Marketing for Divorce Lawyers
Divorce lawyers should be focused on serving clients, yet you also need new clients to keep your firm alive and thriving. Creating a digital marketing strategy that taps into the market and brings those clients to you is essential.
Since marketing can be very time-consuming and requires expert strategy, do the necessary groundwork to determine who you’re marketing to and how you’ll reach them. Then think about what professionals you can hire to get the most out of every marketing activity. Over time, you’ll measure marketing results and make adjustments as needed, learning what serves your firm best.
Define Your Target Audience
As a family lawyer, you have multiple smaller target audiences to choose from, and narrowing it down can help you effectively focus your marketing efforts. Here are some examples of target audiences relevant for different lawyers:
- Young individuals planning their wedding who have questions about structuring a prenup
- A person seeking a collaborative divorce who largely agrees with their spouse on key issues associated with the end of the marriage
- A parent concerned about the impact of domestic violence allegations during a divorce
- A parent who fears high-conflict divorce
Each of these clients has different questions and needs. If you can narrow down what you do and who you do it for, you cut through a lot of the messaging provided by other firms to stand out and capture your target audience’s attention.
Who Will You Target?
If you’ve previously served clients at a broad level or can’t pick one specific kind of case to focus on in your marketing. Think through these questions:
- How did those clients find you?
- What did those cases/clients have in common?
- What made them unique?
- Which cases did you enjoy handling more, and why?
- Which clients had the best experience working with you?
You can also look at the cases in which you have been the most successful in determining your niche as a family lawyer. For example, maybe you get a lot of feedback about fighting hard for your client’s best interests regarding property division. That could be rolled into a practice focus on high net worth clients who have a lot at stake in property division during divorce.
Once you have a sense of direction, you’ll better understand how to put your messaging in front of these ideal clients.
In the example above, the lawyer has clearly focused on a female audience. The message is all about helping women protect their families through empowerment. The target audience is crystal clear and the message authentically connects with that prospective client right away.
Where Do They Go for Answers to Their Problems?
Once you know your target client, it’s time to think about how they approach getting answers to their questions. Do they ask others for help on social media? Do they research topics related to their legal issue online?
Divorce lawyers might have two different kinds of clients to target with different marketing efforts.
For example, a spouse who has already been served papers for divorce might be in a position to decide quickly. They need legal counsel, and they’re looking for some reputable who will fight hard.
This might be distinct from the client who spends a few months investigating whether divorce is the right fit for them before setting up a consultation with a lawyer. Consider whether you have one type of client more frequently than another when determining where your clients go for answers to their problems.
This can be a tricky question to answer. The strongest divorce lawyers know they can use the insight of an experienced team of marketers to pick the right approach. If you’re stuck on which marketing channels are most appropriate for your family law firm, discuss this with a marketing agency.
In general, organic and paid channels can both work for family lawyers.
Organic Channels
Organic channels include things like social media, word-of-mouth referrals, and search engines. They take a longer time to get results than paid advertising but usually end up less expensive in the long run.
That’s because organic channel outcomes snowball. The more your site ranks in Google search, for example, the easier it is to maintain that ranking and draw in quality traffic. With paid ads, however, the immediate payoffs you achieve could peter out over time, especially if someone with a higher ad budget knocks you out of the game.
You need a clear strategy and method to analyze results to get it right with organic channels. That usually comes with the support of an outside marketing team.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Both the served-with-divorce-papers client and the one looking for information about the process of divorce share something in common: they’ll probably do their research online first. This research might even happen directly on their phone. It makes a big difference whether your law firm shows up on the first page of search results for relevant keywords, and that can only happen when you invest time and resources into SEO.
One study found that only 9% of readers scroll to the bottom of the first page of search results. This means you need a comprehensive plan for targeting the right keywords to achieve goals in three ways:
- Content marketing: Creating original, high-quality content that helps your search engine rankings and provides helpful information for prospective clients
- On-page SEO: Optimizing each page on your website by providing key details about what’s on the page, making Google more likely to rank that page
- Link Building/Off-page SEO: Getting other websites to link to your content, showing Google that your website is authoritative.
Since each of these three elements is important for winning with SEO, hire someone who has strong results with law firm SEO services. The divorce lawyers with the highest rankings choose trusted SEO partners to get results, and you can, too.
