Although many of us commonly regard lawyers as effortlessly successful individuals, most experienced attorneys won’t hesitate to correct this mistaken assumption. While practicing law can be a highly profitable career path, not all law firms see massive success right out of the gate. After all, how are you supposed to attract clients if no one is even aware of your practice? Up and coming attorneys looking for effective ways to build awareness for new practices would do well to consider the following measures.
Maintain an Active Presence on Social Media
It’s easy to see why businesses of all sizes have come to regard social media as an essential marketing tool. In addition to providing you with user-friendly platforms to spread the word about your practice, the web’s most popular social media sites will help you connect and communicate with scores of prospective clients. Just remember that creating accounts for your practice on social media mainstays generally isn’t enough to sufficiently promote a business – you’ll also need to maintain an active presence on those platforms.
Among other things, maintaining an active presence entails posting updates on each of your social media accounts each day. Fortunately, posts can easily be reused from platform to platform, so you needn’t necessarily worry about creating new posts for each individual site on a daily basis. (Of course, this isn’t to say that you should never aim to create platform-specific posts.) The exact number of updates you should post per day varies depending on the platform. For example, a single daily update should be sufficient for sites like Facebook and Instagram, whereas multiple daily updates are liable to serve you well on short-form platforms like Twitter.
Create Locally-Focused Web Content
In the interest of driving local clients to your website, you should make an effort to craft locally-focused web content. Such content includes blog posts, feature articles and other text-based forms of media. When putting together these pieces, make a point of including search terms that your target clientele is likely to utilize. For example, a divorce practice in Madison, WI might find success with something along the lines of “divorce attorney in Madison” or “affordable divorce lawyer in Madison, WI.”
Although finding the most effective keywords may require a bit of trial and error, it shouldn’t take you long to get the hang of keyword integration. Additionally, take care to avoid keyword stuffing – i.e., the practice of littering content with keywords and/or using keywords in a wholly inorganic manner. This is liable to tank your search ranking and cause prospective clients to question your professionalism. You can also help boost your site’s search ranking by posting new content on a regular basis.
Keep an Eye on Online Reviews
Many attorneys – and many businesses in general, for that matter – rely heavily on online reviews from satisfied clients. Whereas favorable reviews help drive business, bad reviews are likely to drive away business. With this in mind, request that clients – particularly ones who are pleased with your work – write online reviews about their experience with your practice. When doing so, make sure to avoid coming off as desperate and/or overbearing. After all, clients shouldn’t necessarily feel obligated to write favorable reviews. Rather, they should want to.
Create a User-Friendly Website
Websites for lawyers should be user-friendly, easy to navigate and, perhaps mostly importantly, optimized for mobile devices. Since the majority of web traffic now comes from mobile devices, any practice with an unoptimized website is doing themselves harm. Furthermore, adding a handy chat feature to your website can be a great way to connect with prospective clients. So, if your practice’s current website leaves a lot to be desired, don’t hesitate to reach out to a knowledgeable web designer and set things right.
As is the case with other fledgling enterprises, marketing a new law practice can be an uphill battle. Depending on where you’re based, the area of law in which you specialize and your preferred promotional outlets, attracting new business is liable to prove challenging. However, while spreading the word about a new practice isn’t always easy, it’s far from impossible. So, if effective ways to drum up awareness for your practice are what you seek, put the previously discussed tips to good use.