Many law firm marketing tactics exist, but what usually happens is that everyone does the same things as every other law firm.
Given the work that goes into marketing efforts, it’s worth making sure yours separates you from the crowd.
Play to win. Not copy.
That's the difference between marketing tactics and marketing strategy.
It’s impossible to execute every marketing idea. Create a law firm marketing plan to decide the resources, marketing tools, and people you’ll need. Clear online marketing goals are essential for promoting your legal practice to the right client base.
Instead of randomly picking something and throwing money and time at it, be intentional. To get you inspired, here are several creative marketing ideas for a law firm with examples from different practice areas.
Note: If you're marketing a small law firm, don't think you have to do every single one of these. A small law firm might get the best results from focusing on one channel, with one message, for one type of client. Stick to that and layer on additional channels as you pass the $1-2 million mark.
1. Create Short-Form Videos
Many legal issues are complex and cannot be easily chunked down into one-minute clips as part of a video marketing campaign. But resist the urge to record long and detailed videos.
Your audience doesn’t have the time.
Instead, keep narrowing down your options for what to talk about until you have a question or topic that can be covered well in 1-2 minutes.
Your video doesn’t need to have all the answers. For example, a short-form video about filing a personal injury suit in a timely manner might include only the basics, such as:
- The statute of limitations for general cases
- The statute of limitations for cases against government agencies
- Whether that statute of limitations can ever be tolled or extended for special circumstances
- Why a prospective client should reach out to a law firm in advance of the statute of limitations deadline to have their case evaluated
In just two minutes, a viewer will get the gist of whether or not they can even file a lawsuit based on when their issue happened and will be encouraged to reach out if they still have questions about their specific situations.
Short-form videos perform well on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube (YouTube Shorts). They can also show up in Google Search for certain keywords.
Get to the point quickly in these short videos. Most videos lose viewership over time, even when the videos are short. Put your best law firm inbound marketing content upfront and title the videos accurately, so the person knows exactly what they’ll learn in the video.
Try Multi-Media Content Marketing
If you're having trouble creating short-form videos, start by trying to get on podcasts that record them. Then, get rights to the video and use a tool like Descript to cut it up into bite-sized clips.
Stuck for material? Start with the most common legal questions your lawyers are asked in intakes by potential clients.
Note: Adhere to any ethics guidelines you have to follow by adding your disclaimer that you’re not providing legal advice.
2. Get Involved in Community Campaigns
Sometimes there’s nothing better than getting involved directly in your legal community.
Why? Because you’re not “just a law firm” when you’ve actively committed to important local causes. By adding this humanity behind the law firm, you’re giving back and making a good name for yourself in the process.
A personal injury lawyer could partner with a local high school driver’s ed course to support a day of signing anti-texting and driving privileges or the chance to check out a drunk driving simulator. These educational campaigns might not generate new leads or new clients right away, but they do a lot of good and keep your name top of mind for a segment of the population very likely to get in car accidents.
Here are some other great ways to use community campaigns to make a difference and build your law firm's brand at the same time:
Scholarships
A personal injury attorney could offer a $1,000 scholarship for students with perfect driving records, or an estate lawyer could start a “What’s your legacy” essay contest.
Becoming a Sponsor
You might get extra press from radio or TV stations covering the event. Ask your team members about events and causes important to them to get everyone involved.
Create Your Own Charity Event
Don’t feel boxed in when stepping up with community campaigns. Decide on something that speaks to you and your team.
For some inspiration on how to set up a scholarship, check out some law firm examples:
3. Optimize Your Landing Pages for Conversions
Here’s the problem with websites: everyone has one, and most law firm websites look identical. If you don’t differentiate yourself from the competition, there’s no specific reason a client would choose your law firm over another.
So get creative with your website design and user experience.
Getting website traffic through law firm SEO or social media marketing, how do you stand out from the thousands of other law firm sites?
How to Keep Your Audience Engaged
Here are a few different ways to keep attention on your site and your firm:
- Settlement calculators are a great call to action.
- Interactive content, such as a map of what happens to a body in a car accident or showing how skid marks tell the story of the accident after the fact.
- Animated videos, such as one explaining the process and timeline for filing a workers’ comp claim
- A quiz asking yes/no questions and getting contact information to help potential clients better understand if they have a claim or not.
- Live chat offering quick help for someone to schedule a call if they think they have a case.
- Add a texting option to your call-to-action phone number links and buttons.
- Video testimonials from past clients on your homepage.
- Add as many positive reviews from your clients to your homepage and results page as possible. Social proof in the form of client reviews is far more powerful than what you say about yourself.
