Strategies to Effectively Build a Legal Practice
Building a client base for your law practice doesn’t just happen by itself. You may get a few clients from word of mouth or by putting your name on a sign. Real growth, though, requires a process. You need to effectively generate leads, then convert those leads to clients. The second half of the equation is often the easy part—studies show that nearly half (42%) of all consumers hire the first lawyer with whom they meet. The key, then, is finding leads and getting the opportunity to sell yourself and your practice. So what’s the best way to do that? What are some proven techniques for generating leads? Let’s look at some digital strategies that have been shown to drive potential clients to a law firm. First, though, let’s have a clear understanding of what the lead generation process looks like.
The Essential Steps in the Lead Generation Process
To create good leads for your practice, you need to use strategies that funnel potential clients to you:
- The first step in doing that is to make potential clients aware of your firm and the services you provide. That may involve paid advertisements, social media campaigns, directory listings, or well-optimized website content that maximizes your visibility online.
- Once a potential client has awareness of your firm, you need to generate interest. You can expect them to have key questions. Can you help them solve their problem? Will it be easy for them to come see you? What makes your practice different? You’ll garner their interest by answering such questions in ways that meet their needs.
- Once a potential client is aware and interested, you need to convince them to contact you. Highlighting your past successes, accolades, and other selling points can persuade a prospective client to contact you.
- Finally, you have to make it easy for them to take action, to do what is necessary to actually contact you. Online, that means providing plenty of opportunities to send you an email and including numerous highly-visible placements of your phone number (many clients still prefer to call).
Five Digital Strategies for Creating Leads for Your Legal Practice
Here are the most effective ways to use the internet and online marketing to build your client base:
- Develop and implement a well-conceived website—Your website is often the first impression most potential clients have of you and your practice. It’s essential that you have a professional design with custom content, that you personalize the site to distinguish yourself from the competition, and that you include numerous calls to action to make it easy for people to contact you.
- Use landing pages—Landing pages allow you to target clients who would best be served by your practice, either because of your area of practice or the geographic location of your offices.
- Reap the benefits of email marketing—Email remains one of the most cost-effective ways to reach a broad potential audience. It allows for active tracking of potential leads, as well as a targeted approach.
- Implement a social media campaign—Most people on the planet are actively engaged with some social media platform, whether Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, SnapChat, or others. Social media can help you build stronger connections with potential clients.
- Use pay-per-click to enhance your visibility—The higher you appear on a search engine results page (SERP), the more people will see your brand and the more potential leads you’ll generate. One of the best ways to do that is to pay for a higher SERP position.
Let GetLegal Help You Build Your Law Practice
At GetLegal, we offer attorneys and law firms nationwide more than two decades of proven experience in digital marketing. We offer a comprehensive arsenal of online tools to help you build a profitable client base, from full website development with custom content and design to video production, search engine optimization, social media campaigns, directory listings, and online reputation management. To learn how we can help you generate more potential clients for your practice, go to https://glpbpro.wpengine.com/ or call us at 1-817-359-7077.
