Modern legal marketing relies heavily on storytelling
Attract more clients with content that educates, fosters trust, and motivates to action.
In most markets, the standard message is “we’ll fight for you”. It’s uninspiring and if you go with that approach, you’ll sound like everyone else.
A different strategy will personalize your practice. The people coming in for their first consultation will feel like they already know you. This puts you at an advantage especially in this environment where people are shopping around for the firm that ‘feels right’.
High-impact educational content attracts viewers attention; the social proof of the client stories provides the proof and this formula drives website traffic resulting in a higher percentage of phone calls and form submissions.
Besides video, your law-specific digital marketing stack should include:
Original, high-caliber written content
PPC, Social Media, Geofencing & Programmatic Advertising
Call-tracking to prove ROI
Client Stories
Testimonial videos establish brand authenticity and have a stronger power of persuasion than written words. Testimonial videos increase client acquisition.
Law Firm Marketing Strategies that Get Results
No matter how original, educational, or high-quality the material, its value is determined by the ROI and how it affects your firm's bottom line.
You’ll want measurement tools in place to help you identify what’s working, discover areas for improvement, and determine where to scale back or where to focus your efforts to open more cases.
Hearing From the Experts
Explainer videos help to educate clients and provide them with insights into your organization’s core values.
Short form explainer videos are used to describe the services offered by your firm. Explainer videos help the average consumer understand the nuances between the different practice areas you serve.
Explainer videos will help increase the type of cases you want to open and should serve to reduce the type of inquires you want to triage with a paralegal or automate a response altogether.
Make Your Website a Trusted Resource
When people go searching, are you providing them answers?
Or, is it your competition?
We’re hearing and seeing people doing their own research online. There’s data showing that people are almost 80% of their way to making a decision before reaching out to book an appointment.
Who do you want educating your potential clients?
Providing educational content that satisfies the needs of your potential customers, that helps them solve their problems, is the best way to build that online relationship.
The most important thing you can do is to create original, high-caliber, educational content for your website. You’ll want about 750 to 1,000+ words per page.
If you need help thinking about the content that goes on the page, visit our content creation page for ideas.
The video content you create will most likely fall into two major categories; short form and long form.
Short form is anything under 30-seconds.
Long form video content is over 30-seconds.
The short form is primarily used for advertising. This format has a specific intent with highly customized calls-to-action and populated with tracking phone numbers to measure the efficacy of the ads.
The long form video content should be nested at your website. I encourage web developers to strategically post videos on pages alongside relevant topics.
There are a variety of types of people that will visit your website and you want to cater to all.
Some people will read the copy and avoid the videos.
Others will skim the written copy and watch the videos.
And others who are truly interested will read and watch everything on the page; especially if you are providing really good educational content.
Long form videos can also be used in your social media, Google My Business, directory sites, sales collateral, recruiting of talent and at conferences and trade shows.
Video is everywhere and the demand is growing. This is not once and done. You want to find a media partner who can help you continually create content.
Retargeting advertising for law firms
What happens when someone is researching a legal issue, they land on your webpage but aren’t sure they’re ready to reach out? Maybe it’s an evening or weekend?
They leave your site with an honest intention of coming back. A little time passes and they see an ad for another attorney in town who specializes in solving the exact problem they’re trying to solve.
They click on that ad. They are transported to your competitor’s site and are deluged with positive video stories of the cases you’ve won for clients with almost the same exact problem.
You may have just missed out on that consultation because the other attorney in town is using Search ReTargeting.
Search retargeting allows us to target keywords people have search with banner and videos ads as they move around the web.
If you depend on online traffic to grow your law firm, it’s time to consider ReTargeting - - it focuses on bringing traffic back to your website.
Data shows that 97% of new website visitors leave without making contact with a law firm, at which point they might go away and never return. Unless you have a plan to bring them back…
Site retargeting is another type of retargeting campaign that reminds website visitors of your offerings, after they leave your site, helps to bring them back and drives more conversions.
It allows you to display relevant content to your visitors on other websites they visit after visiting specific pages on your own.
Today's law firm marketing executives use retargeting as a key tool to engage their audience, increase conversions, and drive more consultations.
A potential client has to arrive at a certain comfort level with your firm before they’ll make the decision to reach out to schedule a consultation.
There is data out there that says that one has to hear your message at least seven times before they take action. Retargeting helps with this. Retargeting increases the visibility of your law firm and allows you to connect with people who have already shown an interest in your firm.
Compared to other forms of advertising, it is significantly less expensive and has better ROI.
What is retargeting?
Retargeting is a form of online marketing that allows you to place ads in front of people who have shown interest in certain search terms or has visited your website.
For the vast majority of websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting is designed to help law firms re-connect with the 98% of users who don't immediately convert.
Retargeting works well for branding and conversion optimization when it's part of a larger digital strategy. I wouldn’t run retargeting by itself as it should be paired with other inbound and demand generation tactics.
How does retargeting work?
