Have a law firm?
Today we are going to discuss three law firm marketing strategies that can help you get more clients…
One of the most important marketing principles that you need to understand if you want to attract more clients is this: if you try to appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one.
That’s why you should start by niching down, not just in terms of the area of law that you specialize in but also in terms of who your target audience is.
Say, if you specialize in business law, you can niche down to serving venture-funded tech startups and then niche down even further by focusing on startups that are based in San Francisco.
Now imagine that you are a founder of such a startup and you are looking for a law firm. Would you rather hire a generic business law firm or a firm that specializes in serving venture-funded tech startups based in San Francisco?
See how instead of having a generic offer that everyone feels lukewarm about, you can create a hyper-specific offer that is irrelevant to the vast majority of people but super appealing to your dream clients?
Moreover, if you do good work for your clients, you will start gaining a reputation as the go-to lawyer that people in those circles recommend to each other.
Imagine once again that you are a founder of a tech startup and that you need a lawyer. You mentioned this to another tech founder at a party and they recommended this lawyer who did great work for their startup. Wouldn’t you call that lawyer and schedule a consultation with them?
Finally, if you specialize in one niche and focus on serving a specific demographic, you begin to acquire expert knowledge that your competitors don’t have access to because they aren’t as focused as you are.
Now imagine for the third time that you are a founder of a tech startup. You come to a law firm’s office to talk to the lawyer that your friend recommended. It turns out that this lawyer understands startups, has helped clients deal with similar problems in the past, and can address your concerns before you even raise them. Wouldn’t you hire them immediately?
This is the power of niching down: it makes everything easier, from marketing to lead generation to sales. Realistically, you probably can’t become the top “lawyer” or even the top “business lawyer” but maybe you can become the top “lawyer for venture-funded startups based in San Fransico”. And being the best in your niche has outsized returns!
If you intend to use marketing to drive traffic to your law firm’s website, you should make sure that it’s optimized for lead generation.
We recommend using a free 30-minute consultation as a lead magnet. Providing these consultations virtually will likely get you more but lower-quality leads while talking to potential clients in person at your law firm’s office will likely get you fewer but higher-quality leads. You might want to experiment with both approaches to see which one results in more revenue.
Your law firm’s website should be designed with one conversion goal in mind: to get the visitor to book a free consultation with you.
You want to promote your free consultation with a “Book a FREE Consultation” tab in the navigation bar, with a feature box on your homepage, and with clickable banners on every page of your website. Follow conversion-centered design principles to nudge the visitor toward taking action!
Cold outreach is the most straightforward way to get in touch with potential clients and see if they might be interested in your services.
Of course, it’s important to consider whether this marketing strategy makes sense for your law firm. In some niches cold outreach can work well while in other niches it may be seen as completely inappropriate.
There are three key cold outreach methods:
Let’s take a closer look at each of them…
Alex Berman is the founder of the X27 marketing agency which used cold email to grow his business to seven figures in annual revenue.
He wrote a great book called “The Cold Email Manifesto” where he covers everything you need to know to get started with cold email.
Here’s a quick overview of the process that he outlines in his book:
Alex includes cold email templates, follow-up email templates, and much more in his book. We recommend reading it if you are serious about cold email.
You can also get in touch with potential clients by sending them direct messages on social media. LinkedIn is probably the best place for that.
Be careful to not overstep boundaries here. Shooting someone a DM on LinkedIn about the legal services that you offer will probably be seen as acceptable but doing the same thing on Facebook or Instagram might be perceived as creepy!
While the effectiveness of cold calling appears to be declining, you can still get leads by simply picking up the phone and calling potential clients.
We recommend using this cold calling framework that is taught by Patrick Dang, an international sales trainer who has helped over 70,000 people worldwide improve their sales skills:
Here’s how Dang explains this framework:
People are busy.
They may have opened your cold email or cold direct message but then never got around to responding to it because they got distracted by something else.
So if you don’t get a response the first time you reach out to someone, follow up with them until you get a yes or no answer.
You can add a way to opt out of follow-up messages in the P.S. section of your emails.
