Legal Marketing Experts
Why Is MileMark Media The Right Choice For Your Firm?
Consumers are conducting a growing number of searches on mobile devices and tablets. In fact, mobile searches have surpassed laptop and desktop searches already. We develop every law firm website with a responsive design to enable every visitor the most optimal viewing experience.
Once the law firm website is completed, the next critical step is driving traffic to the site through effective legal SEO (search engine optimization). Does your current vendor update your site’s content and invest ample hours to effectively increase your site’s authority? Google changed their algorithms over 400 times last year. Staying on top of such changes and making the necessary adjustments with your site is critical. At MileMark Media, we understand that similar to an attorney’s stock in trade, effective optimization comes down to simply time and expertise. Our legal marketing specialists invest a significant number of hours on a monthly basis to ensure that they stay on top of the constant changes and maintain strong overall rankings and traffic.
Another key component to an effective online marketing program is to have a strong Social Media and Blog presence. Fifty percent of consumers are now utilizing social media and blogs to assist in their decision making process when hiring an attorney. It is essential to establish social media pages for your law firm that mirrors your website and syndicates content across all social media. Developing an effective Social Media strategy will expand your network and generate new clients. At MileMark Media, we realize it is important to develop and maintain an effective social media strategy. We not only write the content and manage the process, but similar to our optimization solutions, we analyze the respective results and continue to modify based upon the desired performance. Contact our legal marketing experts today and let 50+ combined years of law firm marketing work for you.
Legal Marketing FAQ
Frequently asked questions about legal marketing, web design, SEO, social media marketing, blogging & more. View more on our Legal Marketing FAQ page.
- How do you market a law firm?
- How do I get clients as a law firm?
- How much does a website cost?
- How long does SEO take?
- How do I market my law firm on social media?
- How often should I blog?
- What makes good legal content?
How Do You Market A Law Firm?
There are many ways to market a law firm, some of them include digital marketing, online and print display advertising, billboards, television and radio commercials, email and physical mail, and more. Some options will work better for certain law firms but in general the fastest growing trend in legal marketing is digital and internet. Below are some ways you can take advantage of marketing your law firm.
- Explore different marketing options – Use all options possible that suite your firm, especially free options. Claiming profiles and cleaning up your business information on the internet is a great start. Find what marketing avenues work for your firm.
- Create great content – Content is key in any marketing campaign, same applies to legal marketing. Create compelling, unique content that is good for readers and good for search engines. One good piece of content can go a long way.
- Word of mouth and referrals work – Referrals will always be an important part of law firm marketing and business. Keep good relationships with peers and clients, it can generate leads for a long time.
- Focus on reviews – In today’s marketing landscape reviews are more important than ever. Try to focus on encouraging good reviews without any spam tactics. Look at your law firm presence and review rating across multiple sites, see what clients are saying.
- Brand consistency – Take a look at your law firm’s branding, is it identical across mediums? The website, business profiles, cards, brochures and any other marketing material should have consistent branding with the look and feel of your firm. Logos, colors and themes are important for a website and other marketing assets, they can play a big part in conversion rate.
How Do I Get Clients As A Law Firm?
Whether you are just out of law school or have been practicing for years, there are always answers to the question – How do I get clients as a law firm?. One of the easiest and fastest ways is simply word of mouth. Let all friends and family know about your law firm business. Here are a few more ways to get noticed.
Join Local Bar Associations
Joining bar associations around you is one of the first steps you should do as a new or existing lawyer who wishes to expand their presence. At the very least it will grow your personal network so you can rely on other experienced colleagues for advice. Many times it leads to relationships that create future leads.
Join Local Community Groups
Look for other community groups within your area, often these are great opportunities to network. You never know when your neighbors will need a lawyer.
Market Your Law Firm Online
Internet marketing and websites have become the dominating force in legal marketing. It is crucial today to have a website, even better if that website is branded with great content. Don’t skip this important marketing vertical, you will be surprised how much traffic and exposure a successful online legal marketing campaign can create.
Social Media
Let potential clients see who you are as a firm, in the form of imagery and quality content. Post often but make sure it engages your followers, look for latest trends and compelling content. Follow other relevant users and encourage them as well.
Paid & Display Advertising
There is paid advertising in the form of online PPC or pay per click, as well as print and display advertising. Much of paid and display advertising is costly, and reserved for firms with high marketing budgets. This does not mean you should rule it out, experiment with campaigns within your means, see if paid advertising helps your law firm.
Lead Generation Services
There are many lead generation services out there, especially in legal marketing, not many are great. Make sure you aren’t sucked into any type of paid agreement that doesn’t lead to results for your firm. Oftentimes these services are costly, and the leads aren’t always qualified.
How Much Does A Website Cost?
