#026 – 22 Marketing Strategies For 2022

Hi, I’m Annette Choti, an attorney of 20 years that created Law Quill, a marketing agency for small and solo law firms. Join me to learn how to grow your law firm through digital marketing strategies, SEO, social media, and more. Let’s get that law firm of yours more online visibility, a larger digital footprint, tons of organic traffic and more clients. I’m so excited. You’re here, click that subscribe button and join me in the legal marketing lounge.

Hello, did you miss me? I’ve been gone a while. I know, I took this break. Because frankly, I’ll be honest with you, we’re friends, right? I got extremely busy with Law Quill, which is a great problem to have, right? Except for the fact that I had to set aside Legal Marketing lounge just for a hot minute. It was just a hot minute, we’re back. And we’ve got an episode today. I’m saying we like the royal way. It’s just me, right.

22 Tips For Your Law Firm Marketing Strategy For 2022

So I have got an amazing episode for you today to make up for the fact that I took a little break. So hopefully you all forgive me. And the value that I bring to you today will help you in all of 2022. Happy New Year, I didn’t even get around to saying that the start of a new year is a perfect time to re-evaluate, well, a lot of things right, but specifically to consider your law firm marketing tactics. And that is what we are going to talk about today, I’m going to give you 22 tips for your law firm marketing strategy for 2022. See what I did there 22 in 22, we’re going to talk about improving your website quality, your traffic, your online presence, and ultimately expanding your clientele.

Because at the end of the day, that is the point of all marketing. It’s not likes, it’s not comments on your Instagram or Facebook feed. It is about clients picking up the phone calling you and making money, right. So there are a lot of digital marketing strategies that you should consider deploying in 2022. So let’s just get right into it, shall we grab your cup of coffee. And let’s get started.

#1 Build More Content on Your Website

The first thing that is the most important, I think I’m not waiting till the end, I’m just going to put it right out here at the very beginning, is to build out more content on your website. If you’ve listened to me for any period of time, you know that the trajectory that every law firm and small business should have is website, a website that’s optimized for SEO, SEO optimized content, and then social media backlinks, all of the things, but really a website and what’s on it is foundational, that is your real estate on the internet. And you need to build out content, you have to really look at the difference between your high ranking and low ranking pages.

You need to see what is trending and what your competitors are doing. And you may notice some disparities in all of that. So look at the website you have right now. Try to improve your low ranking pages, and your blog posts that are not seen as often that you that you think are valuable.

You can do a technique called skyscraper ring, which is taking that piece of content, adding to it, rewriting it, adding keywords, optimizing it for SEO using all the tactics that I’ve talked about in other podcasts or on my blog.

And then this is the important part, you need to go and have Google reindex that page. So if you decide to go back and look at your older blog content that maybe is not optimized for SEO, but you feel like it’s still really great content. Go ahead and perform all of your SEO magic on it.

And then go to Google and reindex it and then start building out new content. Because in addition to revisiting and updating old content, you really need to be consistently putting valuable content to increase your eat score with Google eat his expertise, authority and trustworthiness.

So consider the practice areas that you are targeting the most, the ones that you want to get the most clients from, and start building out those topics, those sub pages, those blog articles. So that’s number one. And it really is, I think, honestly, one of the very most, if not the most important tactic that you can use in 2022.

#2 Update Your Website

Number two, update your website’s design, websites start looking old, quickly. There are a lot of modern updates. And we all know when we get on a website that is several years old. And unfortunately, your competitors are keeping up their websites. So this is not to say that you need a website redesign every year, you don’t. But to get to the top of Google’s SERP, which is the search engine results page, you really do need to stay current with website design.

Now, the Google bots don’t know what your website looks like, it doesn’t know if it’s a clever brand or logo, but the visitors that you have that come to your website do. So they will stay on your website longer. If it’s visually appealing, if there’s great content on it, you want to make your little home on the internet as inviting as possible. That way they stay longer, it decreases your bounce rate, and you have more of an opportunity for them to pick up the phone and call you. So definitely consider updating your website’s design if you haven’t in a while.