Local SEO
Local SEO is one of the most important ways you show up in search results for your ideal client. When you can align your local SEO strategy, you’ll get the best leads in your local area, and from there, you can convert them into actual clients. Search engines consider a few factors when listing law firms in local search results, so you need to know how you’re going to approach that.
Depending on the case, you’ll be working with your clients for months or even years. If it’s easier to target specific neighborhoods or suburbs, local SEO can help with that so that it’s easier for your clients to come to your office.
For example, if your divorce law firm is located all the way at the east end of a city and you find yourself losing clients living on the west side who don’t want to make a 45-minute trek through traffic for appointments, you might focus your marketing efforts on clients in your local area only.
When you establish yourself as a prominent law firm in a particular area, you’re more likely to succeed with local SEO. Use law firm directory listings, review sites such as Avvo, and Google My Business to position your business for the best results with local SEO.
Paid Channels
Organic efforts often achieve the best outcomes over time, but they take some patience before seeing results. If you need a faster result for the short term, paid channels can help. Paid channels require you to pay based on the number of impressions, clicks, or leads.
If you’re thinking about using paid channels, find a dedicated legal marketing expert to consult with you about your budget and overall strategy. Since you’ll want to get organic traffic over time, too, don’t neglect those methods if you’re also investing in paid channels.
Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is a mixed bag for divorce lawyers. For one, many people don’t broadcast publicly on Facebook that they’re in the process of considering divorce. There’s no “interest” button that a Facebook or Instagram user updates to indicate they’re interested in speaking with a family lawyer.
As a result, the percentage of people seeing your ads in your local area who might also need a divorce lawyer on the day they see the ad is small.
You might be able to reach those qualified family law clients in a better way, such as through Google Ads for chosen keywords or organic search.
Google Local Service Ads (Pay-Per-Lead Advertising)
With pay-per-lead ads, you can put your law firm at the top of all search listings. A photo, your firm name, hours open that day, the number of years in business, and a snapshot of your Google review profile are all displayed in this section. This method works well if you have a good track record on Google to earn that prospective client’s trust.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Get attention from qualified leads searching for relevant terms with pay-per-click ads. Using pay-per-click (PPC), you target valuable keywords and phrases in your local area using a bidding system. While Google does some of the heavy lifting for you, you can’t expect to win with pay-per-click unless you also have a great family law firm website and other tactics to turn that viewer into a prospective client.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a hot topic among lawyers, but it doesn’t perform very well for family lawyers. Most people don’t want to read a lawyer’s newsletter to begin with, but many people are very private about their decisions around divorce.
Having an email newsletter delivered to a personal or work email doesn’t feel private enough for many people. It takes a lot of work to create a great email strategy for a law firm, and with the limited results it offers, this tactic is better ignored.
Determine Your Value Proposition, Messaging, and Positioning
Practicing family law with good results is not enough to stand out in your market. You need to differentiate your law firm from other family lawyers in the area. If you’re struggling to figure out that uniqueness factor, take these steps:
- Read through reviews from past clients: do you see any trends in their comments?
- Consider your own strengths and how they apply to your law practice
- Ask your colleagues what they think makes your law firm different from the competition
Selecting a value proposition and the right messaging is not just an exercise. You’ll consistently use what you come up with throughout your marketing, so it should be a message you’re excited to share.
Cordell & Cordell has built a reputation on their strong positioning of protecting the rights of fathers in divorce. Their messaging promotes the concept that just as a father will always be there for his children, the right lawyers will always be there to support a father going through a divorce. The messaging touches on emotional tones and a client’s concern over getting parenting time.
Set a Budget
There’s no shortage of ideas about what you could do to market your divorce law firm, but there is a limit to what you should spend. Finding the right mix of activities that deliver results and a good return on investment is vital. Make sure your lawyer marketing plan matches the budget available.
According to a 2020 survey by the American Bar Association, less than half of law firms with under nine lawyers had a marketing budget, and only 64% of bigger firms use a formal marketing budget. Create one to track outcomes and maximize your spending.
Don’t forget that your budget should include costs such as freelancers, marketing agencies, ad spend, and software, if needed.
Build a Fast, Modern Website
Whether you’re mainly using organic, paid channels, or a combination of both, you need an easy-to-use and professional-looking website. Since other channels drive this traffic to your website, that site should be made with the viewer in mind.