That’s what Justin McGill did when he used cold email to grow LeadFuze to $30k+ MRR in just one year:
That way, you can continue following up indefinitely with a clear conscience because if someone wants you to leave them alone, they can simply hit the reply button and let you know.
McGill also advises against “just checking in” type of follow-up messages and instead recommends focusing on bringing more value. Say, you could send them a case study of a previous client that you worked with.
You need to follow up after cold calls as well. The potential client may intend to schedule a consultation with you but then get distracted by something else and forget about it. That’s why you should continue following up until they either book an appointment or tell you that they changed their mind and are no longer interested.
And don’t take the lack of responses personally. Remember that these potential clients probably have a lot on their plates already. Aren’t we all busy and distracted these days?
Content marketing is an umbrella term that refers to various marketing strategies that revolve around using content to attract potential customers.
Here are the three most popular types of content marketing:
Let’s take a closer look at each of them…
LinkedIn is probably the best place to promote your law firm.
Sharing educational content intended to provide value to your dream clients can help you establish credibility, expand your professional network, and get leads.
Create a content calendar and use tools like MeetEdgar or Buffer to schedule and publish content.
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is the practice of optimizing websites and web pages in order to attract organic search traffic from Google.
Starting a blog can help you get more traffic but you need to be strategic about it if you want to succeed with SEO.
Technical SEO revolves around ensuring that search engines can crawl and index your website. It’s boring but it needs to be done.
“The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO” can help you sort it out and make sure that everything is in order.
Every article that you publish on your blog should target a specific keyword that you can realistically rank for. What does that mean?
Reaching the first page of Google isn’t enough, you need to aim for one of the top three spots and ideally reach the very top. Why?
The vast majority of clicks go to the top three search results, with the #1 search result getting more than a quarter of them. In fact, according to Backlinko’s research, the average CTR for the top result is 27.6%.
Here’s a chart that illustrates the click distribution. See how there’s a drastic drop off even from the 1st result to the 2nd result?
Basically, if you aren’t confident that you can reach the top of search results, it’s probably not worth targeting that particular keyword.
Here’s a tutorial from Ahrefs that can help you learn the basics of keyword research in just 10 minutes:
Also, if you are serious about SEO, we recommend going through Ahrefs’ “Blogging for Business” course which is available for free on their YouTube channel.
Ahrefs is the most popular SEO tool out there and is considered to be the industry standard among digital marketers.
Semrush is another popular option worth considering. It’s more expensive than Ahrefs but also has a broader scope.
You can read this Forbes review to learn about the differences between Ahrefs and Semrush.
Okay, so you picked a target keyword, now what?
The next step is to create SEO content that meets the search intent for that keyword.
Meeting the search intent is presumed to be the main thing that Google’s ranking algorithm is optimizing for, which means that you should optimize for it as well.
When someone types in this keyword into Google, what exactly are they looking for? That’s what your content should provide.
Before you start working on your article, do some competitive research and see what’s currently ranking on the first page of search results for that keyword. Then ask yourself how you can make your content better.
Tools like Clearscope and Surfer can help you with competitive research, creating outlines, and optimizing your content.
Keep in mind that these tools provide advice based on what’s currently ranking for that keyword, though.
This means that if the content that’s currently ranking is of low quality, the guidelines provided by Clearscope or Surfer may prove to be misleading.
You don’t want to mindlessly imitate your competitors, you want to create SEO content that meets the search intent.
Remember: meeting the search intent should be your North Star!
Once you publish your article, you need to get links from other websites. This is called link building.
These backlinks are essential for getting your article to rank for your target keyword. Why?
Because Google’s ranking algorithm sees them as indications that your content is high-quality.
Adam Enfroy came to prominence in the SEO scene when he made more than one million dollars in just two years with his blog that he launched back in 2019.
Here’s the strategy that he used to build 3,157 backlinks in his first year as a blogger:
And here’s a video where he discusses some of the changes that happened since then:
We want to emphasize that you can’t expect to succeed with SEO if you don’t proactively build links. You can have top-quality content but it’s not going to rank if it doesn’t have enough backlinks!
Creating videos for YouTube and TikTok can also help you attract your dream clients. There are quite a few lawyers who use these platforms that way.
