Law firms, like any other business, need to keep a steady stream of new clients and cases coming through the door. But since attorneys are definitely experts in their practice area, but usually not marketing specialists, lead generation for lawyers poses a challenge. So what can law firms do to ensure a steady stream of incoming leads to fill the pipeline?
Whether you’re a solo practitioner or small practice handling marketing yourself, a larger firm with an in-house marketer, or a firm that works with a marketing agency, the practical attorney lead generation tips outlined in this article will keep your pipeline full with new potential clients. Keep reading to learn more about trackable marketing tactics you can implement to drive impactful results for your firm.
What is lead generation for lawyers and why is it important?
Lead generation for lawyers is the act of driving prospects with good-fit cases to your firm using marketing strategies and tactics. Lawyer lead gen is actually quite similar to that of any other industry, but to get to the point where firms can generate leads, they need to have an understanding of the marketing funnel and an approach for each stage.
While it might not seem like it, all businesses, including those in the legal industry, utilize the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is a framework that depicts how prospects convert into clients and can be divided into 3 main stages:
- Awareness: The awareness stage, or at the top-of-the-funnel, is where prospective clients learn your law firm exists. Prospects may see your logo on an advertisement in town or search on Google for an answer to a legal question and come across an article authored by your firm.
- Consideration: At the middle-of-the funnel, or during the consideration stage, prospective clients are interested in how your firm’s services can help solve their challenges. At this stage of the funnel, through your marketing activities, it’s your objective to convince prospects that you’re the firm for the case.
- Conversion: At this bottom-of-the-funnel stage, you’re urging prospective clients in your marketing messaging to take action and get in touch. These marketing activities should prompt prospects to fill out a form or call to set up a consultation with your firm. For that reason, the conversion stage is where lead generation generally takes place.
For example, consider how the marketing funnel applies to a personal injury firm. It might seem as if an injured person simply reaches out to the first firm that pops up in Google when they’ve been a victim in some sort of accident. It’s likely, however, that the process starts well before that point.
Just like any other business, personal injury firms raise awareness with upper-funnel tactics that garner widespread attention like ads on TV and radio, as well as bus wraps and billboards. They likely also address commonly asked legal matters via their blog and social media channels. By doing this, their brand will already be top of mind when a person has a need for their services.
When an accident occurs and thus the need for a personal injury lawyer arises, the person has entered the consideration stage and will therefore narrow their search to several potential firms. If the firm has already made a positive impression on the individual in the awareness stage, the prospect will continue with online research in the consideration stage. Information on the firm’s website, like blog content, case studies and testimonials, will help the prospect weigh whether the firm is the best fit for their needs.
Ultimately, in the conversion stage, the firm with the most effective lead generation and intake strategy will both prompt the individual to reach out and swiftly convert them into a client.
How does the lead generation process work?
The lead generation process is essentially the result of marketing efforts throughout the entire funnel culminating with a lead generation activity that drives prospective clients to submit their contact information. Meaning, once the firm has effectively communicated its expertise and offerings to prospects – it’s time to generate the lead.
The lead gen process is akin to an exchange of information: the prospect is providing their contact information in exchange for a high-value offer from the firm. This could be in the form of a free or discounted consultation or case review, or even an ebook, physical book, or email newsletter that serves as a steady stream of information on legal topics important to the prospect.
While the lead gen process might take place on your law firm’s website, social media, or through various digital or traditional channels, the value-add is a critical component. The other key aspect is that once target clients have provided their contact information for a consultation, your firm must have operations in place to swiftly convert them into a paying client.
Now that we’ve discussed how the lead generation process works at a very high level, let’s get into the eight actions your firm can take to produce leads.
8 actions that generate leads for your law firm
Step 1: Turn your law firm website into a lead generating machine
It’s virtually impossible to market your law firm without a website as the website is the centerpiece of your legal marketing efforts. It’s not just a place where you convey your law firm's areas of practice, expertise, the services you provide, and the results you’ve generated for past clients — it’s the landing pad for all your marketing efforts. Therefore, when used properly, your site will serve as your lead generation engine.
Due to its central role in lead gen efforts, you need to optimize your site’s conversion potential. Most marketing-savvy law firms use call tracking to gauge which marketing activities are driving which leads — context which is then used to optimize their marketing spend and improve their efforts to convert prospects into paying clients.
For example, a family lawyer handles many different types of legal matters, such as alimony, custody, child support and the like. For each of those matters, you’ll have a dedicated service page on your site. When you implement call tracking and leads roll in, you’ll know who landed on which page and whether they arrived at that page by clicking on a social media ad, searching on Google or Yelp, or through any of your other legal marketing activities.
This is made possible with Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI), a feature of call tracking that assigns or dynamically inserts a tracking phone number from your number pool onto your website landing pages. A number pool is the group of predetermined numbers from which the dynamically inserted number on your site is selected at random. This dynamic tracking phone number, along with timestamp data, translates information to you about the visitor, including: who they are, when they called, what content they interacted with on your site, and how they found you.
