We live in the Digital Age. That means that for your law practice to thrive, it has to live there too.

But what does it mean to “live online”?

It doesn’t mean just having a website and a Facebook page.

Nowadays there are a variety of strategies you can implement immediately that will help you grow your law firm exponentially using proven digital advertising tactics.

Some of the most effective marketing strategies that should be included in your digital campaign are Pay-Per-Click advertising, Search Engine Marketing, Social Marketing, and Content Creation.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

What is Pay-Per-Click

Pay-Per-Click refers to advertising that charges you each time someone clicks on your ad. These ads appear at the top of search engine results based on the search criteria entered. One of the most popular platforms used for PPC is Google Ad Words.

How do you use Pay-Per-Click

The process of creating an efficient PPC campaign begins with setting your budget and choosing your keywords. You first decide on the monthly allowance you will use based upon the number of clicks you receive, and use the keywords to determine what searches will cause your ad to appear.

Phase two of a PPC campaign is where things get interesting. Although your keywords assist in determining when your law firm’s ad will appear, it is also based on its ad rank.

Your ad rank is determined based on the size of your budget, and the quality score of your landing page (the page your ad takes them to). The quality score of your landing page is based upon the pages click-through-rate and how relevant the content is to the search criteria. These steps should get your law firms PPC campaign off on the right foot.

Why use Pay-Per-Click

Pay-Per-Click advertising has many benefits when it comes to building awareness online.

The first is that it is the most cost-effective way to advertise online. For a small amount of money, you can pay search engines like Google to appear at the top of their search results pages. You can tailor your budget to any amount, and implement benchmarks that once hit will not spend any more of your money until the following next month.

The second reason to use pay-per-click is that you can create targeted campaigns that find your audience. PPC gives you the ability to decide when your ads will appear based on what people are searching for. As a law firm, for example, you could set the criteria based on keywords like “Attorney for Car Accidents” and pop up right at the top of the page.

Aside from being cost-effective and having the ability to target your audience, PPC is also one of the quickest ways to see results from your advertising efforts.

As soon as you set up your PPC campaign, you can immediately see the results and have the ability to analyze them. You can see how many times your ad has appeared in search results, as well as how many times it has been clicked on. Using this data, you can make quick changes to your campaign as necessary, unlike other methods where it may take months or years to collect enough data to analyze.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

What is Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing refers to a variety of different tools that work together to grow your law firm’s digital presence. The tools that you should focus on for your campaign include Search Engine Optimization, Automation and Auto-responds, Emails, Call-to-Actions (CTA’s), and Landing pages.

Search Engine Optimization is an important step to achieving your advertising and marketing goals. When done
correctly, SEO helps your law firm appear on the first page of search engine results, which is one of the most important lead-driving factors for business growth.

Automation and Auto-responds are valuable in creating a personalized, streamlined process for engaging your leads and clients. As a law firm, this allows you to send emails with relevant content, offers and schedule consultations or other meetings all with the click of a button.

Email Marketing is a great way to engage your audience on a regular basis. By providing a form on your website that collects your leads contact information, you can run email marketing campaigns that keep you in touch with them. Some tips to running a successful email campaign are to personalize them, provide value and avoid anything that could be considered spam.

Call-to-Action’s play a vital role in converting your leads into clients. When we refer to CTA’s, we are talking about engagement points, often in the form of clickable buttons. Once clicked on, these buttons provide your leads content that moves them further along in the process of becoming clients.

Landing Pages are the individual web pages on your website that people are taken to when they click on a search result or link. These pages are essential to your SEM success because the content you put on them is analyzed by search engines and used for search results. Therefore your landing pages should consist of content that correlates to what people would be searching for.

How do you use Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a continual process that you have to constantly be on top of. The competition is fierce, and if you take your eye off the ball for a second, you can lose all of the progress you have made. It is important that you are always updating and checking your efforts if you want to stay out in front.

One way that you can stay ahead of the competition is by targeting local markets. It does not do you much good if your law office handles cases in the Chicago area but are coming up in someone’s search results in Orlando.

