In a world where parchment and quill have given way to pixels and keystrokes, even the noblest profession of law finds itself dancing to the rhythm of digital drumbeats. Internet marketing, once regarded as a distant echo in the grand hallways of legal institutions, now rings as a clarion call to be heard, understood, and embraced.
Perchance you’ve noticed this evolution, the intertwining paths of legal practice and digital outreach, and are poised to embark on your own journey through the rich, varied landscape of internet marketing. Or perhaps you’ve been treading this path for a while, seeking new strategies to invigorate your online presence.
Either way, this chronicle is for you. Penned with care and discernment, it lays forth ten guiding principles of internet marketing, specifically tailored to the needs and aspirations of law firms. Each tip is a stepping stone on the path to digital prowess, carrying the promise of turning your law firm into a beacon of information and service on the bustling thoroughfares of the internet.
So, ready your carriage, set your sights on the digital horizon, and join me in this exploration of the top ten internet marketing strategies for law firms. Who knows what delightful discoveries and profound insights this journey may offer? In the harmonious marriage of law and technology, one can only anticipate the emergence of a waltz most enchanting and fruitful. This article is based on a webinar by Actionstep, which provides 10 essential tips and tools to kickstart your law firm’s digital marketing strategy.
The webinar was hosted by Lionel Rivera, the Digital Marketing Manager for Actionstep, and Matt Stoneman, the Creative and Brand Manager for Actionstep. Both are seasoned marketing professionals with extensive experience in digital marketing for startup companies, global brands, and tech companies.
The webinar began with a brief introduction about Actionstep, a legal practice management software that offers a comprehensive solution for CRM, matter management, document assembly and storage, time and billing, client and office accounting, reporting, and more. The software is designed to adapt to the needs of a law firm, providing a complete firm management system for every step of their journey.
The webinar then delved into the three pillars of marketing tools: Generation, Conversion, and Execution. Each pillar was discussed in detail, providing valuable insights into the various tools and concepts that could improve a law firm’s marketing strategy.
Under the Generation pillar, the hosts discussed the importance of investing in SEO for search engine dominance, unifying social media, and testing out paid social. They emphasized the value of Google Search Console, a free tool by Google that monitors your organic search performance. By installing its script onto your website, you can start gathering valuable data about your total clicks and impressions.
The Conversion pillar focused on optimizing for conversions, ensuring mobile friendliness, and creating beautiful content. The Execution pillar emphasized the importance of project management, organizing campaigns, and data gathering and recycling.
The webinar concluded with an open question and answer session, providing an opportunity for participants to clarify their doubts and gain further insights into the topics discussed.
This webinar is part of Actionstep’s broader ‘Marketing for Law Firms’ webinar series, which includes topics such as making a marketing plan, SEO and content, digital marketing trends, and much more.
For more information, please visit the Actionstep events page for past and upcoming installments in the series.
The webinar further delved into the Generation pillar of marketing tools, emphasizing the importance of SEO and search engine dominance.
Google Search Console, a free tool by Google, was highlighted as a crucial resource for monitoring your website’s organic search performance. It provides valuable data such as total clicks, total impressions, average click-through rate, and average position on search engine results pages. These metrics are essential for improving SEO and understanding your website’s performance.
Other tools recommended for SEO included Answer the Public and Buzzsumo. Answer the Public provides a web of questions related to a key term, which can be used to create content that adds value and improves SEO. Once you have identified valuable keywords, the hosts suggested developing content targeting one to two keywords. This content could be in the form of a blog, webinar, social post, or even fleshed-out web pages.
The concept of search engine dominance was introduced, which can be achieved through Google Ads. However, before diving into Google Ads, it’s important to research key terms that your potential clients might use to find your business on search engines. A tool like Ubersuggest can help you research key terms that your competitors’ websites rank for, providing you with targetable terms. Once you have identified these key terms, you can use Google Ads to pay for a top spot in search results for those particular keywords. As you learn which keywords, ads, and web pages perform well, you can optimize to favor better performance.
The hosts then moved on to discuss the importance of unifying social media using a tool like Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a free or inexpensive tool that allows you to organize all your social profiles under one roof. It enables you to connect all your profiles, schedule your posts, and engage your audience in one place. However, having everything in one place is not enough. It’s crucial to have a cohesive strategy, plan out your social media posts, maintain a consistent message, experiment with your content, and add value with your posts. Hootsuite can help you understand your engagement data, helping you answer the fundamental question: “Am I adding value to my core audience?”
The webinar transitioned into the Conversion and Execution pillars of marketing tools.
In the Conversion pillar, the hosts discussed the importance of optimizing for conversions and refining how clients get in touch with your firm. They emphasized the need to understand the concerns or questions a client may have before submitting a contact form and suggested keeping forms concise, as data shows that forms with three to five fields often work best.
The hosts also highlighted the importance of creating mobile-friendly pages. With over half of all pages loaded on mobile devices in 2021, it’s crucial to cater to this considerable portion of your website traffic. They recommended making your site responsive, meaning it can adapt to fit the device that’s requesting it, whether it’s a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. Google’s search algorithm also favors responsive sites, making it even more important for your search ranking.
The third focus in the Conversion pillar was creating beautiful content. The hosts reassured the audience that you don’t need to be a trained designer to create great-looking content, thanks to tools like Canva, which provides pre-filled templates for a range of outputs. Combining this with free stock image resources like Pexels or Unsplash can help your designs look great and be customized to your target audience.
Moving on to the Execution pillar, the hosts stressed the importance of tracking your data to know if your efforts are successful. Google Analytics was highlighted as a crucial tool for this, as it aggregates, interprets, and reports on all traffic in and out of your website. This allows you to stay informed about what needs improvement and what’s already working well.
Another tool within the Google suite is Google Tag Manager, which allows you to manage small snippets of code on your website without needing help from a website developer. It acts like a loading zone for your website, allowing you to add things like Google Analytics without getting into the nitty-gritty of website coding.
Concluding the webinar, the hosts revisited the Execution pillar of marketing tools, emphasizing the importance of tracking your campaigns. As you post on social media or start running paid ads, using tracked URLs can provide you with valuable information about who clicks on your links and where those people came from. This information can be used to improve your future campaigns.
The hosts also discussed the importance of page speed, recommending Google’s Page Speed Insights as a tool to identify elements causing delays. Once you’ve established Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, you can start to audit what else needs improvement.
To help organize and manage projects, the hosts recommended using Asana, a project management tool that keeps track of where projects are at, keeps team members up to date, and allows external resources access to that information. However, they noted that tools like Asana are only as good as what you put into them, so it’s worth testing them out and finding what works best for you and your team.
In summary, the webinar covered a wide range of tools for each pillar of marketing:
- For Generation: Google Search Console, Answer the Public, Buzzsumo, Ubersuggest, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, and Hootsuite.
- For Conversion: Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool, Canva, Unsplash, and Pexels.
- For Execution: Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Page Speed Tool, tracked URLs, and Asana.
The hosts concluded the webinar by expressing their pleasure in seeing firms that use Actionstep grow and flourish, and their satisfaction in being able to share what they’ve learned along the way with their customers.