10 Online Marketing Strategies You Can Put in Motion Today

Online marketing, at its deepest elements, can be extremely complex and unintuitive. It can take professionals months to start seeing results on their time investment to get a firm higher on Google’s search results. To just scratch the surface, it would involve search engine marketing, content management, and search engine optimization, each of which have a spiraling depth of intricacies. These measures can bring many times as many client clicks to your website or contact information as you’ve ever known, but unless you hire experts, the online marketing hill can appear incredibly steep.

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t do anything on your own to help your law practice be more relevant online. In fact, these ten tips below can be the difference between pages 2 and 1, or in search engine terms, absolute obscurity and illustrious fame. The vast majority of these are free, fairly self-explanatory, and also relatively easy to maintain once completed.

1. Claim and Verify Your Google Places Listing: This is perhaps one of the most important things you can do on the path to managing your online presence. Thankfully, it is also one of the easiest. When prospective clients want to investigate their choice of attorneys online, more than 95% of them use Google. If your business is not claimed on Google places, you will be at an immense disadvantage at being found amongst competitors who have been proactively managing their online presence. Because many searchers include geographic keywords with their query (“injury attorneys in Chicago”), having your business claimed with the correct address ensures that you appear on the map of business listings. Appearing on Google’s map (which is located near the very top of the search results) is a great way to get your company’s name in front of searcher’s eyes, especially if it would otherwise have been at the bottom of the page…or worse, on page 2. 

Consider this: If it means that even one client finds you that wouldn’t have before, won’t it have been worth the twenty minutes needed to set it up? 

Another tip about Google: The majority of their products are great, but for your purposes, avoid AdWords Express like the plague. If you are working directly with Google services, their reps will push for you to buy it. It’s not to say that AdWords itself is a bad program. In fact, it can be a great tool to market yourself. AdWords Express, however, tries to make it sound as though it’s just as good, except easier. In practice though, the program proves to have too many flaws and limitations, and you’d be better off resisting it.

2. Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest Listings: While these search engines certainly aren’t the priority that Google is, they are the next logical step as far as search engine listings go. Google isn’t the only search engine that gleans information from other sites, and YellowPages.com is not Google’s only target, either. That is why it is important to ensure your listing is also updated and visible on search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and map directories like MapQuest. This way, no matter which search engine is copying the other’s index, your information will be up to date, and all the more likely to appear to a searcher.

3. Craigslist Classifieds: Anybody looking for anything will very likely give Craigslist a try…eventually. While you may not think legal services are as synonymous with Craigslist as say, selling a lawn mower, there is actually a section dedicated to it. By posting specific classifieds such as “Affordable New York Divorce / Family Law Attorney”, you can try and capture searchers who have a specific concern or legal matter. You can then create multiple different listings for different law areas, and maximize your reach. Thousands of other legal firms are posting classifieds on Craigslist to try and capture this niche of searchers, why aren’t you?

4. Social Media (Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter): Ever heard of them? They’re kind of popular. While they are slightly less of a windfall for legal professionals, they are still entirely viable options for online marketing, and can be a cornerstone of your marketing campaign.

Facebook is the Google of social media, and as such, you need to have some sort of presence on it.  Even if your firm won’t gain as much from it as other industries do (who use it for public relations, promotions, etc), there is a value to having your firm listed on this Internet powerhouse. You’ll want to make a business account and then make a business page. Make sure to have the “wall” updated with company news, relevant industry articles, and anything else that will show viewers that you are active and socially-conscious. Encourage clients and partners to “friend” or “like” your page or profile, and do the same for their Facebook pages. It’s a quick and painless way to network, and can sometimes lead to a large return on (time) investment. To read more about the importance of social media in the context of your law firm, see our earlier article: Social Media Marketing for Lawyers

Creating a Linked-In business profile is also an important social media task, though for slightly different reasons as Facebook.  A Linked-In profile is an easy way to create a networking hub for your firm, where you can find and be found by likely cohorts and interested searchers. It also provides a social media outlet to send to those business partners who shy away from Facebook like it’s a plague designed by the current generation to make them feel technologically inadequate. Having a Linked-in profile is becoming more expected for business professionals, as well as companies. If you think of Facebook as a power-tie (standardized flair), then Linked-In is the suit jacket (practically mandatory in its professionalism, with a bit less personality).

Twitter is valuable for a very different reason. While most companies use it to reach out to their followers, you likely won’t have the viewership as, say, a rock artist would. If you won’t reach many people with your “tweets”, why is twitter valuable, then? Not to make the tweets, but to hear them. Twitter allows you to search through the millions of tweets created every day for people asking if anyone knows a lawyer, or complaining about matters that they (perhaps unknowingly) should have an attorney for. Once you find these tweets, you can reply to them with your contact information, and as easy as that, you may become the legal savior for someone who never may have called your firm or found you online.

To learn more about Twitter and if it’s right for your firm, see our article about Twitter’s pros and cons. If you decide it’s worth the effort, take a look at LegalPPC’s guide to setting up and using Twitter.

5. Online Press Release: Press releases are valuable because they make (copious) mention of your firm and/or site on third party platforms. When you have any kind of relevant or interesting story to publish about your firm, compose an article about yourself and send it out to anyone who will take it. Even if The Wall Street Journal turns you down, there are free journal and article sites that you can send it to, or even allow you to post it yourself! Make sure to include hyperlinks to different parts of your website (though it’s best to avoid arbitrary over-use, some search engines can recognize this!) and of course mentions of your firm and/or its applicable employees. When the search engine sees your firm on resources other than your own site, it will assume you are much more relevant and worth showing on a search.

