You made the leap to start your own law firm. With the arduous business formation process out of the way, you’re now ready to start taking on clients.
But how will they find you? Referrals are great, but they aren’t enough to fill your calendar. You’ll need to show up in online search. You’ll need a digital marketing strategy.
Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Solo Law Firms
An Optimized Law Firm Website
Solo and small firms don’t always seem to be sold on having a website – or at the very least having a quality website. But the fact is, your website is the online representation of your business. Perception matters when clients decide which law firm to trust with their case.
And for many solo firms going virtual, the website is the only time someone interacts with your brand. You invest in your physical appearance and show up for in-person meetings and hearings in a suit, right?
Besides looking professional, the site also needs to be fully optimized. This means that it needs to be fast on mobile, having forms and click-to-calls set up to convert quickly, and provide depth on what you do and why you do it in the written content. We’ve written on this topic ad nauseam in the past.
Pick a Service Area Focus
There’s nothing wrong with having a general practice law firm. But when it comes to showing up in search, it’s best to define your business on your website. It will be much more difficult to show up for general practice terms or numerous service areas than picking one or two that you specialize in. This is especially true if your domain is brand new, which is likely if you are just starting out.
A best practice to refine your service areas down on your website is to pick the most profitable cases to you. You will get general cases no matter what, but if you optimize your site and Google Business Profile for what is most profitable, you will form a niche, build trust, and rank for terms surrounding that service and your area.
Do Longtail Keyword Research
Doing keyword research when building a new website or marketing campaign is essential. Not only should you be researching keywords for the interior content that will live on your site, but for your content marketing efforts (more on that below).
This is another opportunity as a newcomer to separate your firm in a crowded online field. Do more longtail keyword research instead of optimizing for the most obvious keywords that may be tough to rank for early on. For example, if you are an estate planning law firm in Chicago, you will find it very difficult to rank a new domain for “Estate Planning Attorney Chicago.” While your internal page may be optimized for this term, you should create pages that nest within this service area with phrases such as “Do I Need a Trust and Will Done in Illinois?”
If you don’t have access to a keyword research tool, you can research yourself by typing in your service area and location. Google will give clues to what people are typing in the “People Also Ask” section of the search results pages. Often, the results found in these dropdowns can be replaced if you write effective content.
Write Custom Content Regularly
This is related to the point above but can’t be overstated. While unique content is essential when your site is being built, it is even more important to consistently write content about your service areas, your local area, and what makes your business different.
By writing content consistently, you show Google that your site is continually updated with relevant content and should be rewarded with higher organic rankings. The organic traffic acquisition doesn’t happen overnight. One of the biggest mistakes in content marketing is giving up writing content after a few months. A typical content marketing strategy that adds 3-4 pieces per month will take about 4-6 months to start bringing relevant traffic.
Optimize your Google Business Profile
Google owns 93% of all searches in the United States. If you are going to do well in terms of organic search – and ultimately client acquisition – you need to play by their rules. It only makes sense to optimize your law firm’s Google Business Profile.
First, you need to create or claim your profile. From there, you will need to optimize it, including updating categories, adding photos, responding to reviews, adding Google Posts, and much more. This maintenance needs to be done on a weekly basis in order to move your profile up in the listings.
We’ve written a free guide on how to optimize your Google Business Profile listing (formerly known as Google My Business Profile).
Paid Search Strategies that Limit Budget
Paid search has always been a surefire way to get people to get traffic to your law firm site quickly. But you need to be very careful how you go about it, or you will be burning budget with very little return.
Google Local Service Ads is a great way to go for solo and small firms to get started. With these new ads from Google, you essentially only pay for the conversions that are relevant leads for your firm – if you are monitoring and disputing those that aren’t relevant. In this way, you can manipulate what leads you pay for better than you can on other paid platforms.
Facebook (Meta) is also useful for specific service areas with the most relevant targeting available. You can also utilize lead ads, which allow users to submit their information on Facebook without having to click through to your site. But, you will want to either check these often or utilize an integration to send them to your email or CRM if you use one.
If you want to take the dive into full-on Google Ads, make sure that you limit your budget or utilize a service or someone with experience. It’s really easy to burn through budget that you may not have.
Bringing It Together
As you are just starting, you may not have the time or resources to utilize all of these strategies. It can be sort of a catch-22 in many ways. You need to be found to sustain your business, but you are on your own and don’t have the time to do what needs to be done to be found.
In the spirit of entrepreneurship, we have developed packaging for solo and small firms that need to get started for a lower cost. Whether it’s a new website, marketing, lead qualification, Google Profile Management, Facebook, or more, we have affordable pricing to get started and get your firm found quickly. We’d love to talk to you and point your new law firm in the right direction.
