4 Secrets That Will Dramatically Improve Your Online Legal Marketing

Online marketing for law firms can be challenging. The digital landscape changes constantly and it’s hard to keep up.

Here are 4 secrets that you can put to work for you in your online legal marketing campaigns.  They will make huge improvements in your digital marketing efforts.

Secret #1:  Target your digital marketing efforts and what your results skyrocket.

As a lawyer, you probably take on a wide variety of types of cases.  But your online marketing for your law firm should be very focused.  When you focus you will get better results because your marketing messages and online content will speak more directly to those looking for your services.

When you make that connection with your prospect, i.e., your message meets their needs, you will be more successful.

So how do you get started with targeting?

First, you have to define the person you’re targeting. We call this your persona. You want to identify as many common traits that your likeliest prospect would have.

For a legal practice, you might want to identify a persona that coincides with a type of case that you want to focus on.

Let’s say you’re looking to get more DUI cases to defend.  Let’s define who that person is.  They are likely very stressed out because they were stopped by the police, arrested and likely spent the night in jail.  So they are likely to be very anxious to find someone who can help them in one of the worst situations they’ve ever been in.

They likely know nothing about the process that is ahead of them and have no idea what to expect or what they should do. This is good for you, as a lawyer, to know because you have all of the answers that they are desperately looking for.

Secret #2: Answer your prospects questions and you shall reap the rewards.

The next step in sending your online legal marketing into the stratosphere is using your newly acquired targeting knowledge to attract very highly qualified prospects to your website.

The best way to do that is to create content that answers your prospect’s questions. Stay away from content that sounds like a sales brochure.

Content that answers their questions and is helpful to them does two things for you.

1) It helps build their perception of you as an expert in your field.  That also creates a level of trust in you as a professional and a legal expert in the exact area where they need help.

2) It shows the prospect that you really are interested in helping them and they are not just another sale to you.

In the old days, when people were looking for a lawyer, they’d turn to the big thick yellow pages and pick out the ad that seemed to meet their needs the best.

These days the tables have been turned and the buyer is in control.  They don’t want to be interrupted and sold.  When they want to buy a product or service they initiate the search and they do it online.

If you have content that answers your targeted prospect’s questions, they will find you.  Then it’s up to you to turn those prospects into clients.  Luckily for you I’m going to show you how to do just that with….

Secret #3:  Use calls-to-action and premium content to turn visitors into clients.

Your online legal marketing campaign doesn’t just drop the ball once you get targeted prospects to your website. You need to then convert them into clients.

In order to convert these prospects into clients you’ll need to collect their contact information.  To do that you’ll need to offer up something of value in exchange.

When you ask someone for their contact information, their name, email address and their phone number, they will weigh the decision in their mind in the same way that they evaluate any purchase decision. The purchase in this case is that they are giving you their contact information in exchange for the valuable content you are offering.  It’s the same decision process as purchasing something in a store for cash. If they feel the transaction is a fair value they will move forward.

So let’s start with the premium content. This is what your prospect will evaluate for value.  If the premium content is not perceived as having value, nothing else will matter.

If you’re an attorney who’s focused on getting more DUI cases, there are several options you can use for premium content. Just keep it focused on helping the prospect.

You could go the ebook premium content route and create an ebook titled, “10 Things You Must Ask a DUI Lawyer Before You Hire Them” or “You Are Charged With DUI.  What Happens Now?”  Either of these ideas will have great value for someone who suddenly has to deal with a DUI charge. It’s likely that they haven’t had this charge before and have no idea what to expect.  As you guide them with your expert tips and advice it will help reinforce you as an knowledgeable attorney who can help them with their current problem.

Now that you’ve got some awesome content you need to get people to give you their contact information in exchange for your awesome premium content.  Start by using calls-to-action.

Calls-to-action are effective when they highlight the benefit to the prospect of the premium content.  Simply put tell them what the content will do for them. In our example the call-to-action could show a picture of our ebook cover and say “Make Sure You Hire The Best DUI Attorney”  “Download free ebook now”.

Then that call-to-action would be linked to secret number 4…..

Secret #4: Use an offer specific landing page.

So our online legal marketing has done very well so far and we’ve now got a potential client on our offer specific landing page ready to give us their contact info.  That let’s us know that they’re pretty serious.  We can tell that because they read our helpful article and then clicked our helpful call-to-action, they probably need a DUI lawyer right now.

So how do we get that conversion from visitor to prospect and all the way to client?  The magic happens on the landing page.

On the landing page we are going to focus on one thing: getting the prospect to fill out and submit the form. Yes they will get the ebook, but we are laser focused on getting that lead for this potential client.

So we don’t want any distractions on this page. We’ll include our logo at the top of the page because we have a relationship with this prospect now and we want them to feel like they are still on our website.  It’s also best to maintain the general theme of the website on your landing page.  You want to carry over colors and general style, but not the layout.

You should also not include your website navigation. You have them this close, don’t let them get distracted and lose that conversion.

Everything on the landing page should be a benefit for the prospect. You should have a headline about how the premium content will help the prospect.

A short benefits paragraph, a picture of the ebook and some benefit bullets are all you need on the page on the left side.

On the right side of the page I like to put the form.

The form should have a headline that reinforces benefits of the content.

You should use as few fields on the form as possible. The more fields, the lower your response rate wil be.  You obviously need name and email address.  Phone is good, but this will really suppress response.  You’ll need to test how much phone number suppresses response for you.

My last piece of advice is that you use another benefit on the button instead of the word “submit”.  This is valuable marketing real estate. Use it for marketing purposes.  Something as simple as “Get free ebook” could increase response.  Again, you can test various phrases on the button.

Online marketing can be a great source of leads and additional clients for any law practice.  When you target your efforts, responses can skyrocket.

Hopefully you found these 4 secrets helpful and will be able to implement them into your online legal marketing campaigns.