However you decide to capitalize on your website, track the results. If you create tools for people, like a settlement calculator, make it simple and designed for a good user experience.
4. Optimize for SEO and Google Search
Here are some creative attorney marketing strategies that go beyond the basics to enhance your online visibility and drive more traffic to your site using SEO (search engine optimization).
Content Clusters and Pillar Pages
Instead of creating standalone blog posts, consider organizing your content into clusters. A pillar page can provide an in-depth overview of a broad topic, such as “Family Law,” while linking to related blog posts that dive deeper into specific areas, like child custody or divorce mediation. This structure not only helps search engines understand your site better but also keeps visitors engaged by directing them to relevant information.
User-Generated Content
Encourage your existing clients to share their stories or testimonials about their experiences with your firm. This not only builds social proof but also generates fresh, unique content for your website that can improve your SEO. Consider creating a dedicated section for client testimonials or success stories. Just make sure you obtain permission to use their experiences publicly.
Voice Search Optimization
With the rise of smart devices, optimizing for voice search is more important than ever. Think about how potential clients may phrase their questions verbally. Create content that answers common legal questions in a conversational tone. Incorporate FAQs on your site that align with natural language search queries, improving your chances of capturing traffic from voice searches.
Local SEO Enhancements
Local SEO is critical for law firms. Optimize your Google Business Profile with accurate information, including your firm’s name, address, and phone number (NAP). Encourage clients to leave reviews and respond to them promptly. Create localized content that speaks directly to the communities you serve, such as area-specific legal guides or blog posts addressing local laws and regulations.
5. Host Live Events
Now that the world has been cooped up indoors and on screens for years, many people are excited to (safely) enjoy in-person events again. The truth is it’s a hard sell to run a webinar, even if your content marketing is great. People are burned out.
Lean hard into engagement with an in-person workshop. They don’t always generate new business immediately, but they can pay off in the long run through word-of-mouth referrals.
Here are some marketing tips for lawyers to get some real interest and the right clients in the seats:
Title the workshop with exactly what an attendee will get out of it. “Workers Comp 101” is not an engaging title, but “How to Organize Your Workers’ Comp Application for Submission” has a clear outcome.
Use bullet points to market your workshop that can pre-qualify your audience. An estate lawyer, for example, might target parents of kids going off to college with a financial strategy for success workshop in which new adult powers of attorney are discussed and offered.
Be prepared to follow up. While it’s possible some people who attend a law firm workshop will be ready to set up a meeting with you that day, others will require more hand-holding. Provide homework assignments or follow-up materials related to the core content, so the relationship doesn’t end when the workshop is over. The next step of offering legal services is more natural when this audience has already had a good experience with the firm.
Be careful with live events by setting your marketing budget and goals in advance. Start small and refine your process rather than renting out a room and ordering catering for 100 people for your test run. Once you know how well you convert prospective clients with live events, you can decide on how many of these to fit in per year.
You can use posts on your Google Business Profile to promote these as part of your local SEO initiatives as well.
6. Get Creative with Social Media & Retargeting
Everyone says, “Use social media,” but what does that actually mean? Get started by looking at the social channels where you have the best engagement/following or the potential to grow in either one.
Skip digital marketing channels where people are unlikely to search for an injury lawyer (Twitter is a great example.) Instead, focus on a platform where you can be most consistent and where your audience spends time.
Getting Started with Social Media Marketing
Here are some examples of how to use your social media presence as part of your law firm marketing plan.
- An IP lawyer helping handmade/craft business owners can create short reels and image-based content for that audience on Instagram
- A business attorney helping with formations, partner disputes, or tax issues can leverage LinkedIn marketing more effectively than other platforms
- An immigration lawyer might use TikTok to create short videos answering the most common questions in Spanish
- A personal injury lawyer can use Facebook to share images and video content around common mistakes made after car accidents or workers’ comp accidents
Retargeting Your Law Firm Website Visitors to Other Platforms
After people have visited your law firm's website, use retargeting advertising options most social media platforms provide to continue to deliver content and stay top of mind with people once they leave your site.
Tailor the content on your chosen channel. Batching the content is one tip that can make this much easier.
If you create four YouTube videos per month, for example, choose all the titles and scripts one day and record all four the next day.
Those materials can be edited and published over time.
If you find social media overwhelming or are just not interested in handling every aspect of content creation and publication, hire an expert marketer or social media manager to help you develop a legal marketing strategy and simplify the process.
7. Use Influencer Marketing to Tap into More Audiences
Influencer marketing involves partnering with people or brands that have an audience on social media or other platforms to promote your firm.
The audience doesn’t have to be massive, either. Someone with 10,000 loyal followers can be more valuable than one with 100,000.
