The business world is constantly changing. It ebbs and flows, grows and evolves. It’s truly a beautiful thing, especially for the consumers who benefit from its ever-changing ways. But the learning curve can be steep for business owners.
However, keeping up with marketing trends is vital for law firm business development.
So what can you do to generate more leads? How can you stay relevant in a constantly evolving consumer-driven market?
Keep reading for the top marketing ideas to keep up with the current online and local trends.
How to Generate More Leads for Law Firm Business Development
Law firm business development requires a commitment to the cause. Like any type of firm, you can get creative and change things up in your marketing strategy, but you must play by the basic rules.
1. Perfect Your Website
The first rule of law firm business development is building an intuitive, user-friendly website. If your website isn’t easy for potential customers to use, they’ll find someone who’s website is better. As a digital society, we’ve been spoiled by ease-of-access and convenience.
As well as functional, your website also needs to be aesthetically appealing, like this law firm. Regardless of its inaccuracy, consumers will immediately judge you, your law firm, and your credibility based on your website. First impressions are everything.
2. Lock Down Your Local SEO
Now that you have a beautifully designed website, you need to learn how to drive traffic to it. This means learning and implementing SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO is a techy term for describing the complex algorithms search engines use to find relevant sites based on keyword searches.
Did you know that 87% of consumers start by searching for things online?
For example, if someone searches for “law firms in Mckinney, Texas,” search engines scour the internet for related content on websites to pull up the most relevant results. This is where local SEO comes into play. You must have your contact information and address on your website.
It’s also a good idea to create a blog with plenty of articles on legal issues and other relevant information. It also helps to use multiple forms of media (pictures, videos, infographics) as well as internal and external links. You should also include articles about operating in a distinct location.
As an added bonus, you can also take advantage of pay per click marketing. In PPC, you pay search engines to bring up your website in the top results regarding specific keyword searches. You simply pay the search engine a predetermined amount for every click your website gets.
3. Be Active on Social Media
Next, you need at least one social media account. We recommend using Facebook first and then adding Instagram. From there, you can add others.
Assuming you have a personal Facebook account, you can invite all of your friends to like your business page. From here, you can take steps to grow your following.
However, in order for social media algorithms to work in your favor, you must be active on it! A good rule of thumb is posting once a day, and being active on the platform for 20 minutes and after posting. This will help your post be seen by the more people.
4. Take Advantage of Social Media Marketing
Since you’re already on social media now, it’s time to start learning how to use its marketing and advertising programs.
On your Facebook business account, there should be a tab called “ad center”. This ad center allows you to build ads from scratch or from pre-fabricated templates they provide. From here, you have a lot of options.
First, you can use target marketing. This allows you to choose the demographics of people who will see your ads. You can discriminate based on age, gender, location, interests, and hobbies. This helps your advertising dollar go where it will count the most.
Secondly, you can use social media advertising for research to narrow down the most effective strategy. You can build two or more different ads and run them simultaneously.
After they’ve run for some time, you can see which one of them is performing the best. Facebook ad center will give you an analysis based on how many likes, shares, comments, and link clicks each ad got.
5. Get Involved in Your Community
Another tactic for local law firm business development involves making your presence known within the community. To do this, you have several options.
First, we recommend hooking up with a local charity and sponsoring an event with them. This can be a 5k race, pot luck style gala, live music, etc. No matter the event, it’s a great way to show the community that you exist and that you care about more than your figures.
6. Build Affiliate Relationships with Other Local Businesses
Another way to make an impact in your community is to find other local businesses and create affiliate relationships with them. These can work in a number of different ways.
However, affiliates are often similar businesses with a mutually beneficial relationship. For example, a law firm and a bail bond service. The system works primarily off of referrals.
An affiliate relationship may be as simple as each side pointing consumers to one another. Alternatively, you could give a percentage of revenue for anyone they refer to you.
7. Experiment with Online Marketing Strategies
Finally, there are countless law firm business development strategies based on digital marketing. We mentioned PPC advertising above, but there are many more, such as:
- Influencer Marketing – Paying social media users with large followings to advertise for you
- Email Marketing – Building an email subscriber list that you can send email campaigns to
- Banner Ads – Paying other sites to place your ad on their site
- Landing Page Marketing – Creating pop-up windows with strong calls to action (click here for more info, subscribe for free content, etc.)
Experiment, Learn, Make Mistakes, and Grow
The most important part of law firm business development is to constantly embrace learning. Experiment with different approaches to generating leads, getting your name out there, and converting leads to clients.
Most importantly, remember that failing only provides an opportunity for learning and growth. Spending money on a marketing idea that flobs teaches you what not to do in the future.
For more insightful information and advice on business, be sure to check out the rest of our articles before you go!
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