First, we add a smart container tag to your law firm’s website. Each time a new visitor comes to your website, an anonymous user profile is dropped.
As your tracked visitors browses the internet, the profile will tell the system when and where to serve your ads.
Retargeting profiles can only be used for a maximum of 90 days to ensure that the data is up-to-date.
Because of this, some churn in your retargeting pools is to be expected, but new profiles are also actively being added while the container is still firing. Because you are using your own data, there is no CPM data cost, but the media placement fee will still be applied.
It makes sense to start your project with a campaign planner guide. I’ve linked one here from a well known site.
Geofencing and Geoframing for Law Firms
Law firm marketing executives can benefit from geofencing and geoframing physical locations as part of their overall strategy. Let’s explore what geofencing is and how we can leverage geoframing.
What is Geofencing for law firms
Geofencing enables law firm marketing executives to target mobile devices based on current location in order to reach people who are in a physical location and for whom they do not already have first-party data.
Because geofencing depends on data from mobile devices, it's important to note that geofencing is only available on mobile and tablet in-app inventories.
With the help of Factual's Geopulse Proximity, marketers can create a "fence" around a specific location (a radius around an address or destination, or a drawn frame), and Factual will provide an actionable audience that can be targeted both while they are there and after they leave. Factual requests the device location data prior to serving an impression in order to confirm the accuracy of each advertisement's placement.
You can create geofences using location names, types, postcodes, DMAs, and other information. The data from your geofence will be made available as a targetable geolocation that can be used on the back end by a Digital Magnet Strategist who will create it in the Factual system.
The Process of Geoframing
Geoframing enables the creation of a tailored audience based on the mobile devices who have entered a specific location and time. By creating a geoframe, or the location and time period in the past from which mobile devices are being collected and aggregated, marketers can target people from specific events or locations after they have left that geolocation.
Use cases for geoframing include targeting competitor foot traffic, body shops, emergency rooms and other urgent care-type facilities to get your message in front of people at a time when they need your services most.
To create user pools for custom audience targeting using Factual's GeoPulse Audience or OnSpot's Device ID Retargeting, our providers use information about mobile service providers and device IDs. During the proposal process, your Strategist can establish a geoframe perimeter around your target locations.
How to Decide Between Geofencing and Geoframing
Geofencing and geoframing both rely on highly specific location data from a mobile device to create an actionable target for your campaign.
Campaigns that want to target only people who are currently inside a geofence are best suited to use geofencing. For illustration's sake, let's say that your client has a product that is sold in a Macy's store. By using geofencing, you can show advertisements for your product to customers who are currently at Macy's locations and boost sales.
However, this pool is later used for retargeting, cross-selling, or up-selling. In contrast, geoframing works best when trying to create a user pool based on the users who have visited a specific location.
A personal injury law firm, for instance, might want to keep track of the device IDs of clients who visit other personal injury law firms so that it can later retarget those clients and offer a free consultation.
If you need assistance selecting the strategy that will work best for the location, timing, and objectives of your campaign, don't hesitate to get in touch with your account manager or the support team.
Benefits of geofencing and geoframing for law firms
Using location-based targeting strategies like geofencing, geoframing, and geolocation targeting, you can communicate with your target audience based on where they are. By employing these tactics, you can increase brand recognition, compete with more established brands, and draw your target market's attention when it matters most.
The platform offers a variety of geolocation targeting options, including targeting by country, state, city, DMA, and postal code. However, in some circumstances it's necessary to collect user devices in a specific area.
With geofencing, marketers can more precisely target their campaigns than they could with the built-in options in our campaign setup. Marketers can collect users who have visited a specific location with the help of geoframing for later retargeting. Both instances involve the collection and use of mobile device data to create a more niche audience than is possible with traditional advertising tactics.
Geofencing and geoframing best practices
It is suggested that you build the campaign's creative using mobile creative sizes (300x50, 320x50, or 320x480) or sizes accepted across devices because geofencing options target mobile devices (300x250, 728x90).
Setting your base and maximum CPMs higher than the rates used in conventional display strategies will ensure that you are able to take a sizable chunk of the limited inventory in hyper-local geolocation.
Applying a geofence or geoframe should not be done with any additional targeting constraints layered on top of it (e.g. data targeting, contextual targeting, site targeting, etc.)
Due to the limited geolocation, do not lower the frequency cap below 3 impressions per day.
First Things First
Our Client Experience team can help you put geofencing and geoframing into practice. Please contact one of our Strategists if you need assistance or more information on how to use this location-based targeting.
Find the Right Marketing Partner
Vendors are everywhere. They’ll process your order. They’ll deliver contracted work.
Partners are harder to find. Partners work collaboratively. Partners are interested in your success and will work tirelessly to help you achieve your goals.
Take the time to find the people you like and that you feel will complement your team.
Are they responsive?
Do they take the time to listen?
Your marketing partner is out there. Once you find the right partner, you’ll know it. Take a moment to watch a message from one of our partners.
