Legal marketing is critical today for attorneys who want to obtain more clients. However, the personal injury lawyer marketing space is fiercely competitive. Continue reading to learn why and how to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Forward Lawyer Marketing can assist if you need help with personal injury lawyer marketing.
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Legal marketing is expensive, with the typical law firm spending roughly 2% of their gross revenues on advertising. However, personal injury lawyer marketing is even more costly, with some firms spending up to 20% of their gross revenues on marketing! Why?
You can thank the digital marketing world for driving up marketing costs for personal injury attorneys. While the most prominent law firms in major cities can spend money on billboards, sidewalk benches, buses, and more, small personal injury law firms focus their marketing firepower online. It may feel impossible sometimes to stand out among a crowded personal injury field in Google and on social media, but it is an effective way to gain clients, so many law firms are dipping their digital marketing toes in the water.
As Google has become the de-facto way many of us buy goods and services, legal prospects have also turned to search engines to solve their legal woes. A recent study determined that 86% of consumers use Google as their top way to find a lawyer. Also, 53% of users rely on cell phones and computers during legal research. Just 50% of consumers spend more than a day searching online for an attorney.
When they search for a lawyer, there are many competitors, too. Did you know there are more than 400,000 law firms in the US, and more law firms pop up daily? At least a few of those hundreds of thousands of law firms may also put a shingle out in your area.
Other reasons the personal injury marketing space is so competitive, especially in SEO include:
All it takes is one excellent lead to generate tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue for a personal injury law firm. However, knowing what a potential client’s case could be worth can be challenging, so personal injury law firms are willing to bid up the price of essential keywords to capture traffic.
Online advertising is an effective part of a marketing campaign, but SEO is highly cost-effective for small law firms. So, more law firms focus on SEO to get the best bang for their buck. While it can take a while for effective SEO to gain traction, the results are often better than other types of marketing.
If you just started doing SEO for personal injury attorneys, it takes time to get noticed by Google and consumers. However, many law firms have been doing SEO marketing for years, and it will take time to penetrate this market and gain on the competition.
To stay competitive in the online personal injury marketing landscape, you need leading-edge digital marketing methods described below to attract and keep potential clients. Now, we will review how personal injury attorneys can leverage their precious marketing dollars to stand out from other attorneys in their communities.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and means what it says. When a consumer searches for a service online on Google, a complex algorithm determines which web pages appear first for the query. SEO professionals must effectively optimize your site to rank as one of the top results for personal injury law in your city.
This personal injury lawyer marketing method uses link building from significant sites in your legal niche to give your site additional authority, a Google ranking factor. Online content is also written and optimized, which helps Google to understand what the page is about. If you do not use SEO on your web pages, Google might not recognize them, and your organic traffic will suffer, which means fewer personal injury lawyer leads.
Google search engine bots scan pages on your site for relevant keywords that are important for popular legal searches. As a result, the search engine obtains an understanding of each page and why it is helpful for legal information consumers.
Also, your law firm should invest in local SEO to stand out in the incredibly competitive local marketplace. After all, if you are a personal injury attorney in Tampa, you might not care if your site ranks highly for ‘personal injury lawyer in Boston.’ Your SEO marketing company will probably aim to get your site in the local 3-pack Google results for the best local organic search results. If your law firm serves a national audience, ranking highly in local SEO can still be beneficial.
While SEO is critical, it is worth mentioning another reason related to it the space is so competitive. Unfortunately, there are only so many ways to say ‘personal injury lawyer’ or ‘personal injury attorney.’ While we know pretty much how people will search for you, the limited number of keywords means countless other firms are competing for attention. That is why you must do everything in your legal marketing campaign better than everyone else.
Think about some situations where people need a personal injury lawyer. For example, many people pull out their cell phones after a car accident to search immediately for a personal injury attorney. Unfortunately, a PC is nowhere near when the accident happened, and the person is still in their car. How your website is designed to look on a mobile phone is critical to marketing success. If your site is unfriendly to mobile phones, consumers are likelier to visit a competing site.
Fortunately, it is easier than ever to find out how well your site loads on popular mobile phones. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly test site to find out. You will learn if your legal website is correctly optimized for mobile searches. Remember, if the page takes more than a few seconds to load, your potential client probably bailed and found another site that loads faster.
Does your law firm specialize in car, truck, bus, and motorcycle accidents? You should have dedicated landing pages for all of these so people coming into the site from Google get the specialized content they need to answer their specific legal questions.
PPC ads are essential for personal injury lawyers because the ads are high on popular search engines. Your firm is charged a specific PPC whenever a legal prospect clicks the advertisement.
You can bet that most personal injury pay-per-click keywords have plenty of competition. So, you need to reserve a substantial PPC marketing budget if you want to compete. You can reduce advertising costs and boost ROI using long-tail keywords like ‘car accident personal injury attorney in Tampa’ instead of ‘lawyer in Tampa.’
Even if you are ready to put up the cash for a strong PPC campaign, you should not rely on it as your only strategy. Rather, use PPC as an add-on method for acquiring new legal leads, such as social media and SEO.
Social media is one of the best ways to engage in personal injury lawyer marketing to stand out from others in your area. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Avvo, and other major legal platforms are popular with consumers seeking legal answers. Social media might not be the #1 destination for people wanting to solve a legal problem now, but these sites are effective for keeping your brand at the top of mind when the need arises for a lawyer. Some ways to engage with your legal audience through social media include:
Building a powerful social media presence for personal injury lawyers may take a lot of work to get leads, but you need to use it because other law firms in your area are. Share engaging content daily that matters to your personal injury audience and you will be rewarded with results over time.
For example, if you are a car accident attorney in Dallas, you might write content about the most dangerous Dallas intersections. Check the local news often to find out which roads are causing the most monthly accidents. Then, write a blog post about what makes those particular roads more dangerous, and post it on your social media channels.
There is little doubt that personal injury lawyer marketing is one of the most competitive spaces online. But Forward Lawyer Marketing can partner with you to turbocharge your personal injury lawyer marketing with an ‘all of the above’ approach that includes SEO, PPC, blog marketing, content writing, web design, reputation management, and more. Please contact our legal marketing pros for assistance with personal injury lawyer marketing at (888) 590-9687.
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