The world of digital marketing is far from static. From rapidly evolving search engine capabilities to shifts in user behavior, your law firm’s digital marketing efforts should change and adapt to keep pace with these trends and insights. Most small to mid-sized law firms recognize the importance of building and maintaining a client-centered website. However, simply getting your website up and running is not enough—you should monitor its performance and use this data to make improvements that appeal to both potential clients and search engine algorithms. As you take stock of your current digital marketing strategy, here are four innovative trends to drive more traffic to your website and boost your visibility to potential clients looking for legal services in your community.
1. Prioritizing the Client Experience
By now, you probably recognize that people prefer user-friendly websites over those that are older, slower to load, and full of dense text. These days, most clients will begin their relationship with you when they click on your website. This means that a potential client will form an initial impression of you and your legal services within seconds of landing on your website. First impressions are everything, so consider how to make your homepage as effective and accessible as possible. Here are some “must-haves” for ensuring your law firm’s website puts the user experience above all else.
Negative Space Goes a Long Way
For the most part, people prefer aesthetics that are clean, uncluttered, and pleasing to the eye. Homepages that include large, all-caps messages and huge blocks of text or overly-busy visuals tend to be offputting, while sites with meaningful, condensed headings and short bursts of text (separated by negative space) connect better with site visitors. Take some time to view your website from the client’s perspective. Is the experience calming or overwhelming? Remember that your clients want to feel supported and reassured, so consider how you can convey these traits through the look and feel of your homepage.
Loading Speed Matters
People are used to websites that load instantaneously. If your law firm’s website takes more than two or three seconds to load, site visitors will likely become impatient and click on a different website. As more and more people are performing searches on their smartphones, it’s essential that you check your website’s loading speed on a mobile device. If it takes too long to load, consider replacing cumbersome images or identifying other ways of improving the loading speed.
2. Consider Paid Online Advertising
As people spend long stretches of time online, especially on social media platforms, digital advertising offers the opportunity to meet your clients where they already are. Creating social media profiles for your law firm enables you to interact with potential clients, showing them that you are genuinely interested in forming lasting relationships. Once you’ve created these profiles (on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, for example), start engaging with others by sharing posts, short videos, or commenting on recent cases related to your practice areas. Then, consider launching a targeted digital advertising campaign to promote a particular legal service or connect with a specific audience (i.e., people between the ages of 20 and 40, married couples, or other demographic groups). You can monitor and measure the effectiveness of your advertising, making adjustments along the way to increase its impact and reach.
3. Create Short-Form Videos to Engage With Potential Clients
With the increasingly visual landscape of digital media (think TikTok or Reels), people respond favorably to short, engaging videos. Many users prefer to watch short videos instead of reading an article on the same topic. While the prospect of filming a video may seem intimidating and time-consuming, you can use a smartphone to capture a short (one minute or less) video that sheds light on a legal topic or service your firm offers. Incorporating some humor into this video goes a long way in showing potential clients that you are approachable and invested in their experience.
4. Automation is Your Friend
Automated tools have come a long way in recent years. Automated systems can dramatically improve and simplify the client onboarding process, saving you, your clients, and your firm considerable time and energy. For instance, you can provide a clear contact form on your website for site visitors to complete right then and there. Their form will appear in your inbox with all the relevant information you need to understand their needs, allowing you to dive right in and connect with them. You can also provide a calendar tool that enables someone to schedule an initial consultation with you, removing the hassle of contacting your firm by phone to make an appointment. It’s time to explore how automation technology can help you and your firm improve the client onboarding process so you can focus more on what matters most—serving your clients.
If you want to learn more about how to make your law firm’s digital marketing strategy more effective, give LegalRev a call today at (800) 893-2590.