Lawyers can use influencer marketing to promote their legal services by working with influencers who have the reputation and trust of an audience that’s relevant to your target audience.
For example, a personal injury lawyer might partner with a health and wellness influencer to promote their services to an audience interested in injury prevention and recovery. A family law attorney could partner with a parenting influencer to promote their services to parents.
Getting Started with Influencer Marketing
To get started incorporating influencer collaboration into your law firm's marketing plan,
- Identify influencers who are relevant to your target audience and have a good reputation.
- Reach out to them and pitch an offer to collaborate—it’s even better if you come to them with an idea!
- Agree on the type of compensation you’ll provide in exchange for promoting your firm.
- Monitor the results and make adjustments as needed.
When you’re tracking your metrics, it’s best to use an open-form text field on your contact forms asking people how they heard about you. You’ll get a ton of insight from doing so—the kinds of insight that your analytics and other systems can’t track automatically.
If you don’t do this, you might look at the results of your influencer campaign and think it’s not driving referrals your way when it's really a key part of your lead-generation engine.
8. Use Gated Content
Gated content is a simple concept: offer someone high-quality downloadable materials in exchange for their email address.
When done well, you’ll get their contact info for your CRM and the ability to remarket to them with follow-up emails, retargeting with Facebook ads, and remarketing with PPC channels like Google Ads and Google Display Network.
When Gated Content Works for Lead Gen
Before committing to gated content, understand that it doesn’t work well for every lawyer.
Most people just want answers right when they have them, and plenty of them don’t want to be on some lawyer’s boring email list.
Aim to be the exception to that rule.
Lead magnets like “5 Steps to Applying for Medicaid and Getting Approved Right Away” shared via a PDF for an estate planning lawyer might perform well as gated content.
Likewise, a video series on “3 Business Succession Planning Myths” delivered over a few days has the potential to serve a business attorney well.
If you’re an attorney for issues that people like to research before committing to hiring an attorney, gated content might be an option to pursue. If your audience prefers to get immediate answers to their questions (for example, criminal law or personal injury law issues), you might be better off with an organic search content marketing plan. This approach with blog posts answers the reader’s questions immediately.
Note: Don’t gate your case studies and past client results. Ever.
9. Run PR Campaigns When the Firm or its Lawyers Win Awards
Don’t just add that badge to your website and call it a day when a firm attorney wins a local, state, or national award. A mini PR campaign gets the word out there to a broader audience and potentially earns your website backlinks.
Examples of PR Campaigns that Show Your Strengths
Here are some examples to consider putting the firm or attorneys up for:
- Local business leader awards (Example: Outstanding Women in Business Award)
- Local awards for inclusiveness, community engagement, or charitable contributions
- Regional and national lawyer awards (Examples: SuperLawyers, Best Law Firms in America)
- Certifications (Examples: women-owned business, veteran-owned business)
- Law school/undergraduate Alumni Achievement awards
How to Showcase Your Achievements
When an award is received, market that achievement by:
- Updating website and LinkedIn bios to include it
- Downloading any badges to share on your social media pages
- Writing a blog about the award on your website or in your email marketing newsletter
- Drafting a press release for major awards
- Pitch an article to a local magazine or newspaper (For example, if the firm wins an award for its inclusiveness policies and hiring practices, offer a local article about the best ways to support a diverse workforce in a local publication.)
- Update your Google My Business profile with an image of the lawyer who won and the name and year of the award
If you’re going to put in the work to submit for awards, follow through on sharing the good news about winning when it happens.
10. Harness PPC Campaigns to Drive Leads
Let’s face it—most potential clients are searching for legal help online, and if your firm isn’t at the top of those search results, you’re essentially invisible to them. PPC allows you to place your firm directly in front of these searchers. You pay for each click on your ad, so you’re investing in potential clients actively looking for your services. This means you’re reaching a highly targeted audience ready to convert.
Getting Started with PPC
Start by identifying the right keywords for your practice areas. Think about the phrases that potential clients would use when searching for services like yours. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you determine which keywords have the highest search volume and lowest competition. This is where the magic begins—selecting keywords that will drive quality traffic to your site.
Once you’ve identified your keywords, it’s time to craft compelling ad copy. Your ad needs to resonate with your audience and convey a strong call to action. Whether you’re promoting a free consultation or highlighting a unique selling proposition, clarity is key. Make sure your ads answer the question: “Why should I choose your law firm?”
Monitoring and Optimizing
Here’s where PPC for lawyers truly shines: data-driven results. Use tracking tools to monitor the performance of your ads. Look at metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI). If certain keywords aren’t performing well, don’t hesitate to tweak your strategy. Test different ad copies, landing pages, and budgets to find what works best for your firm.
