Law firms, like other companies, must generate numerous leads – and convert a substantial amount of those leads into customers – to experience sustainability and growth. Many firms rely on the assistance of legal marketing companies to raise awareness of their brand, promote their services, and acquire leads.
However, without the right tools, strategies and processes in place, this partnership won’t be as valuable and productive as it could be. To make the most of your investment, here are a few tips to help make working with a legal marketing agency more worthwhile.
1. Set marketing goals
If you don’t first set measurable goals for what you hope to achieve in the area of marketing, there is no way to implement a strategy for moving forward. You have to identify what you want to accomplish before you can take steps toward it. In terms of marketing, your firm can aim for a variety of goals that include:
- Generating a specific number of incoming leads
- Improving your lead capture rate or client conversion rate
- Increasing revenue
- Growing awareness
- Entering new markets or territories
Whatever your specific goal, it is essential to establish one for guiding your marketing strategy.
2. Optimize your law firm website
In the digital age, a clean, attractive and responsive website is vital. Many people – especially among younger generations – want to research a company online before reaching out, which means your law firm marketing campaigns will likely drive leads to your website.
Optimize your website by designing it to be functional and user-friendly, or in other words: fast, easy to find through a search engine, appealing, authoritative and mobile-friendly. Your website should incorporate valuable content, strong landing pages, compelling calls to action (CTAs) and easy-to-fill online forms.
3. Increase your digital presence
There are other ways to spread your brand and message online. Maintaining a strong digital presence is important for connecting with leads and increasing the likelihood of conversion. It gives potential clients more opportunities for interacting with your firm and getting to know your values. Even if they don’t need your services and products right away, you are more likely to come to mind later if or when they do. A few ways to strengthen your digital presence include:
- Maintaining a blog with consistent, rich, and useful content that answers their questions and lends your firm an “air of authority”
- Engaging in good email marketing that offers the receiver value
- Strategically running pay-per-click (PPC) ads
- Establishing a professional yet appealing social media presence to enhance the image of your law firm
- Improving your local search engine optimization (SEO)
4. Improve your client intake
Legal marketing firms can generate leads for your company, but it won’t increase revenue or maximize your return on investment (ROI) if you don’t have a good process for converting leads. With a streamlined intake process, you can make the most of advertising campaigns executed on your behalf. To improve your client intake process, consider the following measures:
- Hire a trained intake specialist or partner with a legal call center
- Streamline your contract services
- Use customer relationship management (CRM) and case management systems (CMS)
- Implement efficient lead tracking
- Provide ongoing phone coverage
5. Track marketing results
On the other end of setting goals is tracking results. You can’t measure the progress and success of the marketing tools and solutions your company is using unless you have a process for identifying and evaluating the outcome. These metrics can also help you detect areas for improvement or changes that should be made. Among the metrics you should be tracking and analyzing are:
- Total incoming leads
- Lead capture rate
- Lead conversion rate
- Average cost per lead
- Overall marketing ROI
With the information gathered through analytics, you can make necessary adjustments to improve the efficiency and profitability of your marketing strategy.
Maximize your legal marketing
Your firm will experience better results from working with a legal marketing agency by simultaneously focusing on other complementary solutions, such as building a strong online presence, creating a user-friendly website, and improving the client intake process. With the help of your partnering agency, your firm can set clear, measurable goals and track results to ensure you’re making the most of your marketing budget.