In the legal world, it’s not enough to hire a marketing team and hope that they know what they’re doing.
With new platforms and constantly-evolving markets, even a 5-year-old marketing degree (or no marketing degree at all) is not enough to stay ahead of the curve. Each team member needs to learn and evolve to help your firm grow.
But a well-read team doesn’t necessarily mean a group of high-performing marketers — at least not in a law firm.
The internet is full of misinformation and false gurus and can be a massive time-sink for your firm. Your team needs a reliable source for cutting-edge marketing strategies, funnels, and more. Without it, it’s easy to get lost and continue to make costly mistakes with your branding and marketing efforts.
We’ll cover:
The most common law firm marketing mistakes
- Not keeping up with the ever-changing digital marketing landscape
- Focusing only on short-term conversions and ignoring long-term marketing strategies
- Spending on ads without tracking results
- Not leveraging video and social media to build their brand
Crisp Academy courses to solve your firm’s marketing problems
- Content Marketing Mastery
- Email Marketing Mastery
- Paid Traffic Mastery
- Conversion Funnel Mastery
- Optimization & Testing Mastery
- Launching a 3-Part Foundational Facebook Funnel
- Launching a Brand-Building Social Media Strategy
The most common law firm marketing mistakes
We’ve worked closely with hundreds of law firms and helped them get better results from their marketing efforts.
When analyzing pre-optimization campaigns, over time, we have noticed a pattern. The majority of law firms make similar mistakes, and we’ve covered the 5 most common ones below.
1. Not keeping up with the ever-changing digital marketing landscape
Digital marketing changes constantly. What worked in 2019 won’t work today, and what works today will be obsolete in 18 months.
For attorneys and novice marketers, it can be a challenge to understand the latticework that is an efficient multi-channel digital campaign.
A seasoned digital marketer will use different platforms and channels together to get better results than just advertising in one place alone.
For example, they could use a social media ad campaign (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Linked, etc.) to target their ideal clients, create a custom audience of people who visited their site, then retarget those prospective clients with more detailed ads. Once those people submitted their contact information, an automated, optimized email campaign would be sent.
Managing an optimized campaign like that is intimidating and complicated.
But the potential business growth is more than worth it.
It’s essential to educate your firm’s team on paid traffic, social media, SEO, and other channels to create an effective multi-channel marketing approach.
2. Focusing only on short-term conversions and ignoring long-term marketing strategies
Another mistake is to focus solely on pay-per-click (PPC) and think that you’re effectively marketing your law firm.
Not to mention how expensive it is.
The legal industry pays more than any other industry for a click on their PPC ads, and both “Lawyer” and “Attorney” are among the top 10 most expensive keywords on Google.
Instead, consider creating a scalable multi-channel marketing approach.
Here’s an example:
- Create a high-quality branding video that shares your law firm’s story and UVP.
- Clip it into segments that can be used in Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube ads.
- Create targeted ad campaigns that both increase awareness of your firm and send people to your website.
- Use retargeting and email to nurture your prospective clients until they get in touch and arrange a consultation.
This kind of campaign can (unlike PPC) drive an incredible return on investment.
It’s long-term, multi-channel marketing campaigns like this one that helped The Law Office of Travis J. McConnell increase his firm’s profits by 143%.
To learn more about the growth strategy used by Travis McConnell, check out his case study.
3. Spending on ads without tracking results
Another common issue we see is legal marketing teams that spend a huge amount on marketing initiatives without effectively tracking their results.
And it’s a mistake. Companies that track their marketing are 17x more likely to see a positive return on investment than companies that don’t.
Without proper conversion tracking, you’re blinding yourself to the possibility of improvement.
It’s a no-brainer.
Let’s say you have a marketing budget of $10,000…
You create five ad campaigns on Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Linkedin and invest $1,000 in each.
You’re left with $5,000. Where do you put it?
Effectively tracking your results enables you to confidently place that budget in in the campaign that performs best, thereby maximizing the return on your budget.
For instance, if you track your cost-per-click on four different social media platforms, you might find something like this:
Without detailed analytics, you might throw money into Facebook and Twitter because the cost-per-click is lower.
But what about the conversion rate on your website? If leads from LinkedIn are converting at a rate 15x higher than leads from Facebook (or if their cases are worth 15x as much) the platform may be more than worth the investment.
Want a shortcut to all the essential details on modern social media advertising? Our on-demand webinar, “5 Ways to Know If Your Law Firm’s Social Media is Working” provides a crash course in which strategies you should be using from the beginning, and how to know your social media efforts are actually worth it.
4. Not leveraging video and social media to build their brand
Very few law firms take advantage of the most powerful digital tools for brand building. They pay someone to create their website, add a few consultation forms, and call it a day.
