Here’s the truth about marketing your small family law and divorce firm.
It’s overwhelming.
You are a lawyer, and chances are that coming up with strategic initiatives to market your law firm isn’t your strong suit.
Like one of our clients said in a recent review that she left us:
Marketing your family law and divorce firm isn’t a “nice-to-have”, it’s a “must have”.
Failing to take action on building out your family law and divorce firm’s marketing strategy and beefing up your online presence, can hurt your business.
Failing to take action today results in a loss tomorrow.
Marketing your family law and divorce firm isn’t a “nice-to-have”, it’s a “must have”.
Failing to take action on building out your family law and divorce firm’s marketing strategy and beefing up your online presence, can hurt your business.
Failing to take action today results in a loss tomorrow.
It Starts With Defining Your Family Law Firm’s Marketing Budget
You can continue to play the “referral game” – waiting for past clients to recommend you to family and friends who are thinking about filing for divorce.
But the truth of the matter is that referrals are not a sustainable strategy to continue to grow and scale your law firm.
The center of any good family law marketing strategy begins with deciding upon a budget.
We wrote an entire blog post that you can use to help you decide on what your marketing budget should be.
Think about planning out your family law firm’s marketing budget as you would for purchasing a house, car or any other investment.
What is the realistic amount that you’d be willing to spend to acquire a new client? How many new client’s are you looking to bring in per month. On second thought, how many new clients could you realistically handle?
The Pay Per Click (PPC) Approach – Generate Immediate Leads For Your Family Law Firm.
Chances are you’ve been approached by a company before to market your family law firm – you tried it, and it failed.
That’s because most agencies have no idea what they’re doing, nor do they care to take the time to figure it out.
Here’s the reality: There isn’t a “one size fits all” solution when it comes to marketing your family law firm.
The same campaign that worked for one niche of law isn’t necessarily going to glean the same results when applied to a different niche (the same can be said firm to firm).
Don’t let these prior experiences shield you from experimenting with PPC again – paid advertising is a proven method for generating immediate cases.
What Exactly Is PPC + How Will It Help My Family Law Firm Generate Cases?
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the only way to ensure that your law firm is showing up when potential clients are searching for a family and divorce.
In the above example, a simple search such as, “Divorce lawyer near me” as input ito Google. The first two search results were for divorce lawyers in the local Philadelphia area.
When your potential clients have decided that they are at their wits end, they will most likely navigate to a search engine (Google or Bing) and start looking for divorce lawyers in their local area.
Paid Advertising and PPC is also a great way to find clients through online marketing that match specific client criteria.
For example: do you specialize in high asset divorces – helping your clients divide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of assets, property and finances? That’s an extremely unique area of family law, and pulling in leads from a generic marketing campaign isn’t going to be what you’re looking for.
However, PPC is the only method of online paid advertising that allows you to custom-tailor your campaigns to go-after specific household incomes, age brackets, geographic locations and demographics. Kind of crazy, huh?
Things To Consider When Running a PPC Campaign
Who is your target consumer?
Most times when a potential client or lead is researching a divorce attorney, they’re making a very calculated decision that comes with a lot of emotional steam.
In most cases, hiring a divorce attorney is almost the last straw in a long, drawn out situation where emotions are high and a lot is on the line.
The first place that a potential client is going to turn to is their phone.
Navigating to search engines (either Google or Bing) is second nature to anyone with a smart phone or computer. Chances are, they’re going to type in, “best divorce lawyer near me” or “Atlanta divorce lawyer”.
You’ll want to consider who your ideal client is: what kind of house do they live in, what kind of care do they drive, what is their household income, what types of assets will you have to help them split up.
The Longterm Play: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Family Lawyers
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely important component to your family law firm’s marketing strategy.
In short, SEO is the combination of strategies and tactics that you use on your website and online profiles, to build trust with the major search engines (Google and Bing).
It’s a combination of using the right keywords, as well as having a technically sound website (fast load times, no broken links, mobile-optimized pages, etc).
Let’s say that you’re a family and divorce lawyer in Chicago – you’ll want to incorporate those keywords onto your website so that Google knows the services that your business offers.
This way, when potential leads and clients turn to Google and Bing, looking for a company with services relating to yours, your business will show up.
SEO is different for PPC because you do not pay per lead. Essentially, you are receivng free clicks and calls because of the trust that you have built with search engines.
How Long Will It Take My Family Law Firm To Rank With SEO?
As we mentioned, SEO is a long-term strategy.
It’s something that should be implemented from the very first time that you launch your law firm’s website.
Over the years, the blog posts and content that you have published on your website will start to rank for keywords relating to “family and divorce lawyer”. This process can take anywhere from 9 months to 3 years.
Yes, the timeframe is that long. Think of SEO like a long-term relationship. You have to put the time in to make it work. Any attention that’s taken off of your SEO is going to hurt it.
However, there are ways that you can “cut the line” so to speak.
At the SMB Team, we have a proven way to get family and divorce lawyers ranking with SEO in 90-days or less.
We focus on helping our clients rank locally for very specific terms relating to their ideal clients and local geographic area.
There’s no use in trying to outrank the powerhouse lead generation companies such as: Avvo, FindLaw, etc.
These websites have extremely high domain authority and have built trust with Google and Bing over many, many years.
