Why do Lawyers Who Don’t Use Digital Marketing Fall Behind?

If you work for a law firm or run one, you should consider your marketing strategy. You know marketing means you’ll attract some new potential clients and retain old ones. Getting your firm’s name out there isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary.

That’s why you should know about digital marketing and its various components. We will talk about that in the following article. Lawyers who don’t use digital marketing can easily fall behind their competitors, and the wrong strategy could put them out of business in this ultra-competitive industry.

Table of Contents

SEO

You might know about SEO as a lawyer, or maybe you’re never heard of it before. SEO means search engine optimization. You modify your website based on analytics-driven data that tells you what keywords or keyword phrases should appear on that site.

Google accounts for 90% of online searches, so you need to ensure you and the Google algorithm get along. You must hire someone who knows about SEO to modify your site in appropriate ways so that it comes up when an individual Googles certain terms or phrases. If you don’t, the other sites that appear before yours will likely steal that business from you.

Other lawyers and sites use SEO techniques, which is why you must do it too. You should regard it not as optional but mandatory.

You can hire a freelancer to modify your site using basic SEO principles, or you can hire someone full-time to do the work if you have the money to pay them a competitive starting salary. Offering them perks will also help if you want an SEO specialist to work for your firm exclusively.

Email Marketing

You can also set up an email marketing campaign that will reach anyone who you feel can use your services. You probably practice a particular kind of law, and you want to generate an email list of potential clients that fit your ideal model.

You can create that list by offering something enticing on your site. You might write an eBook or hire someone to write it for you. You can offer that if someone who visits the website gives you their email address.

Once you’ve made that list, you can start crafting emails that will get the attention you want. You can make the subject lines conversational to strike the right tone. You can also use analytics to see how many people open the email and engage with it.

If you don’t use email marketing, you should know you’re missing out on potential customers, just like with SEO. Other law firms use this tactic, and you should too if you want to compete with them. Every tool they use that you don’t will likely cause you to lose ground.

Digital marketing must include social media in 2022. You will need to look into what social media platforms your ideal client uses. They might use platforms like Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. You must hire someone who knows how to craft ad content for all of them.

However, you can’t spread yourself too thin when creating social media ads. You need to figure out what platforms your potential clients use so you can target those and not the many others that exist.

You can’t possibly do targeted marketing on all social media platforms. You need to pick and utilize only the ones where your ideal clients spend their time.

Accordingly, you’ll need to contact and hire someone who can do the appropriate research for you. They can use the latest tools to pinpoint the right social media platforms. Then, they will create the content and run your ad campaign.

They might employ pay-per-click advertising. That’s a way to save money on your ad campaigns on social media.

The marketing team creates ad content for you, and then they make sure it shows up when they know someone needs legal services. However, you don’t have to pay anything unless someone clicks on your ad. If you can get someone to click on that ad, you stand a good chance of making them your client.

Use Digital Marketing to Your Advantage

Lawyers and law firms that don’t use social media, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and anything else digital marketing-related don’t stand a chance in 2022. In the old days, maybe all you needed was the word of mouth to attract the clients that kept you prominent in your legal niche. Perhaps you also used radio spots, TV commercials, billboard advertising, etc.

You can definitely still do all of that, but most lawyers know to dedicate more of their ad budgets to digital marketing. It’s where you can find more people and connect with them. You just need to make sure you have the right content and team backing you up in this endeavor.

When you hire your marketing person or team, whether you hire them as freelancers or full-time employees, you can have them study your business model and everything you do. You can have them look over your website with SEO in mind. They can add images and videos if they feel your site needs that.

They might add a company blog where you can connect with your client base and humanize your company. They may suggest you add a way for someone to find your social media accounts via your website.

Your marketing team will more than likely suggest and craft an email marketing campaign. They will spend some time creating an ideal customer profile so they can know what social media platforms to use. They might create pay-per-click ads if you have the money for that. They’re worth thinking about since they often generate new leads.

Simply put, law firms need digital marketing to stay ahead of their competitors because you know other lawyers use it. If you feel like you don’t need it, you might find yourself out of business very quickly. Use technology to stay ahead of others within your niche.