#3 Google Ads Campaign

Number three, consider starting a Google ads campaign. I’m just getting this out of the way at the beginning. Some of you may not be able to afford this, the keywords to try to rank for on Google ads are expensive. And I understand that. But if you are at a new year, and you are looking at your marketing budget, it might be time to consider Google ads.

I will say this, for those of you who right now in your cars or in your office are thinking there is no way I can afford that. Let me reassure you that 80% of all traffic that comes to a law firm website is through organic traffic. If you cannot afford a Google ads campaign, don’t worry, there’s still so much more for you. But I just say this, because it might be the time to reevaluate a pay per click campaign or some sort of advertising. So that’s all I’m gonna say about that. And don’t feel bad if you can’t do it.

#4 Increase in Paid Search Budget

Number four, increase your paid search budget. So this kind of goes to what I just said, which is that if you are already spending money on paid search, doing, you know Pay Per Click whatever you’re doing, just make sure that that ratio that you’re spending on paid advertising is getting you value.

Maybe you actually don’t want to be spending as much on paid search. Maybe you want to be investing in organic SEO. Frankly, that’s my opinion. We all know where I land on that. But I feel like just in the interest of being completely comprehensive and holistic here.

You do need to look at your paid advertising budget as well.

#5 Target New Geo Locations

Number five, target new geo locations. So some law firms are going to target nationwide if you are an intellectual property attorney, etc. And it is more common. For law firms not to target nationwide it’s more common for law firms to target specific states even specific counties specific cities. If you have had success in certain geographic areas, consider targeting neighboring cities and neighboring counties.

If you don’t know where to start, take a look at the populations of nearby locations. Just start building out pages for those with higher demographics that you are trying to reach.

#6 Add Video Content

Number six, add video content, you do not need to hire Martin Scorsese. To do this. You don’t need Quentin Tarantino to film something for you here. You can simply use your phone or you can even use certain platforms that have stock images for videos. Video content is extremely empowering, and it is not going away.

Google rewards websites that have video content, and video ads, frankly, a human element to your website. legal matters are complex. Those seeking guidance are frustrated, scared, concerned, and they may feel more comfortable if they can put a face or some sort of human element to your law firms website.

#7 Adding a Chatbot to The Website

Number seven, consider adding a chatbot to your website. Some people love these, some people hate these. Some are good for certain practice areas and not good for others. But smart chat bots that are clever, can significantly increase your chances of obtaining leads directly through your website.

Just consider it again. Some people find them intrusive or annoying. But chat bots are services that are affordable. And they can control a dialogue flow to encourage visitors to reach out for more information, which is what you want.

#8 Define Your Target Client

Number eight, revisit who your target client is. This may sound a little woo-woo to you. But hold on, don’t skip this part. Remember that your website’s content, whether it’s a practice area page, or a blog, or a biography section, whatever it is, it needs to appeal to your target audience. And it is always good, at least every year or two years to seriously re-evaluate who your audience is.

Consider who makes up your ideal clients, your very, very best clients? What are their values? What are their demographics? What do they need? Where can you find them, create content for that audience on your website, by addressing their specific pain points, and providing possible solutions for them. This is a great exercise that doesn’t take that long, you can look at the clients that you’ve had in the past year or two that are your best clients. And then just try to find more of those people.

#9 Understand Your Competitors

Okay, number nine, study your competitors, it is getting more and more competitive out there. And there are some people that have their game faces on they are ready. Regularly analyzing your competitors can help you figure out what marketing strategies you need to implement to improve your rankings.

You can check out their website, check out their blog posts, check out their social media channels, and make a note of patterns. What seems to be working or not working for them. If they have some article, or some topic that seems to go viral, or maybe not even viral, but several people are engaging and commenting on it, then you will want to have some sort of article or post about that as well. You can use tools that are paid for this.

Or you can just do frankly, the hard work and look at your competitors websites and social media. There is no downside to this. And once you know what your competitors are doing, you know who is on page one that you want to be, you can start developing a realistic strategy to outrank those pages.

#10 Schedule Your Content

Number ten. Create a schedule if you are doing blog posts, and the answer to this should be yes. And if you are not doing blog posts, then you should hire someone to do them for you. Because, again, unless you have content on your website that is consistent and valuable, Google will not come back to look at your website. If you spent 1000s and 1000s of dollars on a gorgeous website, and then do not put any more content on it.