The Competitive Edge
One of the most significant advantages of PPC is its ability to give smaller law firms a competitive edge. You don’t have to have the same budget as a larger firm to see results. By focusing on niche markets and targeted locations, you can effectively reach the clients that matter most to you. Plus, when managed properly, the cost of acquiring a new client can be significantly lower than traditional marketing methods.
So, if you’re serious about taking your law firm to the next level, make PPC a cornerstone of your marketing strategy. It’s a smart investment that can yield quick results, help you connect with the right audience, and ultimately grow your practice.
11. Local Service Ads (LSA)
Local Services Ads are the ads that appear at the top of Google search results, often featuring a great photo, your firm’s name, and key details like your rating and reviews. Unlike traditional Google Ads, these ads are specifically targeted to users looking for local services, and they let potential clients see who you are before they even click to visit your website.
Why LSAs Are a Game Changer
One of the biggest benefits of LSAs is that they put you in front of potential clients who are actively seeking legal help in your area. Think about it—when someone types “family lawyer near me” or “personal injury attorney in [your city],” you want to be among the first options they see. LSAs help ensure your firm stands out in this competitive landscape.
Cost-Effective and Results-Driven
With LSA, you pay per lead instead of per click. This means you’re only paying when someone actually contacts you, rather than just when they view your ad. This pay-per-lead model can lead to a better return on investment (ROI) because you’re investing in genuine inquiries rather than just website clicks. Plus, this model minimizes wasted budget on clicks that don’t lead anywhere.
Trust and Credibility
Google vets businesses that are eligible to appear in Local Services Ads, which can lend an air of credibility to your firm. Completing the background check and showing your firm’s current licensing and insurance can help build trust with potential clients. This added layer of authenticity gives you a leg up on the competition and assures prospective clients that they’re dealing with a reputable firm.
Getting Started with LSAs
Getting started with LSAs is straightforward. You’ll need to create a Local Services Ads account and go through the verification process. Once your firm is approved, you can set your budget, target specific locations, and start receiving leads.
One important tip is to focus on gathering positive reviews. Your rating plays a significant role in how often your ad appears, and clients want to know they can trust you based on the experiences of others. Encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews to boost your visibility.
Future Trends in Legal Marketing
The world of law firm marketing is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of the curve is crucial for law firms looking to capitalize on new opportunities. As technology continues to advance and consumer behavior shifts, understanding upcoming trends in law firm marketing strategies will help you maximize your effectiveness. Here are some of the future trends that you should keep an eye on:
Embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is already making waves across various industries, and law firm marketing is no exception. From chatbots that provide instant responses to inquiries to AI-driven tools that analyze data and predict client needs, embracing these technologies can significantly streamline your marketing efforts.
Imagine having a smart system that can analyze your existing data to suggest which keywords to target in your PPC campaigns or identify which content topics resonate most with your audience. While we still have a lot to learn about using AI for lawyers, this technology has the potential to save time and lead to smarter, data-backed decisions.
Enhanced Personalization
Consumers today crave personalized experiences, and this trend is deeply influencing the legal industry. As a law firm, leveraging data to tailor your marketing messages to potential clients will set you apart from your competitors. This could include personalized email campaigns based on a client’s specific legal needs, dynamically tailored ad content that speaks directly to their situation, or even custom landing pages that address particular concerns.
The more you can connect with prospective clients on a personal level, the higher the likelihood of converting them into clients.
Ethical Marketing Practices
As law firms become more cognizant of their responsibility to promote ethical practices, we’re likely to see a shift towards more transparent and trustworthy law firm marketing strategy. This means being open about your services, fees, and success rates while avoiding misleading claims.
Incorporating ethical practices not only builds trust with clients but also enhances your firm’s reputation in a competitive market. As clients become more socially conscious, they’ll gravitate toward firms that prioritize ethics in their advertising.
By staying informed and adapting to these changes, you can make sure your marketing efforts resonate with clients now and in the future.
Don’t just keep up; lead the way!
Get Help Choosing the Right Marketing Activities
If you’re feeling inspired to hit the ground running with some new legal marketing ideas for your target audience, use that momentum to make sure you have the right support to follow through. Don’t go this alone.
Many marketing agencies targeting law firms promise to “do it all,” but so few of them deliver on that promise. If you’re looking for SEO help, choose a proven law firm marketing agency that gets results for lawyers, not someone who dabbles in SEO but is primarily a social media management shop. Work with pros who know what they’re doing.
If SEO is your next step in marketing your law practice, contact Rankings.io today for a free consultation.
