Building your law firm’s reputation from the ground up can be a tiresome and lengthy effort. So how are you supposed to get clients and do what you set out to do, help people?
Running a law firm can be a harrowing undertaking, particularly if your practice is small and you can’t rely on an army of solicitors and paralegals to bring in work. The ultimate key to developing a thriving law practice is to be good at what you do, because no amount of advertising can compensate for poor performance. With the right digital marketing strategy though, you can draw in new clients and stay financially solvent.
“Ben helped to develop and run the practice at Cartwright King Solicitors. His knowledge of how to market legal services both on and offline made a substantial difference to the cases and bills coming into the firm. Both as a senior management team member and a marketing professional, I would not hesitate to recommend him to other law firms looking to develop themselves in the 21st century. His work in bringing in leads online and getting them converted fundamentally changed how we did business!”
Luke Pickering, Finance Director – Cartwright King Solicitors
Free Initial Discussion And Quote
For a free initial discussion and for a no-obligation quote, please call us on 0330 133 8783 or email [email protected].
Immigration Work
There are many different areas of immigration work that you may want to attract new clients for. Below is a list of most immigration types but your firm may have a particular strength or niche and a bespoke marketing strategy is therefore required to best fit your firms’ individual needs.
- Administrative reviews, appeals and judicial reviews
- Ancestry visas
- Applications for British citizenship
- Applications for discretionary leave
- Business Immigration
- EEA family permits
- Indefinite leave to remain applications
- Partner and family visas
- Standard visitor visas
- Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visas
- Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visas
- Tier 1 (Investor) visas
Using The Internet To Grow Your Firm
With a business model based on billable hours, law firm marketing is often going to be something underestimated and overlooked. But the opportunity to improve your online presence is one you should not ignore.
Word of mouth recommendations have secured client instructions at law firms for decades and will still play a prominent role in the decision-making process of those looking for a solicitor. However, as the business landscape evolves and clients demand different experiences, failing to keep up with the curve could prove costly. Getting the fundamentals of digital marketing for law firms correct is something firms of all size should be investing in.
Potential clients are online researching their legal issue and ultimately the law firm they’ll engage. If you’re nowhere to be found, then you’re missing a trick. It’s a captive audience, a perfect opportunity to display your professional profile, services and experience.
Yes, developing an online strategy takes time and energy, and results may take even longer but get it right, and you’ll have a healthy supply of high-quality immigration leads and new clients excited to work with you as often as you need.
So, where do you start? How do you get new clients for your law firm?
Read through our top law firm marketing ideas for brining in more immigration leads and use them to help shape your law firm’s digital marketing strategy.
Improving Visibility With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
If you’re unfamiliar with this term, then it’s time to do some non-legal reading. There are over 2 million legal orientated search queries every day in the UK on Google and if you’re not optimised to grab that opportunity, someone else will!
It’s time to get on board with SEO and if your website is looking outdated or it consists of just a handful of generic pages and outdated images then it is time for a website re-design. This will help keep prospects on your website longer and keep your bounce rate low.
The basic principle of search engine optimization (SEO) is simple: Maximize your law firm’s visibility online and grow the authority of your site by taking advantage of proven techniques to rise higher in search results. These techniques range from creating content that positions you as an expert within the area of immigration, to technical tasks such as ensuring your website’s structure and code is correctly optimised.
While SEO can be a bit of an investment, it’s an essential part of the online marketing mix for those in a marketplace as competitive as the legal space.
Set Up A PPC Campaign For Your Law Firm
PPC for law firms (Pay Per Click or Google Adwords) is one of the best forms of marketing for solicitors in terms of return on investment (ROI). Not only that, it is very easy to measure your ROI from PPC because you can quickly see how many new instructions you win by doing it.
PPC is a form of internet marketing where you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your advert. This can show at the top or bottom of a search result page and vary in fees. Basically, it’s a way of buying visitors to your website, rather than trying to get them from organic search results which is developed over time through our other service; Search Engine Optimisation.
All law firms should be engaging in some paid search advertising in order to boost leads to the business and convert them. A successful PPC campaign is made from our in-depth, real-life experience of the law industry. We have a real understanding of the mechanics of PPC but also have innovative niche ideas and great data analytics to support and track the strategy. All this paired with our close relationship to our clients ensures we meet your precise aims and succeed.
To understand why it works so well, you need to think about what is happening from the client’s point of view. If your advert is at the top it means you are more trusted website in the first instance and if you follow that up with the correct sales, customer service and conversion techniques, that we can also help you with, then you will take on more clients every time.
Optimise Your Website And Make It Responsive
A slow website isn’t going to cut it. And if your website looks terrible on mobile and can’t easily be navigated then you won’t get any leads.
