As a lawyer, you should really make creating a law firm website for your top priority. This is because a website lends credibility to your practice and lets leads know that you are serious and also ready for their business. Your most powerful and effective marketing tool is a well-maintained website.
What are the Elements of a Great Law Firm Website?
Your goals for effective law firm marketing must include having an updated law firm website design. One that can help your firm gain a competitive advantage while improving your business image. Your website will be a guaranteed sales booster and considerably less expensive compared to buying ads if done right.
1. Helps Prospective Clients Find You?
You will find many comprehensive tools that help you monitor your online ranking. Sites such as ahref.com will give you your website’s internet ranking and let you know if you are findable in a typical google search. But don’t stop there. Look to see if you can be found on social media. For example, social tools like Sprout Social are perfect for monitoring and tracking social mentions across various platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, etc. And although they charge a fee, it’s only a small amount.
Although having a steady stream of leads is a good enough reason to rank high in searches, this is not the only benefit you will get. Another advantage is when you are hiring talent. Expand your online presence to recruit the best talent. Make the most of your staff’s networks. You can post job openings on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn so your team can easily share and retweet them.
Your website design is not the only thing that you should work on. Place the relevant keywords and this will improve your ranking immensely. Leads search for something by using what is known as keywords in SEO. For example ” what should I do after a car accident”. Utilize the necessary and correct keywords effectively, or your website could be doomed for failure, regardless of how well-designed it is.
2. Improves Your Advertising Effectiveness
You are perhaps spending money right now to advertise. Whether it is through pay per click online advertising, radio, TV or any other means, there is no doubt that utilizing your site address on your various promotional channels, will help your firm gain additional exposure.
We are all now conditioned to go for our cell-phones the moment we want to look up something, and clicking on a website is one of the first things we do when we make spending decisions. What is your website telling about you?
You are spending a large portion of your hard-earned fees on advertising.Why not make sure that your law firm’s website design is exceptionally good. There are countless online sources on what a good website design entails.
3. Validates Your Law Firm as an Authority In Your Field
Your website also validates you and your law firm as an authority in the field. Think of your website as a window into who you are as a lawyer, and what you and your firm are capable of doing for a prospective client. Law firm marketing is multi-faceted and you will need to have other things such as content marketing, social media, and email marketing, in your arsenal. But at the top of the pyramid is your website. Note that all of these initiatives will drive traffic to your site. Prospective clients use websites in order to learn more about law firms, services offered, and contact information. Include any certifications and awards that you and your firm have received to add credibility to your website.
4. It’s The Gateway To Your Law Firm’s Marketing Funnel
You should have a marketing funnel at this point. If so, you can grow a database of people that go into the sales if you design your website well. This is unlike social media, where you are building an audience on somebody else’s platform and have little control over the data. Have you designed your website to obtain the visitor’s name and email address? If done right, the information you obtain here can take a lead to a prospective client. Once you place a lead into your funnel you can then stay in touch with them while they are still making up their mind. Wouldn’t it be great if you are first-on-mind when the prospective client is ready to make a decision?
You can easily harvest the name and phone number if you offer something valuable, like an on-point newsletter. We will talk about that more in debt in our other blogs.
Your website should include both content marketing and video marketing considerations.
5. SEO Benefits Of A Well-designed Law Firm Website
Did you know that frequently updated content and blogs will also help you in terms of SEO? Search engines, such as Google, use algorithms to identify keywords and phrases within meaningful content and then rank this content higher. Higher SEO rankings are important as they will attract more online traffic. You know by now that website PPC is very expensive. Wouldn’t it be great if you can rank on the first page of the results?
You will have to incorporate great content, SEO elements, and great website design to get there though. You can save a lot of time and money if you set these up correctly at the beginning, and then run them with little effort.
6. It Leads To A Steady Stream Of Leads For Your Law Firm
Did you know that by making some easy tweaks to the way you craft the digital content, you may potentially bring tens or perhaps hundreds of new leads each month to your website? When an effective strategy backs SEO, it can drive significant traffic to your site at just a fraction of the total cost of advertising fees.
You need leads in order to have prospects, in order to have clients. It all begins with that first interaction. The adage that you never get a second chance to make a first impression could not be more true here. Just do a search for your area of specialty. They are hundreds of other attorneys vying for the same work. Would you, as a client, pick your firm among all the competition?
Done correctly, your website as your law firm’s first impression in the mind of a lead will be incredible. One could tool to see how you rank compared to the heavy-weights in your field is ahref.com. Plugin your firm’s URL, and see what its Domain Rating and URL Ratings are? Then check the URL of some heavy-weight competitors. What do they have in their law firm’s website that you can implement?
You website can be the best source of leads if you correctly design it and implement the required SEO elements.
7. Your Law Firm Website Informs Your Existing Clients
In my immigration law practice, I witness almost monthly policy-based changes that impact the lives of my clients. As an example, when the various travel bans to the U.S. went into effect, I had hundreds of calls from worried clients. They were rightfully worried if these changes affect their lives. We made sure to create a very informative page including Frequently Asked Questions on our website. When each and every client called and wanted to speak to me personally, my staff directed them to the specific page first. Perhaps only one in four clients then called back for further clarification. I saved tens of hours of my time through a well-maintained and updated website.
Your law firm’s website can provide free advice and information about your services. You can deliver this information in a consistent and well thought out way through your site any time of the day or night.
Most attorneys complain about not having enough time to devote to law firm marketing. But it is like the proverbial question about which came first? Chicken and eggs. If you set up your firm’s website correctly, it will be a gift that keeps on giving long after you have stopped devoting as much time to it. It is by far the most essential tool in your law office marketing toolkit.