Since you put the work in already to create a clear marketing message, make sure that it shows up throughout the website, especially in taglines, your homepage, and your about us page. Along the way, sprinkle in feedback and case outcomes from actual clients to reinforce your core messages.
Website Design Basics for Divorce Attorneys
A website must be clean and easy to navigate for a reader. This positions you well to capture interest from potential clients and turn that into an action step such as filling out a contact form or calling your office.
Follow these best practices for your website to achieve that.
Mobile-First
Research pulled from Google’s Benchmarking data shows that mobile devices drive over 60% of traffic to websites. Your website must be easy to read and navigate, even from a smaller device.
Test that your website looks just as good on mobile as it does on desktop to give yourself the best chance of getting clients from all places.
Optimized for Search
Each page on your divorce lawyer website has a specific function, but they should all be designed to share important data with search engines. For example, each site should have a title tag, a meta description, and explanation tags on photos—and that’s just scratching the surface of site optimization.
It’s not easy to optimize a divorce lawyer website with numerous pages, but it has a big payoff in communicating all the right signals to Google. Rankings.io has years of experience optimizing every page of law firm websites. Using our background and SEO knowledge, we’ll make sure each part of your website is set up to perform well.
Live Chat Features
Providing content on your website that allows viewers to read through and learn is essential, but don’t neglect the importance of letting someone know you’re available to talk. There are many questions that a prospective client might have that can be quickly answered using a live chat tool.
Here are some examples:
- What is the filing fee for a divorce?
- Are you currently taking new clients?
- Do you have experience with business assets in a divorce?
Live chat delivers that immediate contact point to help your viewer feel important and heard.
Clear Calls to Action
If someone reads through your website, finds helpful information, but then closes the tab or hits the “back” button, you just lost a lead. Readers don’t know the next logical step to take during a complex legal issue like divorce.
Every page on your website should have one clear call to action. Your goal is to provide the most helpful information relevant to them at that time.
For example, if you have a blog article about property division, you might direct them to a checklist of common assets divided in divorce. You might prompt them to set up a consultation call to discuss their specific situation from that checklist.
Your call to action should be helpful and relevant. Think, “what does this person need to know next?” or “what other questions does this reader still have?” as you choose how to close that page.
In the blog post below, the title is, “What Does Full Custody of a Child Mean in Colorado?” and partway through the post, the lawyers have linked to their child custody service page while talking about their unique approach. It’s a logical next step that a reader trying to learn more about full custody.
Trust Signals
Since you have already looked through your reviews to determine some of your unique value positioning, don’t forget to turn back to that data and infuse it throughout your website. For example, if “great communication” kept coming up from past clients, think about how you hit on that concern throughout various pages of your website. Some examples include:
- “You’ll only work with your main lawyer, and they’ll keep you up to date at each stage of your case.”
- “You’ll get a weekly email recapping where your case is at and what’s next.”
- “As soon as something changes, you’ll hear from us to make an informed decision about what’s best.”
That copy takes the big picture concept of good communication and breaks it down into practical examples to strike a chord with your potential clients.
In the example below, the law firm focuses on “intense case preparation” and outstanding results. The mention of “exclusively family law” highlights that the firm has a strong track record in this area and a targeted practice.
Build Awareness & Generate Demand
Capturing demand is key to being there when your client needs to hire a divorce lawyer, but you can generate demand by positioning yourself as the “go-to” in your local divorce market well in advance.
This works well for family lawyers because a person thinking about divorce might take days, weeks, or even months before they’re ready for an initial meeting. During that time, you want your firm’s name to come up again and again as a reliable source of information and services. By building awareness, especially when your firm uses all of the tactics below, your name will be top of mind when your client is ready to take the next step.
Consider Google Ads, content marketing, Google My Business firm reviews, link building, and social media posts to generate demand for your law firm.
Tactic #1 Google Ads
Once you’ve set your budget and learned more about the most valuable keywords to target, you can use Google Ads to ensure your law firm shows up for those phrases. Google Ads get the traffic to you, but you’ll still need a high-performing website to turn a casual viewer into a prospective paying client.
Tactic #2 Content Marketing
As you create content relevant to your target audience, you can post it on your website to drive traffic from quality leads. Plenty of people don’t know much about divorce outside of anecdotal experiences from family and friends. You can use content marketing to build a library of helpful information for someone facing family law issues.
