If you’re an attorney, choosing where to advertise your firm can be difficult. Twenty years ago, if an attorney wanted to place an ad, there were four basic channels to choose from: TV, radio, newspapers, or street ads like billboards and park benches. Today, the internet has disrupted these four traditional channels of marketing. With so many people using the internet to find services, legal digital marketing has become more important than ever.

According to Pew research, in 2016 only two-in-ten adults in the U.S. consume their news from print newspapers. Would it be a good choice then, for an attorney, to invest in print advertisements? What percentage of those readers would notice the ad? Of those who noticed the ad, what percentage would care? For a law firm’s marketing strategy to succeed, it needs a strong legal digital marketing plan.

Precision Legal Digital Marketing Targeting

Legal digital marketing provides precise targeting, meaning your ads will only be shown to those who would find them relevant. Traditional marketing usually cannot provide precision. When an advertiser buys ad time during a football game, her ad is seen by all of those who are watching. Of those viewers, how many of them are looking for legal assistance in the field you practice? Probably a small percentage. Half of those viewers may even not be in your firm’s city. For lawyers, traditional advertising is often inefficient.

Digital advertisers can avoid this problem. They can target where their ads are displayed based on the target audience they wish to advertise. For instance, if you ran a personal injury firm in Dallas, you could bid on a text ad for the keyword “Texas personal injury attorney.” You will know that whoever clicks on your ad will be looking for legal assistance in your field.

When comparing the text ad (which can cost less than $4 per click depending on which position you want to rank for on Google, Yahoo, or Bing) to the TV ad, we can expect the digital advertiser to spend their advertising budget a lot more efficiently.

Top Legal Digital Marketing Channels

Today, attorneys who want to advertise their website online have a few legal digital marketing options to choose from, depending on their resources and their budget:

• Social Media: It is important for nearly every business to have a social media account. According to Pew research, in 2016 79% of Americans reported having a Facebook account. Attorneys can leverage social media to create a strong and professional brand for their business. Social media accounts for businesses are free. If you have the budget, you can choose to buy paid social media ads, which target potential claimants based on their browsing habits.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Most search engines make money by offering pay-per-click advertising services. Businesses with a moderate marketing budget can design text ads for their websites (which are shown on the top and bottom of search engine result pages). These text ads are designed for specific search queries and can be set to target certain cities and zip codes, meaning you could choose to only display your ad to potential claimants in your firm’s city.
• Organic Search: If you are a lawyer, you should want your website to rank highly on search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. A large website, with hundreds of pages of high-quality content, and a diverse array of other websites linking back to it, should rank highly on search engine results pages. Growing a website, however, is labor intensive and very difficult.

Legal Digital Marketing Tips

For success with legal digital marketing, you should first consider your target audience. Without considering what the best way to target your audience is, you may be spending your legal digital marketing budget poorly. If you are targeting a younger audience, then you may want to consider utilizing social media and paid ads on them.

You should also outline goals for your legal digital marketing. Are you trying to get more traffic to your site? Consider investing in search engine optimization (SEO), working on your organic presence to get more traffic to your website. Is your goal to generate more legal leads? Try paid search or optimizing your website for conversions. By establishing your goals, you can make sure firm is utilizing the correct digital marketing tactics.

Legal Digital Marketing Costs

If you are an attorney, you may not have the time, the money, or the expertise to craft a well-made digital marketing plan. Small or mid-range firms also may not have the budget to hire a legal digital marketing specialist. Paid advertisements can be profitable, but may not be effective if you don’t know the best practices when writing a well-made ad, and monitoring/adjusting the campaign over time. Building an organic following for a website or on social media is inexpensive, but time and labor intensive. A small firm may not have the time or the energy to increase organic traffic to its website from scratch. A lead generation company, like eGenerationMarketing, may be useful when trying to find low-cost, high-quality legal case leads for your firm. Instead of toiling away at your own marketing channels, you can instead pay only for the contact information of claimants looking for legal help in your area.

To discuss our lead availability and pricing in your area, give eGenerationMarketing a call at 617.800.0089. We look forward to speaking with you soon!