Are you struggling to understand exactly why your law firm needs a digital marketing strategy? Here are five top reasons digital marketing is important.
About 65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads are their biggest marketing challenges. Another 74% say converting leads into customers is their priority. Despite how many companies struggle to acquire new clients, many still fail to strategize for digital marketing.
With a well-thought-out digital marketing strategy, you can reach potential clients and spark their interest. Then, you can generate brand trust and demonstrate your expertise. Once you have their attention, you can convert those leads into clients for your practice.
Without digital marketing, you could miss potential opportunities. Instead, your competitors will start acquiring those clients and growing their practices.
Don’t fall behind! Instead, get ahead of the curve with a strong law firm digital marketing strategy. Keep reading for the five top reasons digital marketing is essential for your practice.
1. Appeal to Your Audience Using Digital Marketing
In order to develop a strong digital marketing strategy for your law firm, you need to start with research. If you don’t know who your ideal clients are, you’ll never appeal to their needs and interests.
About 90% of top-performing B2B content marketers focus on informing their target audience over sales tactics. What information are your clients looking for online? Are they looking for answers to their questions or for a lawyer they can trust?
Learning about your customers will help you determine their search intent.
Search intent is usually split into two categories: questions/answers versus products/services. For example, someone might search for “what do I do after a car crash?” versus “car accident lawyer near me.”
These two searches will inspire two different pieces of content.
Segmenting Your Audience for Digital Marketing
As you develop your digital marketing strategy, start by learning as much as you can about your clients. If you’re targeting a broad audience, try to segment it into smaller buyer personas.
Segmenting your audience will help you create a specific approach for each one.
For example, you can separate your audience based on:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Marital status
- Household income
- Interests
- Buying behaviors
- The legal services they need
Your law firm might approach millennials in need of legal services differently than you would senior citizens.
Don’t stop there, however. Properly implemented digital marketing strategies include tracking capabilities that will allow you to continue to analyze and further segment your audiences.
Keyword Research
Once you have a better idea of who your clients are, take your research a step further. What information are they searching for online? What keywords are they using during a search?
Keyword research will help you develop a content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. SEO allows you to optimize your content for search engines like Google. The higher you rank online, the more brand awareness you’ll generate.
SEO can also help you:
- Acquire more website traffic
- Appear credible and authoritative
- Build thought leadership
- Increase leads and conversions
- Generate brand trust and loyalty
SEO depends on keyword and audience research. Otherwise, you’ll fail to appear for the searches your prospective clients are completing. To start your keyword research, you can use:
- SEMRush
- Google Trends
- Ahrefs
- Google Keyword Planner
This research will help you develop a more precise targeting strategy. By creating content your audience actually wants, you can attract them to your practice.
As a result, you’ll start generating more high-quality traffic to your site. You won’t have to worry about leads that will fail to convert. Instead, you can attract the people most likely to become paying clients.
Precise targeting is one of the greatest benefits of a strong digital marketing strategy.
Maximize Your Reach
Traditional marketing methods like billboards and flyers might limit your reach. You might fail to reach prospective clients outside of a target radius. One of the benefits of digital marketing is its ability to expand your reach.
About 93% of all online activity starts with a search engine. However, about 75% of consumers never look beyond the first page of results.
If you’re not using search engine marketing, you’re likely failing to attract clients. Instead, those prospective clients will see your competitors online. With a digital marketing strategy that utilizes search strategies, you can maximize your reach.
As technology develops, you’ll also discover new methods to reach customers. Today, we have SEO, digital advertising, social media marketing, and more. Each method can provide you with unique opportunities to reach clients!
Improve the User Experience of Your Assets
More than half of all overall web traffic comes from mobile devices. Neglecting to create a law firm digital marketing strategy could cause you to neglect this audience.
Optimizing your website for mobile users allows you to improve their online experience. Once people see how easy it is to use your site, they’ll become more likely to convert. With digital marketing, you can find new ways to improve the user’s online experience.
Ignoring these digital marketing tactics, however, can complicate their lives. They might have a difficult time finding you online.
Since people rarely use phone books anymore, you need to use digital marketing.
2. Differentiate Your Brand
How are you standing apart from your competitors? Can clients differentiate your practice with a glance? If people don’t know who you are, they’re not likely to trust you. Digital marketing makes it easy for companies to differentiate themselves online.
Your brand helps you set yourself apart. Failing to keep your brand consistent across all marketing channels, however, can confuse prospective clients. In fact, consistent branding across all marketing channels can boost revenue by up to 23%.
The more often people see your brand, the more likely they’ll remember you. One of the benefits of digital marketing is that it offers many opportunities for building brand awareness. You can use different strategies, including:
- Search engine optimization
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Remarketing
- Email marketing
Each time you appear in front of people with the same brand, you’re building brand awareness.
Building Brand Trust through Digital Marketing
You can also use law firm digital marketing to build brand trust. What values do you share with your clients? Almost 90% of consumers stay loyal to brands that share their values.
Implementing those values within your mission and vision statement can help encourage clients to trust you. If they can trust you, they’re more likely to choose your law firm over another.
