14 highly profitable internet marketing strategies for law firms
How optimizing multiple tactics at once has a greater cumulative effect
Creating an Internet Marketing Strategy for Law Firms Requires an understanding of what marketing tactics are available and how they all go together. Below are fourteen of the most important Internet marketing tactics that law firms should consider using.
1. SEO Essentials for Web Design
The foundation of your Internet marketing efforts is your website. It is absolutely essential that whoever builds your website not only understands search engine optimization but does keyword research and uses keywords in the URL’s and filenames. Many programmers do things that are not good for Google and other search engines and can do more harm than good. If your developer doesn’t understand how to make a site search engine friendly do not hire them no matter how good of a designer or programmer they are.
2. SEO Implementation
Search engine optimization requires optimizing such things as the URLs, headings, sub headings, text, meta-tags, images, load time, interlinking structures, categorization of content and so much more. There are hundreds of items in the search engine algorithms and it is critical to have search engine optimization specialists who are following the latest techniques implemented your search engine marketing.
3. Link Building
A very large part of what makes a site rank in the search engines is the amount of high quality back links to it. Google Penguin that started taking effect in April 2012 has made it so that you now need higher quality sites linking to you. The main way to get great back links is to have great content. While directory submissions, article marketing, public relations and other types of link building can still work to some degree, without something worth linking to, your link building strategy will be built on shifting sands. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
4. Online Public Relations
Public relations has changed radically in the last few years. Social media is now a significant part of public relations. When you reach out to journalists you are now often reaching out to bloggers and a common way to do so is through Twitter. Journalists no longer have time to read traditional press releases. You have to wow them with a trending story and/or blow them away with unique content.
5. Social Media Marketing
Potential customers of your law firm are using social media so it is essential that you get in front of them on this channel. Content in addition to engaging visitors is what will make your social media powerful. Now that SEO is both indirectly and directly enhanced by social sharing and buzz you can kill two birds with one stone by connecting these strategies together.
6. Content Marketing
Content is no longer an optional part of your strategy. If you don’t have good content your SEO, social media and public relations strategies will suffer greatly. Be prepared to hire people to help you write blog posts, develop videos, infographics, e-books, podcasts, printed books and more. You also have to plan on a significant amount of time to share those pieces of content amongst the many new channels available.
7. Blogging for Business
Blogging is now the backbone of SEO, social media and content marketing strategies. If you blog any less than once a week it simply won’t work. By selecting experts from your team that will write for your firm or that you can pay people to ghostwrite for, you can create Google Plus Author Rank and gain instant credibility. Author Rank is Google’s way of making sure that whoever writes your website and blog content is credible. This is a significant part of modern search engine algorithms that you must be aware of to succeed.
8. Paid Search Marketing
Paid search is what makes Google so much money, so it won’t go away anytime soon. While search engine optimization is one of the highest ROI tactics we find that without paid search leads are less consistent.
9. Actionable Analytics and Reporting
If you are not tracking ROI and user engagement through at the very least Google analytics, you are making a huge mistake. Analytics is what allows you to improve your campaigns month after month.
10. Conversion Rate Optimization
At a rate of almost 100 to 1 people are doing more traffic driving then they are increasing the rate at which visitors turn into leads and sales. Doubling your conversion rate will double your leads, so it is essential to make your website have clear calls to action, an obvious value proposition and to display obvious trust signals (Like being in the news or named a Super Lawyer).
11. Email Marketing
Email marketing has the highest ROI of all the tactics. Keeping in constant contact with your customers is an essential part of getting the most out of each lead.
12. Local Search / Mobile
No web strategy is complete for your law firm if you don’t optimize for local and mobile. There are lots of ways to improve your local search rankings such as by completing your Google Plus Local profile and getting local and niche legal directories to link to you. Google Plus Local profiles are great for mobile use but you should also build your website using responsive design so that mobile users have a good experience.
13. HubSpot
HubSpot is more advanced than Google analytics in terms of tracking ROI from various sources. It also has great need nurturing and landing page optimization features. Law firms should strongly consider HubSpot for advanced analytical tracking.
14. Internet Marketing Tools
There are hundreds of tools for search and social media marketing. They are now an essential part of the process that you just can’t live without.
Now that you have a better understanding of the top 14 tactics, you should be aware that if you only do a small amount of them in isolation you will have limited results. When you do multiple tactics in an organized fashion and leverage their symbiotic relationships, your Internet marketing will become highly profitable.
photo credit: Maria Reyes-McDavis via photopin cc
Thanks for the strategies
For lawfirms, along with a lot of what I consider more ‘local’ business, I would place mobile and local search head and shoulders on this list. Content creation and marketing, as well as keeping contextual relevant structure for your business’s website need make sense, local search and local SEO will be where everything is at over the next, well, forever:) This is a grab read, and almost a step by step, area of online marketing actions to see positive effects. Great read!
Hi John, thanks for the great information. While we are not a law firm, (a small healthcare compliance firm in Denver), this is helping me reshape and refocus our marketing efforts for online success. I’m new to SEO and Internet marketing, so this has been a heck of a challenge…look forward to your future posts.
Hi Heather: Thanks for the kind words and I understand how challenging it can be when you are first starting out in web marketing. Looks like your blog could use some varied content that is helping to answer customers concerns/common industry questions – based on keyword research – and some photos to spice it up on each post.
Let me know if you would like us to review it more.
“Content is no longer an optional part of your strategy. If you don’t have good content your SEO, social media and public relations strategies will suffer greatly.”
This is SO true. It’s no longer enough to just have a snazzy-looking website. Your website needs to be a lead-generation tool. Great content is an integral part of that. Great post!
Thanks, Jeff, So true and now that everyone is doing content marketing it helps to focus on a niche. En example would be a personal injury law firm wondering why they don’t rank well in Google when they are targeting so many different concepts at once. You can optimize each practice area but doing a deep content dive on one topic can help a lot.