Traditional advertising is losing ground in the battle for marketing domination. Find out why so many attorneys are pivoting to digital marketing techniques to grow their business.
The internet has changed how we conduct business. Twenty years ago, placing ads on TV and radio, buying space on buses and billboards, and gathering referrals were the only ways to generate a client base for your law firm. Now, trying to succeed with those outdated methods is the equivalent of showing up to the Indy 500 on horseback. The future belongs to digital marketing.
Before signing on with a law firm, 96% of people will perform an online search to locate an acceptable law firm. Connecting with your clients requires you to not only have an excellent website engineered to generate leads, but also to appear as high as possible on relevant search results pages (SERPs). This is the realm of digital marketing: a marketing plan designed to attract and retain the modern internet-savvy client.
Digital Marketing for Attorneys
Many law firms adopt an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude when it comes to their marketing plans. Billboards were good enough for the previous generation. This is a mistake: “it” is in fact broke, and it’s time to fix it. The fix is a robust digital marketing that targets your client base where they are used to shopping for goods and services.
The most common start to a journey that ends with signing on to your firm is a Google search phrased “[specialty] lawyer near me” or some variation of the same. One of the main goals of digital marketing, expressed as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is creating a site that ranks highly on those types of queries. SEO is the process of making your site attractive to search engines through a combination of coding and on-page content and is where any digital marketing program begins.
Digital marketing is the best and fastest way to grow your law firm due to the reduced cost, wider reach, and unmatched insights you gain over traditional advertising.
If you want a good, measurable conversion rate, there is simply no substitute for digital marketing. In the legal sector, the average conversion rate for direct marketing is 2.9%. Lead-generating landing pages convert at 11.9%. Billboard cost can range from $1250-$15000, while TV ads place the cost per 1000 impressions at $47.14. At the same time, organic website traffic numbers are at 11,704/month. Digital marketing is more cost-effective and for smaller firms, you can start your process much cheaper than you could for less-effective traditional advertising.
What Digital Marketing Can Do For Your Law Firm
Digital marketing has numerous advantages over traditional marketing. This is true for any business but is doubly true for law firms that often must operate on a shoestring while trying to compete with the bottomless pockets of the largest firms.
1. Increase Your Reach
Traditional advertising’s reach is confined to those in the immediate vicinity of the ad. Digital marketing’s reach is effectively limitless. By shifting focus to digital marketing, you give yourself the ability to expand your reach and connect to a far wider audience than before.
Additionally, you can leverage this reach and a variety of channels from websites to social media platforms to search engines to effectively target specific demographics. Engage your client base without wasting money on people who have no intention of ever engaging your services.
2. Target Your Audience With Precision
As alluded to in the first point, pinpoint targeting is an arena in which digital marketing shines. Traditional marketing is largely confined to wide-net efforts that waste a lot of money reaching the intended audience. By contrast, digital marketing enables precision targeting.
Firms can create personalized campaigns for clients, based on factors such as age, location, interests, and online behavior. A targeted approach maximizes ROI (Return on Investment) by placing the right ad in front of the right eyes at the right time.
With digital marketing you can easily target your specific audience with advertising and content that speaks directly to their needs.
3. Reduce Advertising Costs
Going hand-in-hand with precision targeting is cost-effectiveness. Precision targeting means your ad spend will go to where it is most useful, but that is only the tip of the iceberg for digital marketing.
Traditional advertising like billboards and TV spots are two of the most expensive options out there and both lack anything close to the targeting ability of a digital campaign. Alternately, firms can spend less and leverage social media advertising, email marketing, and other channels that can more effectively reach the target audience while spending much less. Digital marketing can stretch a modest budget and provide better returns than a traditional campaign.
4. Gain Actionable Insights
The efficacy of marketing efforts is measured in return on investment (ROI) and this is where digital marketing shines. Technology exists to accurately track the ROI of a digital advertising spend, following the ad dollar spent to the lead it generates. Digital marketing will show you where your budget goes and the business it generates.
With data like this at your fingertips, you gain two huge advantages. The first is on-demand knowledge of how your marketing efforts are working, including ROI. The second is the ability to adapt your strategy on the fly, reacting to market shifts as they happen.
Digital advertising opens up a world of data and insights that you can use to enhance your marketing efforts. Quickly find out what works, and what doesn’t, and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
5. Enhance Brand Visibility
It would be easy to think that, with the lack of billboards and TV spots, a digital-first marketing strategy would result in worse brand visibility. The opposite is true.
Users spend much of their time in online spaces, and digital marketing is poised to take advantage. Delivering valuable content, engaging with the targeted audience on social media, combined with a robust SEO strategy means you’re meeting your client base where they are. Your online presence builds both brand awareness and credibility, which in turn fosters client trust and loyalty.
6. Improve Client Engagement
Digital marketing enables direct and real-time engagement with your client base. In the modern marketplace, any delay is perceived as unacceptable, and only digital marketing allows you to interact with clients the way they want.
Promptly respond to inquiries, provide personalized recommendations, and address concerns through any number of channels like social media, live chat, or email. This level of engagement helps foster a sense of loyalty and trust, boosting your client satisfaction and retention.
Digital marketing creates new opportunities for you to engage with your potential clients, with numerous channels such as social media and e-mail offering real-time access to your audience.
7. Increase Adaptability
Thanks to digital marketing’s focus on real-time processes in everything from customer service to analytics, it grants you the ability to adapt quickly. Real-time data and market trends will often provoke the need for change, and digital marketing means you can make those changes.
Traditional marketing methods need extensive planning and long lead times that digital marketing just doesn’t have to deal with. Make immediate adjustments and thrive in the marketplace that exists moment-to-moment. There’s no better way to stay relevant in our digital space.
Go Digital With Lead Science and Never Look Back
There’s just no substitute for digital marketing. From measuring your performance, to adjusting your marketing, to connecting with your client base, there’s nothing traditional marketing that digital doesn’t do better and with less strain on your budget. With two decades of experience in connecting businesses with customers in the online space, Lead Science knows how to grow your firm.
Schedule your Lead Science Discovery Call today. We leverage these 7 points and many more to deliver on our digital marketing pledge to supercharge your lead generation.