But to really reach your target audience and build real trust without ever calling or meeting someone, you need to leverage the two most powerful digital platforms: video and social media.
A few stats that show the impact of video:
- 87% of Twitter users (for instance) say they’d rather watch a video than read text.
- Your prospective clients are over 27x more likely to click on an online video ad than an ad with a static image.
- Viewers retain 95% of a video’s message compared to 10% when reading text.
A few stats that show the impact of social media:
- Facebook alone has more than 2.45 billion monthly users and 1.62 billion daily users (so you can bank on your firm’s target clients being on it).
- The Facebook and Instagram advertising platform offers unparalleled targeting, enabling your business to show your ads exclusively to the people most likely to be interested in your legal services.
Combining the two offers a powerful one-two punch for your law firm.
The Berry Law Firm demonstrates just how effective YouTube videos can be for law firms:
Educational videos and brand videos have generated thousands of views from people invested in learning more about veterans’ legal rights (the Berry Law Firm’s target market).
The Berry Law Firm’s videos have, to date, driven more than a million views and reached more that 275,000 prospective clients.
Not following these footsteps is perhaps the greatest marketing mistake on this list. But most law firms and attorneys still shy far away from the camera.
The good news is that all these mistakes are avoidable. Your team can overcome them with the right training and tools.
And that’s precisely why we’ve teamed up with DigitalMarketer to release Crisp Academy.
Crisp Academy is a comprehensive learning and training platform designed to take your team’s marketing and business development skills to the next level.
Crisp Academy courses to solve your firm’s marketing problems
We share insider information gleaned from generating over $150,000,000 in revenue for law firms around the globe.
Below, we cover a snapshot of the content offered within Crisp Academy — 7 of the most high-impact courses that will help your team achieve your firm’s growth goals, and avoid the pitfalls mentioned above.
Relevant courses:
- Content Marketing Mastery
- Email Marketing Mastery
- Paid Traffic Mastery
- Conversion Funnel Mastery
- Optimization & Testing Mastery
- Launching a 3-Part Foundational Facebook Funnel
- Launching a Brand-Building Social Media Strategy
Content Marketing Mastery
Content marketing is the go-to marketing tool to establish a brand online. That is especially true for professional industries like legal.
Prospective clients want to find an attorney they trust — someone experienced with cases just like theirs.
The numbers show why law firm content marketing is essential in 2020 and beyond:
- 47% of buyers engage with 3-5 pieces of content before starting the sales process.
- Content marketing gets 3 times more leads per dollar than paid search advertising.
This course will help your team master all aspects of modern content marketing.
What your team will learn in this course:
- Why “content is king.”
- How to plan, craft, and execute a content strategy that spreads your law firm’s message and provides meaningful value every step of the way.
- How to research words and phrases your potential clients search for.
- How to identify and separate high-reward keywords from the rest.
- On-page and off-page SEO strategies and techniques.
- How to ideate, plan, and create content search engines love.
Prior experience doesn’t matter — this course will turn amateurs into content marketing experts.
Email Marketing Mastery
Many “gurus” will tell you that email is dead and that you should focus on other channels.
But even in the age of social media, email is still one of the most reliable marketing channels.
Email marketing is the primary lead generation channel for 89% of marketers, 54% of whom say it’s the most effective and cheapest digital marketing channel.
In industries with long, relationship-focused sales processes, email can be a crucial differentiator.
Ring a bell? Email marketing is a perfect match for law firms.
At Crisp, we’ve helped hundreds of law firms use email to connect with their prospective clients, and this course features everything we’ve learned.
What your team will learn in this course:
- Essential email marketing tools, strategies, and tactics.
- How to use autoresponders to automate follow up emails.
- The 3 different types of email and the 2 different ways to send emails.
- How to create 30 and 90-day promotional calendars for email marketing.
- How to storyboard and write email campaigns to keep your subscribers engaged and turn them into brand evangelists.
- The psychology of writing persuasive emails.
After taking our course, your law firm’s email marketing campaigns will be turning prospects into clients on autopilot.
Paid Traffic Mastery
You can’t afford to ignore Facebook and Google Ads.
They are, alongside content marketing, one of the best ways to put your law firm in front of prospective clients.
Content marketing, while powerful, is time-consuming and (in terms of time) expensive.
With paid traffic, you can invest in ads to reach the same audience of potential clients.
This course will teach your team mastery of using PPC ads to drive traffic, leads, and clients to your firm.
What your team will learn in this course:
- How to effectively advertise on Facebook, Google, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
- How to leverage the most popular traffic channels to grow your client base at a profit.
- How paid traffic fits into your prospect’s journey to becoming a client.
- Proven strategies for automating relationship-building tailored to your ideal audience.
