Getting Started With Inbound Marketing For Solicitors

Most law firm websites, in fact most B2B websites in general, don’t actually sell anything. They simply state what they do and how wonderful they are at doing it.

They all read very well but unfortunately there are rarely any attempts to convert visitors into leads and ultimately leads into new clients. 

The typical law firm website is basically a brochure-ware website... destined to sit there and never change...

When you look at the many hours spent agonising over the colours used on a law firm website (or photographs of the partners) and think that if a bit more time was spent introducing an inbound marketing approach then the very same legal website could be generating quite a few new leads each week.

It just makes you wonder about the opportunities being lost each and every day...

It would also be fair to say that in our experience, quite a few firms in the legal sector feel that the only reason they actually have a website is because they might look out of touch without one.

Now we completely accept that selling legal services is very different to selling a tin of coke, a watch, or a holiday to Barbados, but that doesn’t mean your law firm website should be as dull and boring as the rest of them.

Yes, you have your biographies and yes, you have some news, but if you stepped it up a bit and introduced an inbound marketing methodology for solicitors you could move from a website generating zero leads and zero return on investment to a website worth its weight in gold and effectively adding another revenue stream to your practice. 

Perhaps this is a bit more interesting?  

So how do you go about super-charging your law firm website to generate more leads?

What Is Inbound Marketing For Solicitors?

So what is Inbound Marketing?

By its very nature traditional marketing is interruptive as it seeks to interrupt what a prospect is doing in order to get them to see your message. In contrast to this Inbound Marketing is concerned with working out who your audience specifically is and the pains & challenges they suffer so that you can develop quality content which helps to address these pains.

The main premise of Inbound Marketing for solicitors is that as your audience begins to research a solution to their problem they will probably turn to a search engine like Google at some point to find the answer. If you have identified your audience properly and optimised enough content in relation to their pains then you should begin to build good quality traffic to your website.  Other sources of traffic for your website can include using social media, online ads or even email to promote your content (not your services) and bring those interested people to your website to learn more.

OK, now that you have relevant traffic coming to your website you also need to build a mechanism in order to turn these strangers into leads. This is the beauty of Inbound Marketing for Solicitors as the prospects have come to you - you haven't been too salesly by going out to get them.

To help highlight each of the main steps in relation to Inbound Marketing for solicitors we have summarised each of the main points in the table below.

1. Know Your Audience
   What is your target sector and what does a typical client look like?
   If you have many then start with one or two and build out a process for the others. 
2. What are their pain points?
   What makes your audience tick and what would they type into Google to find a solution?
3. Build a content engine
   Produce regular content to address your audiences pain so that they can find this useful content when they search on Google or see it on Social Media, Email or in an online ad.
4. Develop Premium Content
   Take your content a bit further by developing one or two more in-depth pieces of content.
   
   This is your 'Content Offer' - it's free but in reality they are 'paying' for it with their email address.
5. Create a conversion path
   Add Calls To Action throughout your website to get prospects to download your premium content.
   
   This content will sit on special landing pages where the visitor will need to supply their email address in order to download the premium content.
   
   Once downloaded they can now be added to your CRM database and you can decide on how you will nurture them through their Buyer's Journey on their way to becoming a client of your firm.
6. Nurture Until Ready
   Develop email workflows to send timed emails with even more helpful content until they are ready to come forward and start to discuss how you could help them.
   
   (Please Note: Do Not SPAM) 
7. Convert leads into clients
   Provide mechanisms for them to reach out to you, for example, a free consultation.
   
   This takes the lead offline and is your opportunity to convert them into real-world clients.
8. Always be thinking
   Continually review and analyse what is working and what isn’t.
   
   This will allow you to continually improve what you do and improve conversion rates.

The concept of inbound marketing is a proven methodology, it is low-key and not an aggressive, hard-sell approach to winning new clients for your firm. This is one of the main reasons why we believe Inbound Marketing for Solicitor firms works as most lawyers don't like an in your face approach to sales.

In summary, if you would like to introduce Inbound Marketing to your legal marketing, you need to spend time identifying who you think would benefit from your service, work out how to address their pain points and ultimately nurture them until they are ready to talk to you. A little bit of organisation, a good system to manage it all, and you will be well on your way to generating high-quality leads from your law firm website.

If you would like to find out more about introducing Inbound Marketing for your law firm, please download our free guide on "How To Redesign Your Law Firm Website And Win New Clients".