Marketing Ideas for Law Firms: Use These 20 Ideas to Skyrocket Your Growth

Growing your law firm online can be difficult.

Competition, lack of time, lack of resources, lack of expertise — it all adds up.

But an online presence is essential. And, more than that, if done well, online marketing can drive immense growth.

For instance, Crisp’s legal clients have seen an average ROI of 300%, and a 2-10X increase in average case value, solely from the introduction of a video marketing strategy.

In short, marketing online is an essential part of growing your law firm.

But what to do? Where to start?

This resource will give you the inspiration you need to get started.

Here are 20 proven marketing ideas for law firms, based on years of experience growing businesses in the legal industry. Let’s get started.

20 Law Firm Marketing Ideas

1. Identify Your Firm’s Voice and Story
2. Optimize Your Website
3. Create a High-Quality Branded Legal Video
4. Create Educational Video Content That Targets Common Questions
5. Run Six-Second Bumper Ads on YouTube
6. Use Autoresponders to Send Follow-Up Emails
7. Segment Your Leads
8. Personalize Your Email Subject Lines
9. Use Wistia Turnstile to Turn Video Viewers Into Leads
10. Use a Dedicated Landing Page for Your Ad Campaigns
11. Use Testimonials on Your Landing Pages
12. Use Google Customer Match
13. Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences
14. Run a Retargeting Campaign on Facebook
15. Reach Out to Previous Clients for Referrals
16. Make Sure You Target The Right Keywords with Your Content
17. Create Content Relevant to Current Events
18. Prompt a Secondary Conversion After Visitors Book a Call
19. Set a Time Period for Your Google Ads Call Extension
20. Encourage Clients to Leave a Review or Testimonial

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #1: Identify Your Firm’s Voice and Story

Before we dive into specific marketing tactics, it’s essential you start from a strong foundation: your firm’s story and unique value proposition (UVP).

• What makes you unique?
• What makes you relatable?
• Why should a prospective client choose you over a competitor?
• How can people relate to you beyond “just another lawyer”?

Answering these questions will help you create successful campaigns, regardless of tactic or medium.

Even if you have the right medium, you need the right message to be able to convert anyone to a paying client.

We start all our clients off by identifying their voice, story, and UVP. This approach allows our clients to move away from competing on price alone.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #2: Optimize Your Website

It’s 2020, and 87% of shoppers now begin their product search online. It is no different for services like carpentry, gardening, or of course, legal counsel.

Your website is how you make your first impression, and it’s no longer enough to be usable on desktops alone. 94% of smartphone owners (most people) search for local information on their phones. So your website needs to work correctly and load fast regardless of device.

You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see if your site meets usability standards.

You also want to test your website on your smartphone. (Ideally, you should test its usability on multiple models, which you can do with Device Mode in Google Chrome Dev Tools.)

We’ve got further information on this quick tip in our post on mobile optimization for law websites.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #3: Create a High-Quality Branded Legal Video

It’s no secret that we’re big proponents of using video in legal marketing. But you might not understand why.

Lawyers in America have an image problem. A serious image problem.

Law is the most despised profession in the U.S. Only 18% of American respondents think lawyers contribute a lot to society.

Our team went out and asked Millennials on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia, how they felt about attorneys.

Keywords from our interviews:

• Horrible
• Dishonest
• Poisoning the country
• Putting money first, when they should focus on helping the individual

It’s a very negative impression that can be hard to overcome with text alone.

76% of consumers (and 85% of Millennials) have made a purchase after watching a marketing video, and 56% consider it more engaging than any other medium.

This is why we use video to help our clients get 300% ROI on their online campaigns.

That said, trying to make a branded video that sells you and your practice is easier said than done. You need to rely on experts that understand the legal niche, or you’ll be kissing your time and money goodbye.

Take a look at the brand video for The Law Office of James Sexton, and you’ll understand why.

If you are ready to incorporate high-quality video and digital distribution to take your legal marketing to the next level, connect with an experienced Crisp strategist today.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #4: Create Educational Video Content That Targets Common Questions

If you’re focused on niching down, you should create educational videos that target common questions prospective clients have in your branch of law.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, with over 3 billion searches per month.

People head to YouTube for advice and guidance on how to solve problems they are facing in real life. For some, this can be how to change a tire. For others, it can be trying to figure out how long the VA appeals process takes.

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If you focus on terms, phrases, and problems that your clients face, you can reach more people like them, for free, on YouTube.

That is the essence of creating educational legal videos for YouTube.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #5: Run Six-Second Bumper Ads on YouTube

If you already have a long, high-quality video running on YouTube, you might think that your job is done. You’re ahead of the game, seeing results, and happy with staying where you are.

That’s a mistake.

While long-form video is the most effective format for overcoming client objections, it works best when combined with shorter videos.

During Google Marketing Live 2019, Google shared unique research on how the shorter bumper ads format performed. A campaign of three 6-second bumped ads delivered a 107% increase in ad recall and 134% higher purchase intent than the 30-second TrueView ad.

The picture above is an example of a bumper ad on YouTube. Since it is unskippable, the small square in the bottom-right corner says, “Ad will end” instead of “Skip ad.”