By localizing your keywords and search terms you will be targeting the client base that is relevant to you, thus increasing your potential revenue and getting the most value out of your advertising budget.

Why use Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is one of the most important tools at your disposal when growing your digital presence. When people are looking for a product or service, the first thing they do is pull out their phone or computer and perform a search.

Once they have their search results, the majority of people do not click on anything other than one of the top three results. That means making sure your law firm appears at the top of those search results is of the utmost importance.

Social Marketing

What is Social Marketing

Social Marketing refers to using a combination of methods to create an online community that is discussing your business on many different platforms. The methods and platforms you should focus on are Social Media, Reviews, Legal Directories and Peer-to-peer reviews.

How do you use Social Marketing

Social marketing is important in establishing your digital presence across multiple platforms and increase the flow of communication between you and your potential clients.

The first step to getting started is creating professional business accounts on the different media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. It is important to monitor these sites and engage with your audience as often as possible.

After creating social media accounts, you should then look to get listed in online directories. Directories are used when people search for businesses and help you get found and further establish credibility.

Another way to use social marketing is to ask for reviews and perform case studies. Reviews are one of the best ways to improve your brand because they are used as a reference point in your consumer’s decision-making process.

Case studies help in determining how satisfied your clients are and what else you could be doing to improve your digital reach. Reaching out to your clients and leads and analyzing their feedback should provide you with a blueprint on how to improve.

Why use Social Marketing

Social Marketing is a valuable resource because it provides your audience with proof and trust in regards to your business. Essentially it is the digital age’s version of word-of-mouth advertising.

One of the first things people look at just before they make their decision are quality peer reviews. When they see that other people who were caught in a similar situation as them had success with you, they are much more likely to be willing to engage.

What also effects their decision is your credibility. Reviews play an important role in this but are not the only factors.

Having a professional, user-friendly website that is linked to other pages such as Facebook and Twitter is key to furthering your credibility and providing a sense of comfort in your leads that they are making the right decision.

Content Creation

What is Content Creation

When we talk about Content Creation, we mean creating valuable resources that your audience will find useful. Content can take many forms, with some of the most popular being Blogs and Images. However, your content needs to be both relevant and high quality.

How do you Create Content

Creating content is a process that has no end. You should always be looking for ways to improve yours and be thinking about what new content you could produce that adds value to your brand.

When creating your content, make sure that you address topics that are relevant to your business.

As a law firm, it wouldn’t provide much value to your target audience if you wrote a blog post about getting into shape for summer.

Now if you instead wrote an article about the legal steps to take after being involved in a car accident, you have a much better chance of attracting the right consumers.

Another way that you can provide valuable content is by having a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. Being able to provide answers to potential leads is a great way to begin engagement with them and can greatly increase their conversion rate into becoming clients.

Once you have written your content, the final step is to edit and check that you have used your long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are the short 6-12 word phrases that you use throughout your content that help search engines find it.

An example of a long tail keyword a law office might use is, “What type of Attorney do I need after a car accident?“

Now that you have created your relevant, engaging content, and checked for your long tail keywords, it is important to understand why content creation is important.

Why is Content Creation Important

Content creation is crucial to your digital advertising campaign because it increases your credibility amongst your audience and search engines. When you are constantly created quality content that is valuable, you will begin to move up in search engine results because you are expanding your network’s reach.

“The bigger you grow your digital bubble, the easier it becomes for potential clients to find you.”

Establishing credibility is just one of the benefits of content creation. Providing valuable content is also a great way to give your brand voice and sense of realism. You have to remember that there is a person on the other side of that computer screen. Through your content, you can show that you care about their concerns as a person and become the resource they look to.

Looking to Learn More on Building Your Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Strategy? Check These Other Articles Out.

• 4 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes
• 4 Ways to Effectively Market Your Brand Online
• 5 Reasons Your Content Marketing Strategy Isn’t Successful

Want a More Direct Approach?

Click on the Button Below to schedule a Free Consultation with one of our Digital Marketing Strategists to see how we can help grow your law firm through a targeted digital advertising strategy.