All businesses are facing fierce competition to stand out, including law firms. Understanding how to advertise a law firm is one of the most important aspects of bringing clients to your firm and turning it into a household name. For busy lawyers, finding the right law firm marketing strategy can be a time-consuming and costly process without the proper resources or core understanding of marketing principles.
However, there are many ways you can advertise a law firm with little-to-no marketing spend. Take a look at how you can maximize your law firm marketing on a limited budget.
Importance of Law Firm Marketing
Whether you’re just venturing out on your own or you’ve opened a new firm or office in a new location, how will clients know you’re available for legal services without marketing? Sure, you may get some clients who organically find your firm, but you need a targeted law firm marketing strategy to draw them in.
As the legal industry is becoming ever more competitive, it’s essential for law firms to understand how to position themselves in the market through proven legal marketing tactics.
No matter the size of your law firm, cost efficiency and measuring your return on marketing are vital to your overall growth. While marketing can be a process of trial and error, you need to analyze every campaign to ensure you’re optimizing your marketing budget, not throwing money at the latest trends.
Can Law Firms Advertise?
New business is the key to every law firm’s success. While law firms can — and should — advertise to attract new clients, there are a few rules and regulations that law firms should be mindful of to remain ethical.
Lawyers are allowed to advertise, but they must follow the legal advertising rules and ethical obligations outlined by The American Bar Association (ABA) Rule 7.2 on Communications Concerning a Lawyer’s Services. This states that a lawyer can communicate information about their services on any platform, but they must not violate rules such as, but are not limited to, “A lawyer shall not state or imply that a lawyer is certified as a specialist in a particular field of law.”
Types of Law Firm Advertising
There are many ways for law firms to advertise their services, including:
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing, including major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
- Search engine advertising
- Video ads and campaigns
- Print advertising
- TV and radio ads
- Thought leadership
Low-Cost Ways to Advertise a Law Firm
With so many possible channels for marketing and advertising, it’s not practical to put time, money, and resources toward every single available option. And some law firms are working with limited budgets to execute extensive marketing strategies.
Fortunately, there are many low or no-cost ways to advertise a law firm. You will need to invest time, but these options won’t blow through your marketing budget.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a popular and powerful tool for both businesses and consumers. You can get your firm listed on Google Maps to help clients find directions to your office and rank on local searches.
Creating a local listing establishes a Google business page for your practice. An essential component of your firm’s page reviews. Collecting reviews is a strong lead generation practice with 9 out of 10 consumers seeking reviews as a decision-making tool for choosing services.
Though Facebook reduced organic appearances for businesses on the platform, you can create a free Facebook business page to establish an online presence on this major social media platform. If you can, consider combining both paid and organic Facebook tactics.
Yellow Pages
You may still remember the big book of business listings that has mostly gone obsolete. The physical book may be gone, but people still use the Yellow Pages to find local businesses.
It only takes a few minutes to add your listing, ensuring that your firm appears in yet another online business listing to attract potential clients.
Justia
Justia’s legal information portal has lawyer profiles that appear on not only the site but the Legal Information Institute. The profiles can be extensive, allowing you to add photos, links to social media accounts, and a map for directions.
Bar Associations
Naturally, you should have your firm in the state and local bar associations. You can include your name and contact information on your profile if it’s new or takes time to update your existing listing.
You can also check with local bar associations that you’ve joined to see if they have a directory and what the costs include. If you’ve already paid money to join, you may have free or discounted listings.
Guest Writing
Thought leadership is a powerful tactic to get your name out there and drive people to your website. You can write articles for popular websites like The Huffington Post or local legal information websites.
Each post you create offers another spot for online discovery by clients and showcases your authority. You will also have links directing clients back to your website, as well as potentially improving your website’s ranking in the search results.
Pro Tip: If your law firm doesn’t have a blog, it’s an easy win to incorporate into your content marketing strategy. Posting a blog once or twice a week can support search engine optimization (SEO) which directly correlates to your website visibility.
How to Measure Law Firm Advertising Performance
Whether you use paid or free law firm advertising methods, you want to maximize the time, effort, and money you put into it by measuring results.
Creating a process to evaluate your marketing tactics will help you hone on the tactics that are generating returns, which could be improved, and which aren’t working. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success, such as:
- The number of visitors gained from ad campaigns
- The number of leads generated
- Conversion rates
- Revenue generated
Segment your tracking using variables like a marketing channel, campaign, and target audience.
Focus your efforts on the most effective methods and channels by:
- Keeping track of your return on investment
- Ensuring you’re on a budget
- Working with your team to establish a realistic budget and strategy
Law practice management software simplifies the reporting process with tools to harness the power of your data. You can use custom tags to sort and analyze your results by your segments, such as your marketing channel or audience, and evaluate your progress.
Maximize Your Law Firm Advertising with Low-Cost Methods
Law firm advertising is key to maintaining a steady flow of clients, boosting brand awareness, and encouraging referrals. Advertising isn’t cheap, but you can leverage free or low-cost platforms in conjunction with law practice management software to generate and track results without a lot of marketing spend.
Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in November 2022. Last update: February 2023.
