In law firm marketing, lead generation is fundamentally important, yet most law firms leave it to chance. It goes without saying that if you’re a growth-focussed legal practice, your law firm must develop a solid lead generation pipeline.
With a proper strategy and methodology in place, lead generation for lawyers will not only drive new business but when done well, can illuminate other potential areas of growth or expansion.
What is a lead?
A “lead” is a prospect or a potential client. It also depends on your law firm how you want to define a lead—it could be a potential client or simply someone who finds your website content valuable. In any event, it should be someone interested in securing your legal expertise or services.
Why lead generation matters for law firms
Establishing a reliable lead generation process can make all the difference for your law firm. Lead generation encourages prospective clients to interact with you through your website, directory listing, social media activities, or wherever you have a presence. Following this, the focus shifts from lead generation to lead nurture in which you leverage drip campaigns to keep the lead warm and progressing towards a conversion goal. To this end, at Fast Firms, we have our own CRM software for law firms that does this and much more. Talk to us today about LawStripe.
How to drive more leads to your law firm
Now that you have a basic understanding of lead generation and its importance to law firms, let’s explore different strategies that you can implement to drive more leads to your law firm and increase your success in lead generation.
- Law firm website
- Your lead generation efforts should begin with your website, as it is a critical tool for converting leads into clients. It’s futile to drive traffic to your website if those visitors leave without taking action. To increase your visitor-to-lead ratio, your website should follow specific best practices:
- Make sure your website looks professional, is user- and mobile-friendly, and optimised for search engines.
- Do not overcomplicate your website copy.
- Lay up your text in bullets and shorter paragraphs to make it more visually attractive.
- Make use of a well-balanced mix of images and videos.
- Include relevant call-to-actions (CTAs) on each page
- Your lead generation efforts should begin with your website, as it is a critical tool for converting leads into clients. It’s futile to drive traffic to your website if those visitors leave without taking action. To increase your visitor-to-lead ratio, your website should follow specific best practices:
- Email marketing
- Another powerful tool for lead generation, email marketing helps your law firm attract high-quality leads and clients. In email marketing, it’s important to have the basics:
- Mailing list – Build an email list through signups, lead magnets and other promotional materials.
- Audience segments – Target a specific segment of your audience so you can produce more personalized emails and ensure you’re sending the right message to the right people.
- Another powerful tool for lead generation, email marketing helps your law firm attract high-quality leads and clients. In email marketing, it’s important to have the basics:
- Social media
- One of the easiest ways to drive leads to your law firm website is to promote gated content on social media. You may create new leads and nurture current ones in your marketing database by using social media as a megaphone to get your information out there. Create posts that direct to your landing pages where prospects are encouraged to fill out a form.
- Content marketing
- Blog posts, email newsletters, ebooks, videos, infographics, webinars, online content, downloadable guides or white papers—any type of written or visual content related to your services that your leads will find interesting and useful—can all be included in your content marketing efforts.
- Keep in mind that content should be professionally created and really be valuable and practical—content for the sake of content is a waste of time for both you and your audience.
- Client reviews/testimonials
- One amazing online review can bring you hundreds of new prospects. Collect positive reviews on leading review sites like Google and Facebook to position your law firm as a dependable unit that clients enjoy working with. Respond to these reviews, whether favourable or bad, to show that you listen and pay attention. We can help you get more great reviews with our software, FirmRanker.
- Offer free introductory consultations to generate leads
- This strategy isn’t always possible for every law firm but if you can offer free consultations, you may find it beneficial because it will inspire leads to take action and contact you. It’s a wonderful method to get a prospective client in the door and meet with them one-on-one—in person or virtually—making the process of turning a lead into a client a lot faster and easier.
- Keep in mind that as part of this pledge, you will have to put in some time. If you don’t have the time to conduct those first consultations yourself, it could be useful to pay someone to do it.
Start generating more leads today
These are just a few of the most effective lead generation strategies for law firms. The truth is that what will work best for your firm is determined by the objectives of your practice. The best time to be driving leads into your law firm is when you don’t necessarily need them. Law firms often can make the huge mistake of doing nothing from a lead generation perspective and then, when business dries up, look frantically for the silver bullet, that we can confirm, doesn’t exist.
Let Fast Firms assist you in determining which strategies are most effective for your practice. To discover more about how we can assist you in generating more leads, contact us today.