What image are you trying to present? If you want your law firm to appear credible and professional, update your branding. An old, outdated brand can make you look irrelevant and behind the times.
Consistency, on the other hand, can impress your clients. Keep your branding consistent across your entire marketing strategy and show clients you’re a reputable firm they can trust.
3. Increase Conversions
Are you struggling to increase conversions and attract new clients? Developing a digital marketing strategy can help you discover new ways to increase conversions.
First, take a look at your website. Make sure it’s optimized for the user experience (UX). Remember, the easier it is to use your website, the more likely people will convert. If website visitors struggle to use your site or fill out a form, however, they’ll leave.
Many digital marketing strategies prioritize improving the UX. For example, you can use UX design trends on your website to make it easier to use. In fact, user-friendly websites are more likely to rank higher on search engines like Google.
To improve the UX, try:
- Using shorter sentences and paragraphs to improve readability
- Speeding up page load times
- Organizing your navigation
- Utilizing white space
- Simplifying your forms
- Make sure to update your forms. A long, exhausting form can scare off prospective clients before they’re done filling it out.
- End your pages and blog posts with strong call-to-action (CTA) language, too. CTAs will encourage visitors to take action.
- Otherwise, make sure there are eye-catching buttons on your site that direct visitors to convert.
Improving your website by offering more conversion opportunities will help you attract new clients.
Boost Engagement
Do people know you’re there to help? One of the benefits of digital marketing for law firm teams is it can help you communicate with clients.
For example, you can use social listening to determine when people are talking about your law firm. Then, you can respond to let them know you’re aware of their concerns.
Remember, shared values are important for generating brand trust. Let your audience know you’re there and you care. Then, use social media and content marketing to respond to their comments. Engaging with your audience will let people know they can come to you with questions.
Include Automation in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
About 85% of retailers claim search marketing (SEO and PPC) is their most effective customer acquisition tactic. You can automate your search marketing and other digital marketing strategies to save yourself time.
Automation can help you generate conversions without focusing all your attention on marketing. Instead, you can set your campaigns to run on their own. Once your campaigns start generating results, you can make adjustments.
For example, you can set an email drip campaign that automatically sends emails every few days. You can also set triggers. Let’s say someone leaves your website without converting. You can have a pop-up appear urging them to contact you before you go.
Remarketing is another great way to utilize automation. With remarketing, you can have advertisements appear in front of previous site visitors. These ads will encourage potential clients to return to your website.
With automation, you’re increasing your chances of engagement and conversions!
4. Show Off Your Expertise via Digital Marketing
People want to choose a law firm they can trust. If you’re not experienced or knowledgeable, clients might not choose you to represent them. Instead, those clients will turn toward your competitors.
Digital marketing strategies like SEO and content marketing can help you showcase your experience and expertise.
As you start creating content, don’t forget to focus on providing readers with useful information. Then, back-up the information you offer with research. Link to other repeatable, authoritative websites.
External links to other websites will help increase your ranking and show Google you’re a reputable resource, too. At the same time, your readers will see you know what you’re talking about.
The higher you rank on Google, the more credible you’ll look. Positioning yourself ahead of competitors will make you look like an authority in your industry, too. Prospective clients will visit your website before they even consider another law firm. If you’re not on the first page of a Google search, however, they might never see you.
You can use different forms of content to keep your audience interested and engaged. For example, you might consider creating a lengthy blog post. Then, take that blog post and create an email campaign or vlog series.
Do you have a lot of data to share? Consider creating an eye-catching infographic.
Creating different forms of content will help boost your SEO ranking and help you reach new clients. Without digital marketing, however, you’re missing out on these opportunities.
Remain Relevant
Failing to create a digital marketing strategy for your law firm can cause you to fall behind. As more people use the internet for research, it’s important to create an online presence. If you’re only using traditional marketing methods, you might look old and irrelevant. Instead, use digital marketing to stay up-to-date with the latest trends.
For example, you can use social media marketing to connect with your younger target audience. You can also utilize digital marketing trends like video marketing and voice search.
Remember, technology changes all the time. Staying up-to-date with the latest trends will show potential clients you’re capable of adapting. A law firm that can’t adapt, however, might not seem like the best choice for a difficult case.
5. Access to Data
With traditional marketing strategies like billboards and flyers, you can’t always tell what helps you acquire clients. Digital marketing, on the other hand, allows you to review data in real-time.
Which blog posts are attracting the most traffic? Which email campaigns are generating conversions? Are you targeting the right keywords?
Once you review the data, you can make informed decisions about your campaigns. Then, you can optimize to improve your ROI.
Having access to this reporting will keep you from wasting money. Instead, you can make the most of your marketing budget to reach more prospective clients!
Get In Order: 5 Ways Digital Marketing Can Help Your Law Practice
Ready to get your marketing in order? Don’t forget to keep these five benefits of digital marketing in mind. By creating a digital marketing strategy for your law firm, you can expand your reach and acquire new clients.
Start growing your practice with digital marketing today!