These ads are a great and affordable way to make sure you stay at top-of-mind to all your prospects.

You can also use them to highlight different UVPs that a potential client will find relatable.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #6: Use Autoresponders to Send Follow-Up Emails

If all prospects answered and became clients after a single email, every law firm would be successful.

Unfortunately, that’s not how things work in the real world.

Emails have an average response rate of as low as 9%, but you can bring this up by over 40% by adding a single follow-up email. Response rates go up even more with further emails.

That’s why we recommend using an automated drip campaign.

You can use autoresponders/email marketing tools like MailChimp, Aweber, or ConvertKit to set this up.

The following picture is an overview of some of your automation options in MailChimp specifically.

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You can send emails based on when a prospect was added to your audience, target specific dates, or simply send emails in a set order.

To learn more, check out our 4 top tips on using email marketing for your law firm.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #7: Segment Your Leads

On the subject of email marketing, it is vital that you segment your leads.

Segmenting your leads means to separate your list of prospects based on their profile and needs.

For example, even if you practice family law, your prospect list is likely very diverse. You don’t want to send the same email to a spouse considering divorce, that you send to a couple considering adoption.

If you send mass emails to everyone on your autoresponder list, you risk alienating potential clients instead of building relationships. The process of separating these prospects into different sub-lists is called lead or list segmentation.

This approach ensures each potential client gets a relevant, relatable email message.

As a result, segmented campaigns have 100.95% higher click-through rates on average.

In MailChimp, you can create segments based on the date they joined your list or other categories.

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As a law firm, you want to segment your contacts based on the type of prospect or case. You can do this by adding a custom field like “Case Type” to the signup forms on your website.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #8: Personalize Your Email Subject Lines

Users are 26% more likely to open emails with personalized subject lines.

The idea is simple, but it can be very time-consuming to implement. If you run a campaign that generates hundreds of leads, you don’t want to be spending all your non-billable hours emailing them.

That’s why we recommend using an autoresponder and segmenting your list. Once you’re at that point, personalizing an email subject line is as easy as using a merge tag.

A merge tag is essentially a shortcode for autoresponders. It informs the software to replace it with relevant information from the individual prospect’s profile.

In this case, the merge tag you want to use is the one for first name.

In MailChimp, the command is “*|FNAME|*”.

Use this when you create subject lines for your emails.

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Bob, your potential client, will see it in his inbox as “Bob, About Your Case.”

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #9: Use Wistia Turnstile to Turn Video Viewers Into Leads

A common problem is to get visitors to your website searching for more information, but not turning them into leads.

If you’ve already invested in video marketing and you’re driving visitors to your website, Wistia can help you solve this issue.

With Wistia Turnstile, you can collect email addresses by using the video you have already created.

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Let’s say you created a YouTube video on basic legal advice for car accidents and use it to send traffic to your website. You can create a video that goes through the “5 Most Important Factors When Choosing Legal Representation in an Accident Case” and use it to gather emails. Then you can follow up on the leads by using the email marketing tips mentioned above.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #10: Use a Dedicated Landing Page for Your Ad Campaigns

It’s essential to use a dedicated landing page for every single one of your ad campaigns.

When you manage to grab the attention of a prospect of an ad, the last thing you want is for them to exit your website. But if they feel that the website is unrelated to the ad they clicked, or the advertised offer, they will leave. If the ad says “Car Accident Lawyer” and the website shows “Bob Johnson, Corporate Attorney,” they probably won’t stick around to find out that you also do accidents.

Landing pages that match the advertising message can increase conversion rates by up to 212%. That’s why you want to ensure that your “Car Accident Lawyer” ad will lead to a “Car Accident Lawyer” page.

But it’s not enough to change the headline. You want the pictures, design, and landing page copy to be relevant as well. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean showing pictures of marijuana on a related landing page.

You want your ads to function like standard Google search results:

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A dedicated landing page helps a specific prospect feel like you are the right choice for them at that time.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #11: Use Testimonials on Your Landing Pages

Real client testimonials are one of the most powerful selling tools you can use for your business. Customer reviews increase conversion rates of expensive products and services by 380% on average.

Most humans don’t want to take risks and pave the way for up-and-comers. When it comes to big investments and important life decisions, this is even more true. They want the safe, proven option that others have tried in the past.

Make sure that you highlight testimonials that speak directly to your ideal target audience.

We know that most law firm owners are no-nonsense and care about case volume and case values. They don’t care as much about “vanity metrics” like video views.

That’s why we’ve highlighted this review by Aaron Watson, who we helped launch a new law firm with cases from the get-go.

You can use this idea for your legal website.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #12: Use Google Customer Match

It’s much more expensive to acquire a new client than to re-engage to an existing one. Law-related Google keywords can cost over $100.

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No wonder that increasing customer retention levels by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-95%.

It depends on the fields of law that you practice, but recurring business can help take you to the next level.

With Google Customer Match, you can create an audience of your current clients, then target them with ads across Google Ads properties like search, display, Gmail, and YouTube.

The first thing you need to do is head to the Audience Manager in Google Ads and create a new audience based on a customer list.