Enabling call tracking with DNI and using number pools on your website enables attorneys to effectively attribute the ROI from their various marketing efforts so they can identify which channels and strategies work best — and invest more in those efforts, while allocating funds away from under-performing channels.
Step 2: Update your Google Business Profile and facilitate positive reviews
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a marketing must-have for attorneys. Setting up a Business Profile means potential clients will find you when they search online for your firm, firms in your area, or those that practice particular areas of law.
Make sure you fill out your profile and keep all information current to stay competitive in search results and keep up appearances online. Since social proof matters, it’s good practice to encourage clients to submit reviews and have a process for accumulating them. You should also monitor and respond to reviews on a regular basis, whether they’re positive or negative.
Recent images of your offices, your team, and even charity and community events your firm takes part in are a great touch, as it humanizes the firm for onlooking prospective clients. This approach to keeping your Business Profile up-to-date ensures that when potential local clients search for you, they find you. Better still, it means they’ll like what they see — and will hopefully get in touch.
Finally, don’t overlook the importance of measuring the effectiveness of your Google Business Profile so you can gauge the return on investment (ROI) of this channel – just like any other marketing channel your firm allocates time and resources to.
Step 3: Use engaging landing pages to communicate with potential clients — in language they understand
While your website’s homepage and ‘About’ sections are the same for every visitor, landing pages are the key to reaching different segments of your audience. Landing pages welcome new visitors to your website after they click on your marketing CTAs (calls-to-action), on social media marketing ads or a referring website for example. Most importantly, they provide valuable information to visitors based on their specific needs and pain points.
Imagine again you’re a family lawyer. If you’re running online ads for alimony cases, you’ll want visitors who click through on your ads to arrive at a dedicated landing page outlining your services, customer testimonials, and other relevant information as they relate to alimony. However, you also specialize in prenuptial agreements, child custody, and modifications of child support — so you need to have separate landing pages for each of these segments.
But what makes a great landing page?
First, they contain clear and accessible language. Cut the legalese. Tailor the language you use according to how your target clients express their own problems. A good way to delve into this is through keyword research, “people also ask,” and “related questions” on Google searches. Reflect these phrases and terms in your content and the ads you run, referencing people’s challenges in the exact way they articulate them.
Every landing page should contain multiple clear CTAs, encouraging prospects to contact your firm and discuss your services. Use Call Tracking with DNI (dynamic number insertion) to stay on top of which prospects called after viewing which landing pages — and to accommodate their needs accordingly.
In addition to using call tracking to understand which landing pages and campaigns drove which leads to call you, Form Tracking by CallRail completes the picture of your prospects, uniting the online and offline components of their journey and encompassing all contact points. You can even generate your own forms and attach them to landing pages to collect leads’ contact information. With this solution, you don’t need to use an outside form builder and then import the form to your website — just create and add the form to your landing pages. This way, you can track the leads in the same system of record as your calls and digital marketing efforts — providing you with unified analytics in a single source of truth.
Effective landing pages are essential to lead generation, and the insights derived from tracking them are key to driving even more leads as you continue to optimize your efforts.
Step 4: Use one call-to-action (CTA) and make it crystal clear
Once prospects land on your landing pages or website content or encounter your campaigns, what do you want them to do? This is where your calls-to-action (CTAs) come into play. You’ll want to make sure the next action prospects should take is crystal clear. If you want them to get in touch to learn more, say “Call [your phone number] to discuss your needs with one of our experts.'' Remove ambiguity — direct leads to exactly where you want them to go.
Review your current assets to ensure they’re painfully straightforward and successfully driving conversions. This includes both internal assets, or those on your website, and external sites or directories where your company is listed. Think about the following assets as you map this out:
- On your website, make a flow chart of the distinct ways leads can reach you: through practice pages, blog posts, and service pages.
- On sales collateral shared with bottom-of-funnel leads, map out a CTA that will move them along the funnel. For example, booking an exploratory call or getting in touch to find out a quote.
- Get creative and try assets that you’ve previously ignored, such as infographics, informative videos, and quizzes. Test new strategies and tactics to identify what works best for your firm and your prospects - but make sure every asset culminates in a singular, clear Call-to-Action (CTA).
- Make sure each directory has a clear CTA. These CTAs should differ for a law-focused directory, for example, versus a directory for a more generalized audience like Google My Business.
- On review sites, ensure there’s enough educational material available for readers to learn about your firm and its unique approach.
For each asset, map out the subsequent action that the lead should take. It really should be only one action per asset, not “book a call,” “visit our website for more information,” and “follow us on social media.” Systematically edit your listings, website pages, and collateral to reflect one clear action that the prospect should take.
Streamlining your clients’ journey will boost their experience and increase conversion rates.
Step 5: Don’t shy away from social media
Attorneys should absolutely demonstrate their expertise by actively participating in the social media conversation. Social media is a fantastic lead generation avenue. Social lets lawyers showcase their personality and knowledge, which in turn, translates into authority in their niche and inspires confidence in the firm.
Attorneys should bear these best practices in mind when interacting online:
- Be active and opinionated on social media. You don’t need a profile on every single platform, but choose the social media outlets that feel authentic to your firm and stick to them. Commit to posting on a regular cadence, say twice weekly.