At Rankings.io, we use our track record of success with SEO to make sure you’re getting the most out of all your law firm content marketing through service pages, local service pages, testimonials, and blog posts.
Service Pages
Service pages for family lawyers include those dedicated to things like:
- Child custody
- Adoption
- Post-divorce modification
- Child support
- Alimony/maintenance
- Property division
In short, these pages break down various aspects of most divorce cases, your legal services, and cover the most important issues and laws that a client should know.
Local Service Pages
A local service page makes it very clear that you provide the exact kind of support they need in their specific area. Think about the regions, cities, and neighborhoods where you get the most business and consider building a local service page to match.
Local service pages include specific local or state keywords and important information related to the legal matter at hand.
In the local service page above, the reader gets a sense of alternative dispute resolution options for divorce in Chicago while also delivering a great chat option and clear call to action.
Testimonials/Case Results
Case results and testimonials show what it’s like to work with you in your client’s own words. Those words are powerful because they provide some proof to claims you’ve made about your approach. If your core marketing message is that you fight hard for equal parenting time and that is matched up in multiple reviews from your actual clients, you’ll make a big impression on a new client concerned about that specific issue.
Blog Posts
Most people thinking about divorce spend some time considering their options and doing some research before setting up a meeting with a divorce lawyer. Using your law firm blog is an excellent way to create a library of accurate and up-to-date information about divorce or other family issues in your state.
Blog posts can cover topics like:
- Misconceptions about getting divorced
- What courts look at in deciding child custody
- Relevant state or local laws affecting divorcing couples
- Financial issues for people going through a divorce
- Frequently asked questions about getting a divorce
It’s more important to contribute well-written information to your collection of posts than to commit to specific posting schedules. This is a library of content, not a publication.
Tactic #3 Google My Business Reviews
Your Google My Business profile provides details that are immediately helpful to people looking to contact you, such as your phone number, street address, and open hours. It also includes feedback from divorce clients who have worked with you on family law issues.
Getting Google reviews from current and past clients is crucial for helping tell the story of how you serve. If your divorce law firm is known for handling complex child custody issues, you’ll lean into that marketing messaging throughout your website and other content.
The fact that multiple reviews back that up with comments about custody matters helps a potential client know they’ve found the right law firm for them.
Tactic #4 Link Building
As a lawyer, it’s important to have other sites link to your own site. This builds credibility with your website. It’s easy to start by claiming links on your social media profiles and legal directories.
If you want to take your link building efforts up a notch, consider contributing guest posts to other websites where you can earn a link back to your site within the content or your author bio.
Tactic #5 Posting on Social Media
When you post content on social media, remember that social media platforms want people to stay on their sites. For this reason, those platforms suppress posts with links to other places such as your website.
Your goal on social media should be to create social content that is engaging for your readers. A strong online presence generates both demand and awareness that encourages the reader to find your website or Google My Business profile from that point. When you use social media as a channel, start with one platform where your clients are most likely to spend time.
Capture Leads Through the Channel You Selected
You need to convert viewers and readers into potential clients once you’ve earned their view on other channels. Whether that’s an intake form, live chat, or scheduling a consultation right from your website, you need a way to continue earning that viewer’s trust with a deeper commitment than reading a blog post or clicking a link on Google.
Measure Results and Make Adjustments
Marketing requires analysis and tweaking to get the best results for a family lawyer. Capture data every month and review it. If you learn that one channel is gaining better traction than another, determine your next step. You might want to give the lower-performing channel another two months, or perhaps you want to redirect the funds and time from that first channel into another tactic.
Always review your marketing plan and goals when making adjustments to be sure that you’re working towards the right outcomes.
Finding a Partner for Divorce Law Marketing Services
A family lawyer is a powerful advocate and resource for clients. It’s your job to be there for them during some of the most nerve-wracking and confusing points in their life. You’re there for them through that process and serve as a guide, and that’s where your time is best spent.
Working with an outside marketing partner to help you develop the plans to get that client to your office is the best way to grow your law firm’s revenue.
Rankings.io knows what it takes to get a divorce lawyer optimal results with SEO. By working with us, you’ll be competitive and prepared to convert leads into clients. Contact us today to set up a consultation for your divorce firm. We practice what we preach, so read our reviews to learn more about how we can support your firm’s marketing efforts.