Entrepreneurs in more casual niches may be able to get away with low production value but you don’t have that luxury as a lawyer. Sitting on your couch and talking into your smartphone is out of the question.
This means that you will probably need to outsource video production to a studio that specializes in video marketing.
You can do keyword research by typing a general keyword related to your niche into the search bar and looking at what search suggestions come up.
These search suggestions are based on popular long-term keywords that people are searching for right now. You can simply pick one and create a video designed to target it.
You should see what’s currently ranking for that keyword and figure out how to make your video better. Reading through the comments can be really helpful here as it can show you what the viewers thought was missing.
While the content is what’s most important, you should also aim to have a better video title and video thumbnail. Remember that in order for someone to watch your video, you need to get their attention first!
You can either write the script for your video yourself or outsource it to a freelance writer who specializes in YouTube scripts.
Of course, if you choose the latter option, you will still have to provide an outline or at least some bullet points so that the writer can then turn those ideas into a well-structured video script.
Ideally, you want to publish a new video every week, but only if you can maintain content quality.
You might want to consider starting with just one video per month and then gradually ramping up content production over time.
You should be cutting up your YouTube videos into short segments and posting them both on YouTube as shorts and on TikTok.
Regardless of which content marketing strategy you decide to focus on, the secret to success remains the same: consistency.
If you can consistently publish high-quality content week after week, month after month, and year after year, you will do well at content marketing.
The reality is that the vast majority of people who attempt to build a social media following, a niche blog, or a YouTube channel fail because they either get distracted or give up too soon.
This means that all you need to do in order to outcompete your rivals is to commit to a content schedule and then stick to it no matter what. It really is that simple!
Paid advertising can help you get your offer in front of your dream clients and receive immediate market feedback.
Social media platforms really are just advertising platforms in disguise. But which one should you run ads on?
That is going to depend on the niche that you specialize in. If you are offering legal services to businesses, then LinkedIn is probably your best. Meanwhile, if you are helping individuals with civil or criminal cases, then running ads on Facebook might make more sense.
Regardless of the platform, you should use the agile marketing approach: come up with an idea for an ad campaign, create a minimum viable version of that campaign, and start running it with a small daily budget.
Your campaign may not be profitable right from the get-go but you should continue optimizing it until it reaches profitability. Only then should you consider gradually scaling it.
Also, if you keep tweaking your campaign, but it’s still losing money, you should consider dropping it and coming up with a new idea. Not all ad campaigns work out and that’s okay.
We want to emphasize that you really do need to be careful with ads because it’s easy to end up in the red if you don’t know what you’re doing.
While losing some money is an inevitable part of the learning process, you don’t want to burn through your entire marketing budget and then have nothing to show for it. Following agile marketing principles can help prevent that!
Google Search ads are shown above the search results for their target keywords.
You can use them when you find a keyword that looks promising while doing keyword research for SEO but aren’t sure if you’d be able to rank for it. Maybe it’s possible to target it with search ads instead?
You can also experiment with local search ads that target keywords along the lines of “[your service] in [your location]”.
Just make sure to use the agile marketing approach. It’s not just social media ads that can leave you in the red if you are not careful. Search ads can do that as well!
This may be more applicable if your law firm provides legal services to businesses but you may want to consider running ads on podcasts that your dream clients are listening to.
Identify promising podcasts, reach out to the hosts, and work out agreements where they run your ad three times over the course of three months at a frequency of one ad per month.
Just make sure to create a separate funnel for podcast ads with a unique link for each podcast. Otherwise, you won’t be able to track how many leads they are sending your way.
It’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of law firms use marketing to drive traffic to their websites.
While that can work really well, it’s not the most effective way to convert visitors into leads and then into clients.
In all likelihood, you’d get more leads, land more clients, and make more money if you built a sales funnel and drove traffic to it instead.
Our co-founder Russell Brunson, who used sales funnels to grow our company to $100M+ in annual revenue, is one of the top sales funnel experts in the world.
He has written a best-selling book on the subject called “DotCom Secrets”. If you want to learn how to use sales funnels to grow your law firm, we highly recommend reading it.
It’s available on Amazon but you can also get a copy of “DotCom Secrets” directly from us for FREE.
All we ask is that you cover the shipping!
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