Marketing your immigration law firm requires you to balance both online and offline advertising. If you’re looking for new ways to use traditional or digital marketing for your immigration services, follow these guidelines.

Marketing Strategy

Begin by evaluating your market for legal services. Consider these key questions to gain insight and start building your strategy.

Target Market Size: How many prospective clients are available? Some areas have a regular influx of immigrants, while in other areas, immigrants are fewer and farther between.

Competition: What is the competition like for these prospects? If you work in an immigrant-heavy practice area, you may also have a great deal of competition for those potential clients. Conversely, in some areas, there may not be many immigration law firms. Take a look at the other firms in your area and the services they offer so you’re familiar with what they have to offer and how your firm differs from the others. It’s helpful to utilize a SWOT analysis tool to evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – including competition – within the market.

Target Audience: What type of client are you looking for when you market your immigration law firm? You can learn a great deal about your clients through surveys and data. Use this information, not just guesses, to inform your target persona descriptions.

Resources: How much money can you devote to your legal marketing efforts? What can you accomplish with that money, based on the opportunities you have available? If you haven’t devoted adequate funds to marketing, you may not have achieved your goals in the past. By creating an adequate assessment of your marketing budget, and what you need to put into marketing, you can create a more effective plan for your future marketing needs.

Goals: What do you want to accomplish through your marketing efforts? Do you want to bring in new leads? Raise brand awareness? Nurture leads? Understanding your marketing goals can help you measure your return on investment (ROI) and create more effective marketing strategies that are more likely to meet those goals.

The Sales Funnel

The sales funnel is the journey potential clients take once they decide they need your services. You want to keep prospective clients in your sales funnel, rather than allow them to turn to your competitors for their legal needs. As you evaluate your sales funnel, you should map out what your prospective client thinks about your service and how to appeal to that individual.

The Importance of Touchpoints

Most clients need multiple touchpoints before they decide to make a direct contact with your firm. Touchpoints are those points of contact between you and your potential clients, such as your Google and Facebook ads, blogs, social media posts, and other content they may see and consider along their journey.

Know where your touchpoints need to be distributed. Find places where your target audience is likely to be, then distribute those touchpoints across those locations so potential clients will have the connections they need with your business.

Map your touchpoints to particular stages of the sales funnel. You should know whether your touchpoints are intended for clients at the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel or the bottom of the funnel.

Offline Tactics

As you prepare your offline tactics, consider where your target audience is concentrated geographically. Connect with them where they are likely to be through:

  • Billboards
  • Signs
  • Radio/Television advertisements
  • Business cards
  • Referral bonuses

Online Tactics

Many of today’s legal consumers do a considerable amount of research online before choosing an immigration law firm. Your potential clients might make most of their decisions before they even connect with your firm – these decisions solely based on your digital presence. This is why your online marketing tactics are such an important part of the sales funnel.

Your online tactics should start with your website, which acts as an online business card. Your website should:

Be designed according to Core Model. The Core Model designs your website and your online advertisements around your specific business goals and the tasks your clients need to undertake.

Take care to include minimal friction. Friction causes your users to bounce away from your website. Users may leave because your website takes too long to load or because they have problems navigating your site.

Use effective digital lead generation tactics. Your online marketing tactics should find leads where they are and provide them with useful, engaging content that helps answer their questions and guides them to make a decision about your practice.

Be optimized and highly effective with easily accessible contact information. Make sure your website makes it easy to connect with your firm and contains the information your users need to make a decision.

The Goal

The goal of marketing your immigration law firm is to get prospective clients into your sales funnel. Touchpoints, both online and offline, help move the client through the sales funnel until they are ready to sign up for your services. An effective marketing strategy can help you avoid wasted marketing funds while at the same decrease your cost to acquire new clients.

Once you have a steady flow of leads, you will eventually have to grow your firm to meet the new level of demand. To learn how to safely scale up your law firm, check out our free eBook below.