Every day, a crime occurs with a potential client in need of a competent lawyer. This is especially true considering the estimated over eight million criminal offenses in 2019.
However, despite the abundance of cases nationwide, some firms struggle to maintain a full pipeline. Most times, this is due to a lack of efficient criminal law firm marketing.
While word-of-mouth marketing is certainly valid, it comes with some risks. A firm reliant on this method misses out on many clients.
Many times, those charged are hesitant to ask for a referral and have limited time to find a lawyer. A vast majority of these people don’t go around bragging about their arrest to their family, friends and colleagues.
This only serves to emphasize the importance of having a solid digital strategy. Keep reading to discover six important tips for efficient and successful law firm marketing.
Understanding Your Target Audience Criminal Law Lead Generation
Like any business, understanding your target audience is vital to maximizing marketing returns.
Having a solid understanding of your audience allows efficient marketing budget allocation. This is because you know where your audience spends the most time. Ultimately, this leads to a steady flow of quality leads instead of becoming a cash-burning marketing strategy.
The first step to optimizing your lawyer marketing services begins with examining your niche and specific type of client. For example, if your firm specializes in violent crimes, it’s unlikely you’ll want to spend time targeting minor offenses.
The next step is to consider your audience’s demographics. Some demographic data includes your target’s age, location, gender, employment and economic status.
Gathering these data points helps narrow the marketing channels to the ideal ones. For example, consider a law firm that focuses on DUI or felony possession cases in a university town.
The target audience or persona might be a male between 21 and 28 years old studying and working part-time or is currently unemployed.
One mistake of many law firms is that they splurge money on trying to reach as many people as possible. Oftentimes, focusing on specific segments of the population offers a much higher return on investment.
However, you must be aware that creating a narrow target persona or audience may exclude potential clients.
The Importance of Criminal Defense Lawyer SEO
One of the most efficient methods to focus on for your lawyer marketing services is search engine optimization (SEO). From finding a quick bite to eat or the best local barber, people search online and typically only look at the first page of results.
Criminal defense law firms can benefit from long-tail searches specific to their practice. These searches bring in substantial traffic and quality leads.
SEO is essential for obtaining organic visibility. In short, having an optimized SEO tells search engines that your website has more relevant information. Through the process of crawling, indexing and ranking content, search engines will place your firm’s website higher on the list of results.
Developing and implementing an SEO strategy is cost-effective because it’s essentially free traffic. However, the strategy must be properly implemented, or it could have a less than desirable effect and lead to months of wasted work.
In most cases, the best SEO practices improve a user’s experience and keep them on your site instead of pushing clients to competitors.
Think Local Criminal Attorney SEO
For most firms, lawyer marketing generally focuses on the local area. Even firms with a regional or nationwide practice benefit from local marketing.
For example, consider a firm located in Los Angeles. This firm will likely have a list of clientele that’s a healthy mix of residents and non-locals.
One of the best methods to target both groups is having an optimized Google My Business profile and using geo-location. First and foremost, the information on the profile must be consistent across anywhere your firm is mentioned online.
An optimized profile must include the following:
- A link to your website
- Business hours
- Physical location
- Contact information and methods
- Photos of business location
Additionally, it pays to get as many genuinely good reviews on your profile whenever possible. Consider the last time you searched for a restaurant online. If it had limited or subpar reviews, you likely scrolled past to the next option within a few seconds.
Soliciting Google Reviews is vital for maximum visibility in your local area.
Supplement With Paid Criminal Law Firm Ads
In addition to SEO and local criminal law firm marketing, you can also supplement your efforts with paid ads. Many times, paid ads offer businesses the opportunity to be shown first on a search engine results page (SERP).
For example, if you type in best shoes as a keyword in Google, you’ll see a carousel of several shoes that companies have paid to associate with the keyword.
Similarly, using Local Service Ads ads allows your firm to show up before paid, local and organic results. With a strong marketing strategy, your firm can appear at the top with the Local Service Ads, then again in paid ads and finally dominate the page with organic results.
In order to be truly effective, it’s vital to understand how bidding on keywords works and which ones deserve more capital. Otherwise, paid ads can be a black hole with minimal results.
Have a Professional Criminal Law Firm Website
Having an aesthetic website is essential for effective criminal defense law firm marketing. The website is typically the first presentation of a firm that a potential client sees.
It makes a lasting impression and can be the difference between a high-bounce rate website and one that drives consistent leads. The best websites are easy to use, aesthetic and provide quality content.
Become the Authoritative Figure in Your Criminal Law Niche
In a competitive world, it pays to be the authoritative figure in a specific niche. The most effective way to become the go-to source is to provide visitors with consistent, relevant and quality content.
Providing this content tells search engines that your website has what users are searching for. In turn, this boosts the firm’s overall authority online.
Most quality content typically comes in the form of blogs and short videos. These blogs and videos typically answer some of the most pressing questions your audience may have.
Get Noticed With Criminal Law Firm Marketing
In a world full of stiff competition like law, there are a few key factors all successful firms have in common to maintain a full pipeline. These include a solid criminal law firm marketing strategy, social media and a highly visible online presence.
Contact the best law firm marketing service to get tailored results to take your firm’s digital success to the next level. Criminal law marketing can have a 5-50x (Not a typo), contact us for a free audit to see how we deliver these results.