The Google bots will not come back and your rankings certainly won’t go up and in many cases they’ll go down. So prioritizing blogging and creating a regular schedule will help keep your website’s content fresh and increase the chance that more and more visitors will come to your website.

#11 Revisit Keyword Search

Revisit keyword research. You’ve all done keyword research, right? I’m sure the answer to that is also Yes. You should know what your potential clients are putting into Google to find you If you have been targeting the same keywords or similar keywords for some time, and you’re not seeing exponential traction from that, it is time to re-evaluate your strategy.

Again, take a look at what your competitors are doing. Consider what practice areas in which you really want to draw attention. Use tools that are free, like Google Analytics to figure out what phrases and longtail keywords you really should be targeting. You can look at a targeted search and see the questions also asked, those are all great blog post ideas.

And then at the very bottom of every Google search, there are keywords that other people have searched for, in that same topic area, look at all of these and really develop a strategy surrounding some new and fresh keywords that you want to rank for.

#12 Optimize Your Website

Optimize your website for mobile users, almost every single person is looking at your website on a cell phone. So if you think that your website is mobile ready, just take a peek at it on your own mobile device. Because unfortunately, you might be surprised, especially if you’ve had updates recently, especially if you have had changes made to your website. Because the majority of web traffic comes from mobile phones, your website must be optimized for mobile users or you are going to risk losing out on a majority of potential leads. I don’t mean to scare you. But that is true. Because it’s it is super scary. So your website’s design should be easily convertible to mobile screens and offer the same functionality that a computer user would have. Make sure that they can X out of a pop up, make sure that they can access the menu, make sure that your text is not overlapping the mobile screen so they can’t read it.

#13 Revisit Your Email Marketing

Revisit your email marketing. Email marketing is not dead. No matter what anyone tells you. Your Email marketing is one of the best ways to stay on the minds of past clients, referrals, potentially new clients, everyone, everyone that is interested in your legal services. Not only does it help you collect contact information, so you know who these people are.

But regular communication actually expands your audience. Because a lot of people will share valuable emails with friends, colleagues and their network. revisit what lead magnets or opt ins or whatever little freebie or bonus you are giving to collect email addresses, is it still relevant.

And even if it is relevant, maybe it’s time to just introduce something new so that when people come to your website, they have a new option. Perhaps they weren’t interested in your previous lead magnet, but they would be interested in a new one. So you can start test email campaigns to see what works best for your audience. You can do a B testing on that. But whatever you decide, make sure that you are revisiting and revamping your email marketing for 2022.

#14 Manage Your Online Reviews

Manage your online reviews. Now I am sure that almost all of you probably have millions of five star reviews because you guys are the best. But there are some times where a disgruntled client or even someone who isn’t your client, they were just fussy at the person that answered the phone will leave you a negative review. It is very important to manage your online reviews.

A significant portion of consumers depend on reviews when they’re seeking services of any kind, especially legal services, you know that we all go check those reviews. If reviews are not coming in as often as you like. Make sure to send review requests to past clients or colleagues. I’m just going to say that here.

Ask early ask often for reviews. Positive reviews are really important because they are increasing the chances that a lead is going to become a client. There are services that you can purchase that will monitor your online reviews for you. However you decide to approach this just make sure that you do approach it. Just manage your own online reviews, make sure that you are constantly revisiting them.

#15 Analyze Your Website Traffic

Analyze your website traffic. Analyzing website metrics is crucial. And I know that some of you may have your eyes glazing over at this point, and you don’t want to hear it. But when you see pageviews climb, that is encouraging. And it makes you want to keep them moving in that direction. In order to do that, you need to know where your visitors are coming from. If you suddenly see a surge in traffic, you need to know why that happened, where those people came from, so that you can continue to produce content like this.

Again, you can go to Google Analytics, if you are in WordPress, you can add a tool similar to jetpack where you can see how popular certain blog posts are. And then you can take that content that’s popular, and write something a little different that’s on the same topic.

