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A Guide to Inbound Marketing for Law Firms

inbound-marketing-for-law-firms

To attract clients, law firms have traditionally used a variety of outbound marketing media to push out advertisements, from television and radio commercials to brochures, flyers, and press ads. This scattershot approach to lead generation is largely ineffective. People do not tend to respond well to interruptive, traditional marketing.

Inbound marketing is a much more effective marketing strategy because it attracts potential clients to you rather than your firm trying to chase them down. The Internet has made inbound marketing a reality for law firms—it is now much easier to grow your client base and retain your existing clients.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Instead of pushing advertisements out to an audience, inbound marketing is focused on attracting leads to your firm by offering helpful and relevant content. Content marketing draws potential clients to you instead of your firm engaging in a constant search for leads. Your content can include blogs, online forums, search engines, social media posts, and others. A strong inbound marketing campaign can draw visitors to your website or blog. With the inclusion of contact forms and other compelling information about your firm, its practice area, and the services that you can offer, you can convert more visitors to clients for a better return on your investment.

According to the 2018 State of Inbound Report, inbound marketing is considered to be the most effective method of marketing to generate leads and to convert leads to clients. Among businesses and firms that were surveyed, 53% that used inbound marketing and that calculated their returns on investment reported that it gave them higher ROIs than outbound marketing. Among firms and businesses that used inbound marketing strategies, 75% reported that their campaigns were effective.
Inbound marketing is a more ethical approach. Because of the nature of television and radio advertising, ethical guidelines for attorneys in most states have placed restrictions on how lawyers and law firms can advertise their services. While inbound marketing campaigns for law firms must also adhere to the principles of legal ethics, it is easier to do so because it is about generating, producing, and distributing high-quality content that attracts leads to you instead of your firm chasing them down.

Through your content, your firm can offer helpful information that is targeted to reach potential clients in your market area. The goals of the content that you produce are to begin building relationships, establishing the trust of potential leads, and to provide answers to certain types of questions that potential clients for your firm might have. When you choose the right inbound marketing approach, people who were originally strangers to your firm can be introduced to you. They can then be turned into leads, and the leads can be converted to clients. Ultimately, your clients can become advocates for your legal services and help to draw even more leads to your firm. 
How Inbound Marketing Works for Law Firms

People who are seeking legal counsel go through a process to identify, locate, and evaluate law firms and the services that they offer before they make a decision to retain a particular attorney or firm. The process that they go through is called the buyer's journey. By understanding the process that potential clients undergo, you can know when and where you should push a piece of content to target a specific type of potential client.

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The Buyer's Journey:

  1. Attract strangers to your firm with your blog, social media posts, and keywords;
  2. Convert visitors who visit your blog, social media pages, or website to leads by including landing pages, compelling calls to action, and contact forms;‍
  3. Close leads and turn them into clients with your customer relationship management, consultations, emails, and workflows; and‍
  4. Retain your clients with social media monitoring, surveys, and the creation of smart content so that they turn into advocates for your firm.

At its base, legal practice is a service industry. People search for and retain attorneys for help with complex legal issues that they are unable to resolve on their own. Legal issues can confuse and overwhelm people, causing them to look for information that can help them. Inbound marketing can allow you to reach people who are searching for an attorney or firm in your practice area.

The Internet has helped to make legal knowledge more accessible to people who do not have a legal background, and firms have started to recognize how the Internet has changed the practice of law. Instead of being reluctant to share some of your knowledge, you can use the Internet to your advantage with inbound marketing.

Sales are much easier with a good inbound marketing strategy. Instead of wasting your time trying to chase leads down, you can push out smart content that draws potential clients who fit your firm's practice areas. Inbound marketing both attracts visitors and helps to ensure that the people who visit are members of your firm's target group to generate high-quality leads.

How Inbound Marketing Helps Law Firms Increase Revenue

Inbound marketing helps to increase the number of qualified leads that your firm attracts and also helps to drive your revenue. You can do this by creating high-quality content covering topics in your practice areas. It is important that you constantly add new content to attract potential clients. While this can be time-consuming, digital marketing agencies like My Creative Mark can help to generate high-quality legal content that strictly adheres to the ethical principles of the legal profession.

After you have created high-quality content, you must distribute it in a way to reach more people. Search engine optimization can help your content to rank higher so that it is likelier to appear when people search for answers for their legal issues. Social media posts allow you to attract people to your website and firm by building a trust relationship with your followers.

When people visit your website, blog, or social media pages, you will then convert the traffic into leads. This can be accomplished by crafting attractive, highly effective landing pages that make visitors want to learn more.

Finally, using the right CRM to manage your list of leads and your clients using an optimized workflow can help you turn your leads into clients and retain them. A good inbound marketing strategy can help you grow your law firm, and working with the right inbound marketing agency like My Creative Mark can provide you with a better return on your investment than other methods. Contact us if you need help improving your law firm's lead acquisition and revenue.

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