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Note: You need to have surpassed $50,000, and the audience size should be above 1,000 for optimal performance.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #13: Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences

With Google Ads, you can just target keywords and search terms, and you will automatically reach your intended audience. You get in front of people who are actively searching for lawyers in your field. With Facebook Ads, it can be a lot trickier to reach the right audience. Anyone who likes a page related to “law” is likely an attorney, or studying to become one.

That’s where Lookalike Audiences come in. Lookalike audiences make use of the extensive data that Facebook collects on all of its users.

If you use the Facebook Pixel to track conversions, you can easily create a lookalike audience based on prospects who became paying clients.

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When advertising legal services, we recommend sticking to the more accurate 1-2% range.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #14: Run a Retargeting Campaign on Facebook

If you get any traffic from Google search ads or organic search, you don’t want to let them bounce away and disappear. Once a visitor leaves your site, they could forget about you forever.

Retargeting ads allow you to get in front of people who have already visited your website. Many of them will be prospects and potential clients who were interested in your services at some level.

That’s why adding retargeting to your digital marketing mix can increase your conversions by up to 51%.

To set up a retargeting campaign, you will first need to install a Facebook Pixel on your website. Once you have done that, you can create a “custom audience” of website visitors in the Facebook Ads Manager.

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You will be able to target this new audience when creating new campaigns or ad groups.

Learn more about Facebook marketing for law firms.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #15: Reach Out to Previous Clients for Referrals

Believe it or not, personal referrals are still the number one way lawyers get new business. 62% of Americans seek referrals from friends and family when looking for a lawyer. But that doesn’t mean a previous client will automatically recommend you to their inner circle.

Reach out to previous clients by email and let them know that your current caseload enables you to take on new clients. If you practice public law with mainly private clients, you can even set up a discount or other incentive for referring new business. That way, the friend gets to be the “good guy” by referring you.

The results will vary with the area of law you practice, as coaxing personal referrals is only possible when there is a demand for your services.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #16: Make Sure You Target The Right Keywords with Your Content

If your law firm has a website, chances are you invest your time or money into creating content. What that content is about can either result in targeted traffic from Google… or just another page added to your site.

You don’t want to try to rank for basic explanations for legal jargon. You want to make sure that you show up for specific searches that your prospects are searching for.

It is a two-step process. You need to:

1. Find keywords that prospects are likely to search.
2. Find specific keywords that you have a chance to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Using a professional-grade SEO tool is the easiest way to find these magic terms. With a tool like Ahrefs, you can easily find keyword ideas for your content and confirm the difficulty level before creating an article.

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If you do this right, you will be able to land thousands of dollars worth of traffic organically.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #17: Create Content Relevant to Current Events

When you are creating content for social media, you don’t want to focus on dry subjects guided by search terms.

You need to create content that seems relevant to people’s daily lives.

Spiva Law Group, a personal injury firm in Savannah, Georgia does a fantastic job of this.

Here this firm has written a compassionate post detailing how dash cameras can help people injured in an accident involving a commercial truck:

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They also manage to reference current happenings relevant to their audience by linking the start of football season to an issue that affects drivers all year round:

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Promotional tweets like “Need legal advice? Call 99999” will never get the same amount of interaction — and they also won’t help your audience relate to you as a human being. Getting your audience to relate to you is an essential part of a modern marketing campaign.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #18: Prompt a Secondary Conversion After Visitors Book a Call

So a website visitor has booked a call. Great, but does that mean your job as a marketer is done? Not exactly.

Before you get on the phone, you have a chance to build some rapport with the visitor. You can use the thank you page to further deepen the relationship.

Do you have a way to add value to prospects? If you have a relevant ebook, pamphlet, or video to share before your call, do so.

Add the option to view the video or download the content right on the thank you page.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #19: Set a Time Period For Your Google Ads Call Extension

Google Ads’ call extension can be an extremely effective way to engage with prospective clients.

However, if you’ve added the “call” extension to your Google Ads campaign, there’s no point in paying if nobody’s around to answer the phone. If someone calls and nobody’s there to pick up, you may lose a client you could have gotten in a few more hours.

So set a period where your call extension shows (like 9-5), and don’t show it otherwise.

Click here to read Google’s walkthrough of the call extension.

Marketing Idea for Law Firms #20: Encourage Clients to Leave a Review or Testimonial

• 90% of your prospective clients read online reviews before visiting a business.
• 88% of your potential clients trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
• Website visitors who have read a review convert 58% more frequently.

These are just a few facts that show why you need your clients to give their honest feedback.

Make it a priority in your law firm to encourage clients to leave you a review or testimonial.

Make sure every staff member understands that the client’s impression of the firm and the job you do is as important as handling the case itself.

Conclusion

These 20 marketing ideas give you a solid foundation from which to launch your law firm’s growth.

We urge you, though, to focus on that first one before diving in.

Have a serious conversation (or speak to a marketing professional like the expert law firm growth strategists at Crisp) about what your business stands for, why you practice law, and what kind of message you want to put out into the marketing world.

Knowing this, and implementing that story into every one of your marketing campaigns, will make you a more successful marketer (and a more successful attorney).