#16 Optimize Your Website For Speed

Optimize your website for speed. Your Law firm website needs to load fast. And when I say fast, I mean less than two seconds. Anything longer than that, and you have lost a potential client. The speed load time is exceptionally important, because when people come to your website, it doesn’t load fast. And they leave Google takes notice of that. So not only are you losing a potential client, Google is also dinging your ratings for it. Make sure that you have your entire website optimized to load quickly. If you don’t know how to do that. This is the one time you really absolutely need to get an expert in there to look at it and make sure that it loads fast. Because if you have a beautiful website, but it takes 10 seconds to load, no one’s going to see that beautiful website.

#17 Start Guest Posting

Start guest posting. Guest posting is a strategy. That may seem counterintuitive, right? I am always talking about putting posts on your own website on your own real estate. Why in the world would I suggest guest posting, it’s because of the coveted backlinks that you will get one of the indicators that Google uses to develop your SEO to develop your score to for them to determine how popular you are, how authentic how much of an expert you are is through backlinks.

And a backlink is when another website, links to your website. And you want bigger fish to link to your website. If you have large websites that are considered trustworthy news sites, educational sites, business sites that link back to your website, Google will think that you are also trustworthy. So guest posting is a strategy that you can use to obtain these backlinks. You can reach out to other website owners. You can ask for an article to be published on their website. But I’m going to give you a trick on how to get great backlinks for free. And it’s totally white hat.

There is a website called Help a Reporter Out it’s haro.com. And you can go there and sign up for free. And you will get one to two emails every single day. And these are journalists that are looking for quotes or advice or expertise in different areas. Some of those will have nothing to do with you. It’ll be in health or beauty or travel. But every once in a while there are requests for attorneys in specific practice areas to opine and give their opinion about some popular news story. When you write back to them, they will take your quote and put it in their article which is on the internet and link back to your website. This is completely free. You may not have the time to look at all of this. So it’s a really great idea to have an assistant or paralegal someone else get these emails. Every day, look through them very quickly. And if there’s anything that is of relevance to your practice area, have them send that to you so that you can send your quote or your opinion. Again, it’s free.

#18 Sign Up For Legal Directories

Sign up for legal directories. We all know that legal directories are growing market, utilizing legal directories as part of your SEO strategy also leads to backlinks. Why? Because once you are on a legal directory that has a strong Domain Authority score with Google, and it links back to your website, Google again considers you then an authority.

#19 Consider Retargeting Facebook Ads

Consider retargeting Facebook ads. And you all know that I don’t really talk a lot about paid advertising. But if you have ever searched for something online, and we all have only to have that product or service pop up in ads on other websites, you my friend have been retargeted retargeting is kind of give or take a cost effective way to stay on the minds of potential clients.

#20 Have an Appealing Website

If someone is considering legal services for the first time, they may not be ready to sign up the first time they come across your website or another attorneys website. However, with top of mind awareness, retargeting, website, visitors are more likely to turn into qualified leads. So this is a little more advanced. This is sort of your AP class, right? If you are doing everything else I’ve talked about in this episode, if you are saying to me, yes, the net, I am writing tons of long form content that is keyword in an optimized for SEO, and I am completely on my game with social media.

And I’ve already reached out to HARO and backlinks and I’m doing all of these things that you have recommended and you are looking for the next step, this might be it. So I just want to include it because it is really a way to target your audience. And we all know that right? When you’re looking for something, and then all of a sudden, you see 1000 Other people suggesting something similar.

#21 Expand Your Network

Expand your network, expanding your network can have a significant impact on your website’s success. Consider expanding your network specifically on LinkedIn. If you haven’t, a lot of attorneys are there. And a lot of attorneys are not there yet.

But you should be if you’re not, because LinkedIn is a place where frankly, normal human beings are that could be your potential clients. But also it is a network of people who could refer clients to you. So definitely expand your network on social media profiles, I always suggest LinkedIn first, but also your personal outreach, community involvement. COVID. Hopefully, we’ll be over at some point. soon. I hope that this ages, well, this podcast, and COVID is over soon. And at that point, we can all start mingling again, and networking the way that we use to expand your network however you can right now.

#22 Consider Hiring A Digital Marketing Company

This may sound self-serving, but in my time doing this, I have learned a few things. Attorneys and I am one of the hosts. So I feel I can speak on this. Attorneys are Type A personalities aren’t we? We are controlling. We like to do things ourselves. Frankly, we are usually capable of doing those things ourselves. We’re prolific writers, we’re usually pretty quick on the uptake. And we feel like we can figure things out if they are figure out a bubble. We can figure it out. But there is a time and a place to outsource to people who can do it better and faster than you.

