Summary
What is lead generation for law firms?
Optimise your website to drive traffic with high intent
Utilise Local SEO with targeted keywords
Enhance user experience and data capture on your website
Create high-quality, informative Content
Nurturing new leads with email marketing
Targeted Media campaigns for lead generation
Use first-party data to retarget clients on paid social media
Taking a proactive approach to lead generation as a law firm can ensure that you are front of mind for potential clients when they are in need of your services or advice.
From optimised website content to targeted paid media campaigns, in this guide, we will take you through our data-driven strategies for legal professional services to improve their lead generation marketing campaigns with a full funnel approach.
What is lead generation for law firms?
Put simply, lead generation is a way to attract potential clients to your legal business. Often lead generation’s goal is to capture key contact details from prospective clients with the aim of continuing to communicate with them.
In order to successfully convert legal leads, it’s important to focus on a ‘full-funnel’ approach, nurturing new leads from the awareness stage, through their consideration phase and finally helping them make their decision and take action to pursue their claim with you.
Different channels should be used for each stage of the lead generation funnel, with varying platforms and techniques adopted depending on their users and formats.
Here we will outline some key areas that can help drive lead generation and optimise your conversion journey in order to turn leads into clients.
Optimise your website to drive traffic with high intent
Your website could be the key to unlocking new leads from visitors with high intent, targeting traffic searching for relevant keywords, terms and phrases.
Utilise Local SEO with targeted keywords
Your website could be your biggest lead generator, if you are getting the right traffic. Increasing your online visibility by peppering high intent, high volume keywords can help you to direct engaged potential clients to your website when they are searching for related terms or phrases.
Even better, look to target local SEO in your website copy, for example ‘Law firms in Cambridge’ or ‘Solicitors near me’. This can help you drive really targeted, local traffic to your website.
Enhance user experience and data capture on your website
Once you’ve attracted engaged traffic to your website, it’s important to ensure visitors have a positive user experience when navigating your site.
This means ensuring your website design and structure puts the user experience at the center. From ensuring the copy is legible, to checking the accessibility of your site, to creating a clear path to purchase, user experience can be pivotal in translating traffic to clients.
Having very clear Call to Action (CTAs) throughout your website can help signpost potential clients to get in touch, request more information or book an appointment, which is a great way to capture leads from your website.
Another lead generation tactic to consider is to encourage sign ups to newsletters. The best way to include this in your sign is in the footer (bottom of the website) or with pop-ups. Ensure they aren’t too intrusive to the user experience though, as this can actually have the opposite effect, and increase drop off.
Create high-quality, informative Content
Creating quality, informative content can help you to reach potential clients in the consideration phase to make their decision and
Including facts and stats within your content, and showcasing your key solicitors skills can help to improve brand authority and reputation, which is a central theme in Google’s automated ranking system.
Putting useful content behind a paywall is another way to capture leads. In this case, the paywall doesn’t mean that leads have to pay any money to consume your content. Instead there is a value exchange: potential clients will have to supply some of their information, such as their name and email address, in exchange for reading your content.
Once you have captured their contact details, they will enter your customer relationship management (CRM) system, and you can nurture them via a strategic welcome email journey.
Nurturing new leads with email marketing
While lead generation is often measured by the amount of email addresses captured, how you follow up with these new leads is often how you clinch the deal and gain a new client.
So, having a robust email marketing strategy that helps nurture new leads is important. Email marketing is a great way to share key information with new leads, promoting content that might resonate with them and help to build a relationship with new customers, encouraging them through the consideration and decision phases.
Targeted Media campaigns for lead generation
Using both paid and organic media platforms and channels is a great way to build brand awareness and capture new leads.
Test and learn with PPC
Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, a great tactic for targeted lead generation. The most popular form of PPC is with Google Ads, where you can be very specific about your target audience and the keywords and phrases that your ads will show for.
Craft compelling copy for your PPC ads and direct traffic to optimised landing pages will set your campaign up for success. Taking a test and learn approach can help you to refine your messaging for each stage of the funnel and lead to continual improvement and evolution of your lead generation strategy.
A targeted PPC approach can lead to effective use of even a limited budget to target high quality leads who are more likely to convert.
Use first-party data to retarget clients on paid social media
Another form of paid advertising that law firms should consider is paid social media. Like PPC advertising, paid social media allows you to target on a granular level, including age, interests and geo-location. That means you can be as specific or broad as you want when it comes to social media marketing.
You can also use your existing first-party client data to create lookalike audiences for paid media targeting. This means you can target those with a similar demographic profile as your existing customers, who are more likely to result in high-quality, engaged leads.
You may also want to consider a remarketing campaign on paid social media. This targets users who have previously visited your website or engaged with your social channels, to keep your law firm in their mind, increasing the chance of being remembered when they need legal advice or representation.
Build a following on organic social media
When it comes to your organic social strategy, it’s important to consider what platforms you are active on.
When selecting your key social media channels, think about where your target audience spend their time, the types of content that performs well on each platform, and your creative capabilities too.
Channels like LinkedIn are a great place to develop your law firm brand awareness and position your legal team as thought-leaders, whereas Instagram could be a place to share success stories and spotlight your skilled solicitors.
It is better to focus on a few key channels and produce high quality, platform native content than posting non-optimised content across multiple platforms. This allows you to use your time and resources effectively and efficiently to create content that will perform well and help you to increase your brand awareness and generate new leads.
Final thoughts
Rather than waiting for potential clients to search for your services, you can ensure that you are already on their radar through brand building and increasing awareness. This, alongside optimised content to direct high-intent traffic to your website, will ensure that you have a consistent stream of new leads that you can nurture and work to convert into new clients.
Want to level up your law firms’ lead generation?
Get in touch with our team of legal professional services marketing experts.