- Respond to comments and reviews as often as possible. It might help to block a 15-minute calendar event to do this weekly.
- Get serious about reputation management. Responsiveness goes a long way. Whether responding to a negative review or graciously thanking a reviewer for their positive feedback, both are powerful indicators that the firm is involved, listening, and attuned with clients’ needs.
- Use your social media platforms to answer common questions related to your practice area, whether in posts, by going live, sharing YouTube videos, and so on. In this way, you cast a wide net to people struggling with these matters, while also showing you’re approachable and competent.
Carving out time for social media might seem unproductive for your firm, so focus on low hanging fruit. What could work for your schedule? Maybe it’s turning on your webcam to discuss a legal matter in your niche for 15 minutes a week, and then posting that across all your channels and your site.
Once you’ve established a decent library of content, prospects with relevant challenges _will _find your firm. Use lead generation forms and call tracking to gauge which channels and topics are drumming up the most interest. Finally, use the data from the leads you generate to inspire your next content topics and promote it on the channels where you experience the most success.
Step 6: Use content marketing to solve real problems (and ditch the fluff)
Your firm needs to create content for your own website regularly. But why, exactly?
Not only do your leads and prospects want to see proof of your expertise – such as thought leadership on recent legislation and blog posts covering important topics related to your niche – but so do search engines. By publishing content regularly, you ensure prospects and leads are able to search for and find your website, and give Google a reason to share your site in search results.
As prospects come across your content, you want them to be impressed by the depth of your knowledge, and hopefully turn to you for their legal needs. You’ll show that you understand their challenges and can help them reach the best possible solution. But avoid creating noise just for the sake of it. No matter your strategy, focus on creating content that adds value.
Content is one more place you can use call tracking and DNI (dynamic number insertion) to understand the needs of your audience. Again, DNI dynamically inserts a unique phone number from your website number pool onto your site’s different pages, so you know which blog posts were viewed by which leads before they reached out.
When your team takes their call or reaches out after a form submission, you’ll know exactly what questions to ask. You’ll already know which marketing, based on which topics, drove them to your business. And since they’re likely not the only one facing that particular challenge, you’ll be able to capitalize on that subject matter for future marketing campaigns and establish your firm as a go-to resource for individuals struggling with that particular matter.
Step 7: Test, iterate and track offline advertisements and ads
Attorneys often use bus wraps, benches, transit stations, billboards and everything in between to cast a wide net while marketing their firm in local communities.
Thanks to the new era of marketing, it’s not just digital channels where you’re able to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing messaging and campaign creative. With call tracking, your firm can test out new tactics, analyze the results, and fine-tune your approach — even with out of home (OOH) collateral.
Call tracking lets you assign a unique phone number to each of your different traditional media campaigns so you know which leads are generated as a result of which messaging, media, locations — or whatever predetermined criteria you select. This lets you analyze each campaign’s ROI and determine where to continue investing and where to test a different approach.
Lawyers that use call tracking ensure they never go into calls cold, as they know which marketing campaigns drove leads to their business, whether offline or online. And with call tracking by CallRail, you’re able to view all those incoming leads together, in the same system of record. Imagine, a log of all leads generated — whether they called the number on your bus wrap, filled out a form on social media, or clicked on your firm’s ad on Google.
Step 8: Rethink word of mouth and get creative to drive new referrals
Word of mouth (WOM) has always been crucial to legal marketing. If you’ve done great work for a client in the past, and provided them with the experience they want, they’ll likely recommend you to others in the future. To capitalize on word of mouth marketing, put processes in place to encourage satisfied clients to pass your information along — just like generating reviews.
Something as simple as a card during the holiday season that thanks clients for using your business, and encouraging them to pass on the good word can help keep your firm top of mind. Or for clients that leave a positive review on Google or Yelp, reach out and request that they keep your firm in mind if friends or loved ones need an attorney they can trust.
Track these efforts by providing a physical business card and/or your virtual contact file (VCF) with a call tracking phone number. In the past, it was nearly impossible — similar to out of home (OOH) advertising — to track the ROI of word of mouth with any degree of certainty. Today, with call tracking, you can both facilitate word of mouth and calculate how much marketing value is coming from it — something you can’t do with typical marketing analytics solutions that don’t feature call tracking.
Test, track and transform your lead generation efforts with CallRail
Law firm lead generation gets more sophisticated every day. Law firms are now using a barrage of marketing channels and tactics — from their website, social media, Google Business Profile, content marketing and so many more — to engage prospects and generate leads.
Unfortunately, the budget is often finite — which is why you cannot afford to waste money on marketing that is not generating results for your firm. Instead, identify the most effective strategies and double down on these efforts with Call Tracking by CallRail. Use Form Tracking by CallRail to complete the picture and see all of your prospective client contacts. Monitor which marketing is driving leads — whether forms or calls that originate from your billboards, TV, search engines or social media — and double down on the tactics that generate your best leads.
*Book a demo or start a 14-day free trial today today to learn more about how CallRail can take your firm’s lead generation to new heights. *