For example, I don’t do my own taxes. I’m not gonna do my taxes, but I could do my taxes. I could figure that out for myself, but the amount of time that it would take me to do that. And the uncertainty as to whether or not I’ve done it right? Is too burdensome for me. So I just I just outsource it and let the experts handle it. When it comes down to it, I really want to give everyone that is listening, the opportunity to try to do this for themselves. It is why I have over 100 blog posts on my website. It is why I continue to do this podcast.

But when it comes down to it, SEO is hard. It often takes years for law firm websites to get off the ground without help from specialized experts. Sometimes it takes over a year, even with help from a specialized expert, and frankly, anyone that tells you different, you know, I got a bridge to sell you. Because SEO is hard. And it takes a long time. But it’s like anything that’s worth anything in life, right? If you put out one blog post a month, and think that you’re going to be able to compete. Just think about it in terms of the gym. And I know nobody wants to think about it in terms of the gym.

But but here we go. If you go to the gym once a month, what kind of results are you going to get, versus if you went to the gym three times a week, what about five times a week, there are competitors of yours out there that are posting content on their websites, once, twice, and even three times a week, they are doing podcasts, they’re on social media, they are on other people’s podcasts, they’re out there hustling. And if you don’t have the time, or the inclination to really hustle out there and do it yourself. It might be the time to consider hiring a digital marketing company, I’m going to throw some more statistics at you that may help you understand the landscape and make a decision.

Research shows that law firms typically spend 8% of their gross on marketing. So I’ll just let you do the math 8% of gross on marketing. So if we give or take a little bit of marketing, maybe there’s some print marketing, maybe you have a billboard conservatively. And I mean extremely conservatively, we are looking at an average of five or 6% of gross income of a law firm that is spent on marketing. That is what your competitors are doing. Between five and 8%. They are spending on digital marketing. If you want to be competitive, you either have to compete with them by doing this all yourself, which is possible if you have the time. Or you might want to consider outsourcing it.

At the end of the day, this is really up to you, you have to think about what is one client worth to you. And of course, a medical malpractice attorney will have a very different answer than an estate planning attorney. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that the value that one client is to a law firm is different based on the practice area. So think about what that one potential client is worth to you. And now think about your time and how much things cost. If you’re just starting out, and you simply have no ability to financially invest in digital marketing, then that is why I do these podcasts. And that is why I have my blog posts.

But if you are at a point where you are on the fence regarding digital marketing, I just want to let you know what are your competitors doing that isn’t an important question for you to be asking. And it’s also important for you to realize that your time is really valuable. So consider what one client would be worth that digital marketing could bring in for you and then make the decisions that are the best for you at law quill.

My entire goal has always been to help a large segment of law firms from very small to medium sized. And wherever you are at on that journey, I want to be able to provide value for you. And so I am not shilling my wares here, I am simply giving you all of the options that you have.

Conclusion

We did it. We did it. We made it to 22. And really the point of this entire podcast today was to help you remember to stay on top of your game. Law Firm marketing tax need to be top of the line because your competitors are out there. And they are hustling and they are doing it. It can be overwhelming to manage those tactics on your own, which is why you have me and you have my blog, and this podcast. A lot of new information has been put up recently on the blog. So please go check that out. We usually put up a new blog post or two every week, because I practice what I preach. And if you’re interested in getting those automatically, you can sign up for my email list, which is really easy to do on the website. And if you’ve been there, you know, there’s a really funny pop up of me. So that can entice you to go take a peek at it. In the meantime, I want to say thank you. Thank you, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, I am getting to live my dream because of you, because you are faithful listeners, and you are there supporting what Law Quill is doing on social media on my website. It is my privilege to be able to help small and medium sized law firms grow online. And I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for letting me take a little break from this podcast. But trust me, there’s much more to come. And I hope that you will continue to listen. And of course if you ever need me, you can find me at www.LawQuill.com. And until next time, thank you so much for joining me in the legal marketing lounge.