Marketing a law firm is not easy; it requires hard work and has an ever-changing path. The SEO and Paid Search that your law firm did three years ago is just a mistake now. Your website that was cutting-edge four years ago does not fit today’s mobile world. I have worked with hundreds of lawyers and law firms and I spend hours each day watching the changes and trends in legal marketing. Here are the top five legal marketing mistakes I see so far in 2021:
1. The Law Firm Website
Your firm needs to update the website every 24 months. It may not need a complete overhaul, but the coding, structure, and images all need a refresh. Today’s focus is website speed (on all pages), clear contact points, ease-of-use, and mobile aggressiveness. Looking at over 40 legal websites in 2021, over 57% of traffic is mobile and I expect this figure is even a bit low. Talk to your website team and update your site regularly.
2. Content is Still King
In order to not lose ground in ranking, site visits, and conversion, take the time to build a content marketing plan. Content is affordable, and if done correctly, will have a huge impact on your legal marketing. Type the keyword you want to rank for into Google and look at the top three organic results. What does their content look like compared to yours? Now fix it. Everyone has their own idea on ideal content length; for example, I like to see 2,000-3,000 words or more on a “main page” and 800 words or more on a blog post. These numbers will vary by market and your content plan.
3. Local Marketing
Google My Business (GMB) has become the foundation of all good legal marketing plans. This means having a complete and optimized GMB profile, performing detailed and complete citation work, active GMB images and posts, and a huge effort in GMB reviews. Also consider Google’s new “Google Screened” section known as Local Ads. I cannot stress this enough: If you do nothing else, get your local marketing moving!
4. Reviewing Data
We can track anything today. Keywords, site visits, calls, and everything else you might need to build an audience profile. If you do not know your target audience, you are wasting time and money. The data is available for you to review, create a client profile, and then go after them – why are you not doing it?
5. Buying a Product, Not Building a Plan
We’ve all heard it before: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. This is also true with legal marketing. Buying a website is not a marketing plan. Paying someone to do SEO is not a marketing plan. Starting PPC is not a marketing plan. Start with a clear and realistic goal. Then, analyze the market and your competitors, and create a strategy to reach that goal. Lastly, build the program, review the results, and adjust as necessary to keep the goal in front of you.
Get The Legal Marketing Company Experts On Your Side Today
I hear from attorneys that they just cannot compete in such an aggressive market but that is just not true. Set your goals and then sit down with people in the industry and talk about all the available solutions out there. It can be done – and it can be done on almost any budget!
The Legal Marketing Company (TLMC) loves to talk about marketing law firms. Our team of experts is happy to run analysis, audit your website, and even build out some sample plans for your firm at NO CHARGE. Just send us an email, give us a call, or schedule some time here.
