There are many legal marketing methods that all law firms should use to keep the leads coming in. But you also should be sure to focus on marketing methods that are specific to the personal injury field. Keep reading to learn about these essential marketing techniques. If you want assistance with personal injury lawyer marketing, Forward Legal Marketing can help you.
Online marketing offers a relatively level playing field over traditional advertising. You can go head-to-head against your city’s big personal injury law firms if you are smart with your online marketing dollars. Large personal injury firms can put millions into billboards, TV, and radio ads, but you probably cannot. However, the strategies highlighted below will help you build your personal injury legal leads.
For many years, personal injury attorneys could often count on consumers pulling out the Yellow Pages or asking their friends for an attorney’s name when they had an injury or car accident. Today, a great deal has changed in personal injury marketing.
These days, consumers do plenty of their own research online before hiring a personal injury attorney. They study their legal issue in Google, compare the top three or four attorneys in their city, and review their options before hiring an attorney. Sometimes they may interview several lawyers before they make a decision, too. Note that even when the consumer gets a referral, they still research the lawyer online.
A recent Avvo survey of thousands of legal consumers found that one of the critical factors they consider is how the attorney responds and communicates to their queries. Also noteworthy was whether free consultations were available, their reviews, and their years of experience.
Here are more interesting facts about online legal consumers that personal injury attorneys should know:
An essential part of online marketing for personal injury lawyers is pay-per-click (PPC). One of the first things you should do when doing your PPC campaigns for personal injury lawyers is to bid on your brand name. You might wonder why you should spend marketing money on brand searches. Don’t you already show up in organic searches?
The big reason to bid on your legal brand name is your competitors may do it. So, the first thing the user will see when they click on that ad is your legal competitor’s information, not yours. How would you feel if the people grabbing your potential clients will see their name before yours?
There are other benefits to bidding on your brand name in PPC. You can control the marketing message that your potential clients see. If you only focus on organic search results, you allow Google to see what your potential clients will see. You would rather choose what that marketing message will be instead of Google!
Fortunately, bidding on your brand name is inexpensive when considering the bang for your buck. You worked hard to build your legal brand, so you should always protect it.
Video is becoming more critical than ever in business, which is also true in law. More people than ever after the pandemic use streaming video on mobile devices. Putting videos on your website allows your audience to see your appearance and hear your voice. These things help them to feel a connection to you.
Video also can boost your rates for client acquisition. Many studies suggest video leads to more site traffic, longer page visits, and better conversion rates.
This does not mean you must spend your entire budget on high-quality videos. Many personal injury clients succeed with a simple DSLR camera and a tripod. Good lighting is also essential.
If you would instead hand over video production to marketing professionals, that is also an option.
The days of people sitting at computers doing Google searches is not over…yet. However, more than 50% of online searches are from a mobile device, and that number grows annually. This is not surprising; think about how quickly you go for your phone to Google something you are considering buying. The trend to mobile is more than a trend now; it is an essential part of business.
You should design your website to work well on mobile because users are five times more likely to bail on a site that does not load correctly on a cell phone. Here are some essential tips for making your legal website mobile-friendly:
Be sure the website loads well on a mobile phone. It should be easy to read, and any forms the user can fill out should work correctly. For example, if your Contact Us form does not work properly on a cell phone, that is a big problem!
To see if your site is mobile-friendly, go to this Google website. This tool will tell you why your firm’s site is mobile-friendly or not.
Check your site’s speed. There are many sites where you can check how quickly your site loads. If your site loads a long time, you lose potential clients. Forward Marketing can help you with web design to ensure your site loads fast.
For your site to appear in organic search, your site needs to answer the questions that personal injury prospects ask Google. But what about local search results? Local search results show up above the organic search results with paid ads. For example, think about a local search for the best Italian restaurant in your city, and you will see a Google map with a bunch of red dots.
Each of those results when you click it opens a small text box about the eatery with its address, phone, ratings, etc. The next time someone in your city Googles ‘best personal injury lawyer for car wrecks in Miami,’ you want to be one of those top local search results.
How does that happen? Optimizing the box that appears when people click local options is a good start. This part has some technical aspects, but the first step is to set up your Google My Business page. Of course, any large city will have many personal injury attorneys fighting for the same leads you are. Therefore, you will need to do other things in SEO to rank high in local search results eventually. If you contact Forward Lawyer Marketing, we will gladly explain it to you.
When you are up against many personal injury firms in your city, your firm’s online reviews are a significant factor in your success or failure. Trust is critical when consumers make an online purchase, and there is no better way to make people trust you than to have plenty of positive reviews.
Increasing the number of positive reviews online can be as simple as asking satisfied clients to post a review. They can use many excellent review sites, including Avvo, Lawyers.com, and Martindale-Hubbell. However, no matter the site you focus on, it is essential to have a law firm culture where no one is shy about asking for client reviews.
Tell clients you want to read online if they enjoyed working with your firm. Sharing their experiences online helps you to learn and get better. But it also educates consumers in your city about the quality of your services. Also, your clients talking about their legal issues online can inform others who find themselves in their shoes.
No matter how successful your personal injury marketing is, all marketing has a shelf life. Refrain from assuming that it will do so without updates because your site content is performing well for organic search. Never think that because your legal videos on YouTube generate daily leads, you can consider that part of your marketing finished. Excellent personal injury marketing is an ongoing process that requires updates and adjustments.
You need to track your marketing performance and adjust your content and strategies when needed. This is necessary for videos, blogs, page content, PPC, infographics, and any other marketing you do.
Your law firm can exponentially increase its legal leads with the personal injury lawyer marketing methods outlined above. However, if you prefer that your staff focus on legal work rather than marketing, a digital marketing agency can do this for you. Forward Lawyer Marketing can assist you when you need help with personal injury lawyer marketing. Contact us today at (888) 590-9687.