- How to set up, launch, and track ad campaigns with bidding, budget, and ad placement in mind.
Master paid channels to consistently drive leads and clients at a profit.
Conversion Funnel Mastery
Most law firms create a website, set up a contact form, and then dust off their hands, thinking they are done.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Getting visitors to your website is not enough. The average conversion rate is only 2.35%.
Out of every 100 potential clients, less than 3 ever get in touch. If you can improve the conversion rate even slightly, the ROI of every campaign will improve drastically.
That’s where conversion funnels come in. A funnel creates a logical journey that turns a website visitor, first into a lead, and then into a client.
This course will help your team understand the ins and outs of the conversion funnel.
What your team will learn in this course:
- What a conversion funnel is and how to identify the journey your leads take before they become clients.
- How to optimize your conversion funnel for maximum effectiveness.
- The process of Customer Value Optimization.
- How to craft marketing messages custom-tailored to your market.
Create a funnel that turns quality leads into ideal clients automatically.
Optimization & Testing Mastery
Some webmasters think that installing analytics tools is enough to find insights and improve conversions.
But data is only useful when you can compare notes on different approaches.
For websites, A/B tests are the foundation of optimization and improvement.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools have an average ROI of 223%. A single A/B test can have dramatic results. For instance, one website was able to get 256% more leads by testing a new, mobile-optimized landing page.
This course will give your law firm’s team a framework for creating and running meaningful tests. They will learn every stage from test ideation to measuring and analyzing the results.
What your team will learn in this course:
- Advanced optimization tools and platforms.
- How to develop a repeatable optimization process to increase conversions in your funnel, landing pages, and key conversion pages.
- How to run a conclusive A/B split test that delivers data you can trust to make informed decisions.
- How to identify test-worthy pages on your site.
Improve the return-on-investment for all your campaigns with testing and optimization.
Launching a 3-Part Foundational Facebook Funnel
Facebook has over 2,4 billion monthly active users. They also own Instagram, which has over 1 billion users. The combined audience size is, far-and-away, the largest of any social network.
And the reach isn’t the only reason to run a Facebook advertising campaign.
Organic reach for Facebook business pages can be as low as 2%.
But, at 1.61%, legal has the best Facebook ad click-through rate of any industry.
The average cost-per-click for Facebook ads in the legal market is only $1.32. Google Ads clicks for legal keywords cost, on average, $6.75. So it’s much cheaper to reach your target audience with Facebook Ads.
But that audience isn’t searching for a legal answer to their needs (as they are with Google). That’s why you need a Facebook ad funnel — a structured and optimized campaign designed to turn interested someone browsing their Facebook newsfeed into a client.
What your team will learn in this course:
- Achievable business objectives, where they line up on your conversion funnel, and how much you can expect to pay for each.
- How to create a Facebook strategy that aligns your law firm’s business goals with your content and targeting.
- How overall structure impacts your ads, ad sets, and ad campaigns on Facebook.
- How to assemble your content, build your audiences, and optimize your funnel on Facebook.
Master Facebook ads and create a funnel that generates quality leads like clockwork.
Launching a Brand-Building Social Media Strategy
Smaller law firms think of branding as something reserved for the Coca-Colas and Nikes of the world.
That’s one of the reasons they tend to stay small.
Branding is, in fact, the thing that differentiates your firm from competitors. It is especially important for smaller firms.
Building a community around your law firm’s brand is crucial to your growth:
- 72% of users following businesses on Twitter are more likely to make a purchase in the future.
- 91% of consumers want brands to be authentic with their social media content.
Unfortunately, most attorneys are somewhat in the dark when it comes to navigating the world of social media.
This course will change that.
What your team will learn in this course:
- How to brainstorm and effectively communicate a branding strategy on social media.
- The tools you’ll need to launch an effective social media strategy.
- How to effectively engage with your followers and drive more conversions from your social media channels.
- How to create a diverse variety of quality content for social media (even with limited time and resources).
- How to create a predictable social media calendar to continue sharing and engagement throughout the year.
Use social media to build a brand that attracts your ideal clients and makes leads easier to close.
Conclusion
Navigating the world of marketing in the digital age is not an easy task even for the most prominent law firms in the world. For smaller firms, it can seem outright impossible.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
The courses we covered in this post (just a glimpse into what’s offered within Crisp Academy) will help even the most out-of-date marketer get up to speed. Get inspired by cutting-edge strategies to create an online presence that enables your law firm to reach new heights.
If you want to educate your team on how to leverage new digital tools to drive long-term law firm growth, ask us about Crisp Academy today.
Crisp Academy is exclusively available to members of the CrispX Game Changer and Crisp Coach Elite coaching programs.
