Legal Marketing – What Worked in 2021
What Worked in 2021 and What To Continue in 2022
Before we close the books on 2021 and turn our attention to 2022, let’s take a look back at what has been working in the world of law firm marketing.
Marketing your law practice has always been challenging, but in the new COVID world we are living in, it has really, really become challenging. But help is out there. Today we want to talk about ways to improve your client intakes for 2022 and beyond. Today’s law firm must be flexible and strategic at the same time.
As a company that specializes in marketing for law firms, our job is to monitor trends and the tendencies of individuals searching for attorneys. There are several ways to do this, but the best way we have found is by paying close attention to our own clients and the traffic they are getting to their websites. We study where the traffic is coming from, where on the site the traffic is going and when it is getting there.
We also compare website data across all our client’s websites and compare their bounce rates and their firm contacts. With this information we can see which websites are performing the best and look for reasons why. For example, one website may have testimonial videos, while another may only have a few testimonial comments. One site may use stock photos, while another uses more personal photos of attorneys and local landmarks. This type of information may not seem important, but it can be very valuable when you are trying to figure out what makes one law firm more appealing than another. In the end, we are trying to get a website visitor, aka potential client, to stay on a website as long as possible.
Why is this important? There is a connection between the amount of time a person spends on a website and a websites conversion rate. We define a conversion as a phone call, email, or chat. Most often, the lower the bounce rate, the higher the conversion rate. When you take this information and compare it across all our clients, we can get a better understanding of what is working and what is not working.
This seems simple enough, but it can be very challenging. The adage “the only certainties in life are death and taxes” should also include “Google’s always changing”. It takes constant studying and comparing of notes to figure out the best ways to get a website ranked and then it usually changes on you.
One of the many advantages of using a digital marketing company, like Sundown Legal Marketing, to manage your internet marketing program is their many clients. It is hard for a law firm to figure out what works and what doesn’t work when the only data they have access to is their own. Just when you think you have it figured out, things change and you’re back to square one.
So, here are a few things that worked well this past year and will continue to work in 2022:
- Local Service Ads (LSA’s) – LSA’s are expanding in practice areas and locations, and they are a great place to get your firm noticed. If you aren’t familiar with them, you should probably get familiar with them right away. This is Google’s verified and screened section of paid advertising. It is a pay per lead program, but you must become Google Screened through Google’s background check process before you can participate. If you haven’t gone through the free process, here is the link, https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/9376654?hl=en
- Expanding your geographic footprint – Make sure you have content for all the geographical areas your firm covers. This is an important component for expanding your firm’s footprint. Try adding pages for smaller markets surrounding larger cities. This is where people live and commute from and can increase the firm’s exposure to potential clients.
- Cookies – Cookies can be a turn off. We all get tons of spam and the idea of more coming because you accepted cookies can turn customers away. Just be careful and monitor your website analytics.
- Display Advertising – Another area that seemed to show little signs of the Covid effect was display advertising. A good display advertising program, coupled with a smart SEO campaign can really increase site visitors.
- Keyword Mapping: This is an SEO practice in which you assign unique keywords to each page on your website. When you assign a unique keyword to each page, this helps prevent keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization is when multiple pages on your site compete for the same exact keyword. This hurts the ranking of both pages and provides an opportunity to optimize for that keyword by consolidating those two articles and making the existing page more potent for that target keyword. There are software platforms that you can pay for that allow you to check for keyword cannibalization. However, Google Search Console, a free tool provided by Google, does the job very well.
At Sundown Legal Marketing, we are here to help. If you have any questions on how to get your website to perform better in 2022, give us a call. We would love to chat with you about your program and ways it can be improved upon. If you prefer to do your own SEO work, you can also try our free website audit tool by clicking on this link. It will uncover website weaknesses so you can formulate your own plan of action.
We work with law firms in the following areas:
- Search engine optimization
- Content writing
- Social media management
- Paid ad programs
- Video service
- Website development and upkeep
Thank you for time and we hope you enjoy your holidays!
Contact Sundown Legal Marketing Today
If you are looking for ways to stand out in 2022 as the law firm of choice in your area, it’s essential to have the right online presence to support your campaigns. Sundown Marketing Group specializes in helping law firms with a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that gets results. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation to discuss your marketing plan for the coming year. Our law firm marketing consultants can be reached at (800) 649-1764.