6. Yelp (and other review sites): In the legal profession, reputation is everything. When a searcher wants to learn what previous customers have said about a business, they go to Yelp. The first thing to do is to verify that you are listed (correctly), much like a search engine.  Once you appear correctly, begin encouraging (satisfied) clients to leave positive comments and reviews of you on your listing. Yelp is also useful because it is widely used in smartphone apps, computer widgets, and is also on such good terms with Google that your listing on Yelp may appear before your own site!

Also, make sure that you check your reviews on these sites, as you may have received negative comments. Whether or not it is legitimate, it will hurt your reputation much more than ten times that many positive ones. Sometimes review sites will allow you to comment on that person’s reviews, to try and justify yourself. Just make sure you have the means to back up your rebuke if you choose that route, as sometimes it may be better to let the comment sink to the bottom of the page and beyond. The more recent the bad review, the more it will hurt your image.

Having positive comments on other review sites such as your Google place, or even your own testimonials page, can be very effective as well. If you’re like most LRIS programs, you send out feedback questionnaires to your clients to make sure they’re having positive experiences with your attorney members. When a client sends in a questionnaire with positive feedback, have a staff member make contact with that client by phone or email, thanking them for the kind comments. In that same email, ask them to please describe their positive experience on Yelp or your Google Place page (make sure to give them the links). Also ask them if you can add their positive review anonymously (or initials only) to your testimonials page on your LRIS website.

7. Online Directories: While search engines are definitely the most important place to ensure that your contact information is correctly listed, the sheer quantity of online directories makes them worthy of mention.  Directories such as Yellowpages, Local, and Supermedia are just three of the hundred or so directory sites, or at least the ones that matter. They all have (nominal) weight in making your firm turn up in a search before the other guy. Make sure the information is consistent, though (I’d recommend copying the information from your Google Place, exactly as it appears); so that the indexing search engines immediately recognize all of your listings as one (proactive) entity.

8. E-mail Marketing: Have a new office? New employee? Revised practice areas? Tell your clients! As long as it doesn’t go against your privacy policy (which it shouldn’t, since you are directly contacting them and not disclosing their email to anyone else), send everyone who’s ever been in business with you an update on your firm’s march to the top of the legal ladder. While it may be ignored by a large majority of readers, if even one person is reminded of your services and calls or responds, won’t it be worth it? Be careful with this one, though: the last thing you want is to appear that you’ll be spamming their inboxes every other day. Make the emails respectful, professional, and only send with a legitimate update or offer.

9. Website Content: Now that you have a better understanding of just how important it is to have Google and the other search engines on your side, here’s a tip on how to make them like your site more: Don’t be static. A website that adds new content (even quasi-regularly) will be much more appreciated by search engines. By adding new content, you are assuring that the search engines think that your site is relevant, up-to-date, dynamic, and more interesting to searchers than a site that was last updated in the nineties. If you don’t have a whole lot of updates to add about your own firm, add an ‘articles’ section to your website, and have it filled with relevant news stories, editorials, industry journals, or even comics! Even if you don’t want your support staff or yourself writing the content, just post pertinent articles from other websites (such as Lawyerist.com), but make sure to give them credit!

10. Create a YouTube Video: If you perform a Google search for something, you’ll notice that links to websites are not the only returned result. Near the top of the page, you will be given links to YouTube videos, where you can view videos instantly without needing to download neither files nor software. As it turns out, Google puts a huge emphasis on these videos (especially now that they own YouTube!), and they can be an enormous advantage in your favor over your competitors. Even if you were to only make a concise, moderately professional video, and upload it to YouTube with all the appropriate keywords and links to your website, you could easily overtake a competitor who was above you on Google’s search results (if they don’t have a video).

Searchers are much more likely to view a quick and effortless video about a firm, whether it’s a third-party review or company-made, before investigating the actual website further. If you make a snazzy company introduction or a virtual tour, you could also embed it into your company website, or send it to potential clients

A good video is pure marketing gold. A below-average video or worse will just make a viewer laugh and consider your firm unprofessional. Make sure you show the final product to an unbiased acquaintance that won’t be afraid to tell you it’s not ready to represent your firm. You could consider a professional video company for a truly effective video, though that may defeat the purpose of keeping your staff busy. With a few interviews, shots of the office or building, and a few edits from free software (to add names and titles below speakers, along with a few inter-scene effects), you should have at least a satisfactory video, with minimal investment.

These are just ten of many sites that can help your firm be more viable to search engines. They’re also not the only free resources you should be utilizing on the net. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has grown profoundly in both size and credibility, with recent updates giving a much better idea as to the quality of the content. It is especially useful for reading notes on court cases or uncommon legal precedents.  The open directory DMOZ.org is another great resource, as it is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. When search engines aren’t doing the trick, try those two sites before reverting to more time-intensive measures.

So what are you waiting for? Potential clients are likely searching for local attorneys as you read this. Where will your firm be shown? While you may not be at the top of Google’s search results after taking these steps, you are almost assured to be in a better position once Google has taken notice of your increased relevance.

However, it’s understandable that perhaps a few or all of these steps might not be the specialty of you or your support staff. Otherwise, you may have already performed these tasks and want to keep rising on Google’s search results, but are blessedly busy with other matters. For these and many other solutions for your law firm, contact LegalPPC to manage your Online marketing, so you can get back to your practice!