A question many wonder when starting or building upon their internet marketing campaign, how much will a new or re-designed website cost? Many marketers will tell you it depends, which is correct. The answer depends on many things, similar to a home in real estate. The price will vary based on your geography, how sleek or modern the design is, how many extras or functions you need, theme, content, and the list goes on. There are also other features you need in a website to stay up to date with the latest search engine optimization best practices. These items include responsiveness/mobile compatibility, website speed, etc. There is also always the question of custom design, or uniqueness. Are you getting a design that was used on countless other businesses, or are you paying to get a truly custom design that no one else has.
These are all things to keep in mind when getting a quote on a new website. If a marketer can give you a price in the first minute of conversation, it is probably a canned approach or box theme website that has been used before. Every website and marketing campaign is unique and should be treated as such. Getting a unique, custom designed website that fulfills all your business needs and makes you happy to look at every day will obviously come at a different cost than a stock theme anyone can purchase. A few thousand vs a few hundred may seem like a big difference in website and internet marketing investment, but the difference in the finished product, brand power, traffic numbers and customer/lead acquisition will be much bigger in the end.
How Long Does SEO Take?
This is a popular question that comes up when talking about SEO and internet marketing. It is a fair question to ask an internet marketer or agency, but not always a fair answer. You can get various answers to this question, but many marketers will simply tell you they are not certain. That is because there is no time-frame you can accurately predict when SEO results will kick in. You can estimate a time period range based on past results for other campaigns, but that could end up inaccurate. SEO is a process, it is on-going.
There is also the question of goals and expectations, how long does SEO take…to achieve X goal. That goal is usually in the form of search engine rankings, but should also be in the form of traffic and leads. Even if a goal or set of goals is met for a law firm and legal marketing campaign, there is always more that could be done. Here are some things to keep in mind when thinking about a SEO time-frame.
- What are my immediate and long term goals for this SEO campaign
- Will I participate in marketing items needed to help my SEO campaign
- Am I willing to accept the mindset that SEO is an on-going process, not a one time event
- No single keyword, ranking, or piece of content will make or break your website or SEO campaign
- Rankings don’t matter as much as you think, traffic and leads do
- Although the internet moves fast, SEO doesn’t move as fast
With all of this in mind you can now set your expectations for a SEO timeframe. Keep a close eye on your monthly reports, look for increases in traffic, leads, phone calls to the law firm, and rankings, but rankings are just one piece. It is fairly safe to say with all things considered, if you don’t see positive trends in at least some of these metrics within 6 months to the first year, you are not getting the results you need.
How Do I Market My Law Firm On Social Media?
A growing trend in the current marketing landscape is social media marketing. So how do you market your law firm on social media? Follow some of our steps below to begin your law firm social media marketing campaign.
- Create or claim all relevant profiles out there for your law firm – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn
- Correct the information in these profiles to match your current business info, make sure the website matches exactly as well
- Add current photos of the law firm logos, attorneys, staff, building, and any other relevant photography
- Make sure the website link and any other profile links are filled out and correct
- Follow other relevant users on all social media channels
- Engage your followers with a content strategy
The last step is the hardest one, it requires planning and unique, quality content. Once you have your profiles established you have to regularly post content and engage users, it is the best way to gain new followers and interact with your current ones. One of the easiest ways to do this is blogging on your website. If you can generate some good blog ideas relevant to your business, have them written and posted to the website. Then take those posts and syndicate them across all your social media channels. The more engaging the blog post, the better it will do across your channels. You are also now increasing your brand presence and establishing yourself as an industry leader.
How Often Should I Blog?
Blogging is a powerful tactic and should be part your digital marketing campaign, there is always something to blog about. Blogging topics for your legal marketing campaign can cover legal news, FAQs, firm news, change in laws, case results, and more. Whether you are generating blog ideas, have written posts ready to go, or haven’t even started the process, you may wonder how often to post. A general rule is at least a couple times per month, weekly being better. If you can average one blog post a week that is great.
Blogging, if done correctly with a content strategy, offers fresh content to users and search engines. It tells Google you are constantly offering new content, whether that be weekly or monthly. If the content is engaging enough and you post it to your social media channels, you have a good chance of increasing your engagement, traffic and eventually leads/sales.
What Makes Good Legal Content?
Legal content can prove more difficult than some other industries, but there is plenty of room to be creative and unique. The goal of engaging content is to appeal to as many people as possible, and prove some value to that audience. With this in mind here are some possibilities for content topics:
- Current events
- Changes in law relevant to the widest audience possible
- Celebrity legal news
- Scholarships
- Law firm media/press
- Awards
- Community Service
Of course you also want fresh content related to your areas of practice, but these topics are more general and can be applied to almost any law firm. You rarely can go wrong posting new content, aim to do it as often as possible and try to stay creative. Over time you will see traffic, engagement and hopefully leads trend upward.
Get a Free Law Firm Website Consultation
An effective law firm presence online requires implementing a strategy based on the objectives of your firm coupled with the delivery of results. We have a combined 45 years of experience in legal marketing and will offer a level of customer focus that is unmatched in the industry. So instead of asking why choose MileMark Media for your legal marketing needs, perhaps the question should be, “Why Not?”