While having a great-looking, well-designed website is important to help your client convert traffic into leads, making sure you are following best practices with all the technical on-page elements is even more important.
If prospects can’t easily use the website, due to errors, they can’t quickly determine if your client is able to help them with their specific problem, and then they won’t call for that first consultation.
Not only that, but if the site isn’t mobile-friendly and it doesn’t load quickly, it could impact the traffic the website receives and the number of visitors that convert into clients.
Implement Prominent Calls To Action
If the content on your law firm website serves to showcase your law firm’s immigration skills, experience and ability to solve problems, it is your call to action (CTA) that ultimately prompts potential clients to pick up the phone or fill out a contact form.
Your call to action should be short, simple and action focussed. It should make your visitors want to become clients.
In our world of short attention spans, most of your visitors will spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website before deciding to act or move on. A CTA should be eye-catching and do everything possible to encourage action on the part of your visitor as quickly as possible. Your visitors should know what they’ll get out of contacting you, and the CTA should be easy to find, without being obnoxious.
Generate More Leads From Your Law Firm Blog
Law firms have turned to blogging as a great way to generate leads. However, your law firm blog will not perform to your expectations if you focus solely on its content. You need to be employing other tools that encourage engagement and lead them to contact you for follow-up or outsource to expert writers who can save you time and money.
Blogs hold a unique position in the online media landscape because they have become an accepted source of information. When used properly, a blog becomes a clear, consistent voice for your practice. It entices prospects, colleagues, clients and thought leaders to engage you in dialogue. It keeps you top of mind and builds visibility among your target clients.
Develop A Social Media Strategy
There are a growing number of law firms using social media to achieve their business development goals, but without a social media strategy, your time and efforts may be wasted.
Define your social media goals by taking the time to identify your social media objectives. These goals should align closely with the firm’s strategy and overall marketing plan. The goal for most firms is to grow their client base.
Some other social media goals may include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Establishing thought leadership and growing your professional network
- Staying top-of-mind with existing clients
- Fostering new client relationships
In addition to goals for the firm, individual lawyers may want to establish expertise in their industry or practice area. Solicitors can leverage social media to become a thought leader, and journalists may turn to you for interviews and quotes, leading to PR and further exposure.
Social media has real ROI but returns will come slowly and steadily over time. Like a sound financial investment, you should expect that your time investment in social media might not bear results immediately, but the rewards will become apparent with patience and steady management. It can be daunting to consider working on social media alongside billable work but the most cost-effective solution is to outsource it to the experts.
To be efficient with social media we only choose social platforms that make sense for your firm and by planning what types of content to share in advance.
Social media is an essential tool for law firms looking to grow in the digital world and the concerns most law firms have can easily be avoided with proper planning. Marketing Lawyers provides professional social media management for Law firms of any size.
Tracking
Lawyers don’t have the time to waste on ineffective advertising strategies. That’s why you need to accurately measure and track every advertising campaign to find out which immigration marketing strategies work and which should be changed or eliminated. If you keep making the same mistakes, you’re not going to go anywhere.
However, many business owners shoot themselves in the foot by not carrying out simple processes to track leads like implementing a CRM system or tracking ad campaigns by at least asking clients how they found you.
These are the KPIs that really matter to a law firm’s digital marketing strategy:
- Total new clients
- Leads
- Revenue
- Return on marketing investment (ROMI)
- Lead-to-sale conversion rate
- Booking rate (from calls)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
Remember to track the results of your marketing efforts and campaigns. We have access to partner firms who have software to enable us to track phone numbers or email addresses as well as looking at the origins of all your new cases taken on.
Conclusion
Your website is one of your biggest assets. It brings in new leads, showcases your capabilities, and gives you opportunity to build credibility within the immigration field. We can help you figure out exactly what online presence needs to gain ground with the search engines so you can bring in more high quality leads every time.
There are plenty of marketing agencies, but very few that really understand digital marketing for law firms. You can rely on our experienced marketing strategists to help your law firm grow online.
Unlike traditional forms of law firm internet marketing, our online marketing for law firms’ methods provides a measurable return on investment that you can appreciate as well as a quality one. You will see your costs decrease and client acquisition leads increase as you spend less time searching and more time being a solicitor for your clients.
Remember to listen to your clients and get their feedback after every case. If you don’t provide them with what they want, in the way that they want it, your clients will go elsewhere!
How To Get In Contact
As specialists in the legal industry, we can assist you wherever you are based. To learn more about how we can help you, then contact us today for a free initial discussion, please call us on 0330 133 8783 or email [email protected].
