketing services are well worth the cost. Even if you have the best law firm and a beautiful website, it means nothing if no one can find you. Hire industry professionals to put you in front of users with the goal of turning them into clients.

If you have any questions about developing an attorney marketing strategy or the costs associated with marketing, please contact our team today.