When it comes to marketing your immigration services, strategies from a decade ago have lost much of their effectiveness. Older marketing strategies relied on referrals and being discovered in the Yellow Pages and other directories.

Now, more and more consumers seeking immigration services are in their 20’s and 30’s. They are digital natives who prefer to use digital means for the majority of their interactions. Today’s consumers seeking immigration services have clear expectations about a firm’s online presence and expectations of where they can find a good quality legal service.

A solid digital marketing strategy can result in a major increase in qualified leads by attracting digital natives. However, this requires increasing the number of incoming leads while also having the ability to qualify and convert those leads into customers without a high cost of acquisition.

Digital Marketing Strategy for Immigration Lawyers

A digital marketing strategy incorporates all of the tactics you use online to connect with potential clients. A lead may require several connections with your business before deciding to trust you to handle their legal needs.

They may check out your blog and social media posts, view your website and examine your reviews online. Without an online presence, it can be incredibly difficult to keep potential clients interested in your services.

As a law firm focused on immigration, you have to decide how visible you want your online presence to be and where you want to focus that visibility. Higher levels of visibility may require a higher investment on your part but will attract a larger number of leads and help your firm appeal to digital natives.

All of these important details can contribute to your online presence:

Website design. Your website is the digital front door of your firm. On your website, you have the opportunity to connect with your customers and showcase what your business has to offer. Your website should have:

  • A professional feel. Your clients want to know they are in competent, experienced hands.
  • Information about what differentiates you from your competitors. What is it that sets your firm apart? Why should interested immigrants choose you, rather than your competitors?
  • Clickable phone numbers, contact forms, chatbots and other ways to easily allow leads to contact you and leave behind vital information, such as an email address or phone number.

Content marketing. Consumers of immigration services will inevitably need questions answered. By being the firm that answers those questions via helpful content, you gain the trust of your readers, who are then more likely to choose your firm for their immigration needs. Some visitors to your site will even trade their contact information for high-value content, turning them into leads.

Pay-per-click ads. These advertisements should target keywords used by immigration service consumers, allowing them to find your firm as they conduct critical searches. These paid search ads allow you to target individuals on Google and other search engines by highlighting your business in those search results.

Search engine optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on targeting keywords that are relevant to your users so they can find you via search. Do your keyword research to determine exactly what people seeking immigration services are searching for, then focus on those keywords to help raise your search rankings. It’s important to note that implementing an SEO strategy may take some time to see results. For a competitive keyword, it could take between six months and two years to rank on page one.

Social media marketing. Your social media presence is another important way to get the word out about your services. Consider where your customers can most easily be reached, including the social media platforms they’re most likely to use and the type of content they’re looking for as they search.

Planning Your Digital Marketing Strategy for Immigration Services

Planning your digital marketing strategy ahead of time means less time and money wasted. Consider these factors:

Target audience. Who are you marketing to? What are their needs?

Buyer’s journey. What steps are individuals taking as they choose an immigration lawyer? The buyer’s journey is the entire experience with your firm, from the potential client’s perspective, from start to finish. Putting yourself in their shoes can help inform the content you create and how you connect with your customers.

Online presence. What does your current online presence look like? How do you need to adapt it to meet the needs of your consumers?

Cost to acquire new customers. What does it cost now to acquire new clients? How much are those clients usually worth for your practice? By understanding that cost, you can better adapt your digital marketing efforts to meet your budget.

Handling the Increase in Leads

As more and more digital natives seek immigration service providers, it is becoming increasingly important to integrate digital marketing into your lead generation strategy – which can boost leads exponentially. An influx of leads means immense growth for your practice, but only if you are able to turn enough quality leads into clients.

If not, a rise in leads will only increase your customer acquisition cost, and your marketing efforts might result in a negative ROI. If you aren’t prepared, you may end up spending too much time trying to qualify bad leads while good leads are sent to voicemail. Even worse, if there is no response on your end, many leads will move on to the next firm that picks up the phone or responds to their web inquiry.

This is why having an effective infrastructure in place to qualify and capture incoming leads makes a huge difference.

Instead of paying salary and benefits for an in-house intake specialist, or multiple, it might make sense for your firm to partner with a reputable legal call center to handle phone and web leads as they come in after-hours, on weekends and holidays – or simply during work hours when your staff is overloaded with tasks.