You’ve Got a Legal Business…Now What?
It’s no secret that being a lawyer is a great career choice. You’ll get to do meaningful work while earning a decent living and being able to provide for your family. What is a secret, is that being a lawyer isn’t as easy as it looks. After all, you’ll be working in a profession that isn’t necessarily easy to get into, and then you’ll be expected to do even more work once you’re in it. If you’re looking for a change of pace from the 9-5 grind, consider a legal career. But if you want to be sure of your livelihood, don’t just jump into practicing law without preparing first.
Preparedness is important. Not only will it increase your chances of success when applying to legal jobs, but it’ll also help you to become an expert in your chosen field and contribute to your growth as a professional. The more you know, the more you’ll be able to contribute to your practice and to your clients. But in order to be able to contribute effectively, you’ll need to know how to market your law practice online.
Why Online Marketing?
In the world of online marketing, it’s important to understand what your target audience is, what they want, and how you can provide it to them through your content. The key to online marketing is in the content you create and distribute. It’s important to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field so that you’re able to educate and inform your audience about legal issues commonly faced by people in your targeted niche. It’s also important to establish your credibility as a thought leader in your industry so that when your audience is researching the issue they’re interested in, your name comes up as someone who can provide context and understanding.
Lawyers are traditionally known as being information-savvy people. Being able to analyze and interpret information correctly is an essential part of being a lawyer. This is why many law offices operate under the ‘Big-Law’ model. Essentially, this model allows a large group of lawyers to work together from a single location. The group of lawyers handles various legal matters for large organizations and businesses. The lawyers’ expertise allows them to quickly and efficiently research and analyze information related to their area of practice. Big-Law offices typically have large, sophisticated information-technology departments that keep track of the millions of documents and interactions that take place between the firm’s lawyers and its clients. The need for this high level of technology and data storage is necessary because of the volume of work that takes place.
One of the biggest differences between traditional law firms and so-called ‘new-style’ legal services is how they market themselves. The old-school approach was to have a large physical space where you hand out business cards and talk to existing clients in person. Not so anymore. Today, when a lawyer wants to get in touch with a potential new client, they’ll often resort to online methods of contact, such as phone calls, emails, or text messaging. For a legal firm, putting your contact details on your website is the best way to go. It provides your potential clients with an easy-to-find contact point and makes them feel like you’re interested in their business. You can also integrate your website with social media channels, such as LinkedIn or Twitter, which will allow you to actively engage with existing and potential clients.
Building a Website
There are numerous platforms out there, such as WordPress, which can be used to quickly set up a website for free. However, it’s important to pick a platform that’s been specifically designed for the needs of websites created for lawyers. A good lawyer-specific content management system (such as Divi) will allow you to easily create and manage different pages within your website, including those specific to your practice area. The ability to have different pages depending on the area of law you’re representing is an important feature of a good lawyer-specific CMS. It allows you to identify the precise topics that you want to cover on your site and gives you the flexibility to add more content as you see fit.
A good lawyer-specific CMS will also provide you with an SEO tool, called a ‘meta-tag.’ A meta-tag is a short piece of code that appears at the top of a web page. It’s important when optimizing a website for search engines, such as Google, to use keywords in the meta-tag that are relevant to the content on your page. For example, if you’re writing about family law, the keywords you want to use for the meta-tag are ‘family law,’ ‘divorce,’ ‘legal services,’ and so on. Having meta-tags on each page of your website is another easy way to make your content more SEO-friendly. Having meta-tags on your blog posts will also improve your blog’s SEO, as the meta-tag content will appear in the blog post alongside the main content.
A good SEO strategy is important for any lawyer, but it’s even more essential if you want to do well in the digital sphere. As we’ve already mentioned, being able to analyze and interpret information correctly is an important part of being a lawyer. Being able to research and find relevant information quickly and accurately is a skill that can only come from experience, and that comes from practice. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out. The same can be said for SEO. If you want to take your legal business to the next level, consider mastering SEO. It can be a valuable tool for attracting more clients and establishing yourself as an expert in your industry.
Credibility
In legal circles, Google is king. For better or worse, Google is the first place people go to when they’re looking for information related to any topic. It doesn’t matter if you’re discussing tax law or estate planning or litigation or anything in-between, if you want to be found when people are doing their research online, you need to have a website that will get rankings in relevant keywords.
But getting top rankings in a search engine isn’t enough. Having a top-notch website is only the beginning. Once you have a website with content that’s relevant and good, the next step is to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. How do you do that? By contributing regularly to reputable publications that are relevant to your niche. It might be a good idea to start a blog. But instead of just using it as a place to write about your practice area, use it as an opportunity to distribute content that’s both informative and authoritative. Make sure that the information you’re providing is both relevant and up-to-date, and establish yourself as an expert in your industry by contributing to reputable publications. As we’ve established, being able to research and find relevant information quickly and accurately is a valuable skill that comes from experience. And experience is something that you can only get by contributing to reputable publications. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out.
Attracting the Right Clients
Now that you have a website, the next step is to go back and forth with potential clients, educating them about your services and getting them to buy into your value proposition. A good place to start is with a free consultation. During the consultation, you’ll be able to speak with the potential client and get a feel for their needs and expectations. This will help you determine whether or not the client is a good fit for your service and what kind of pricing structure you should use.
Once you’ve established a good rapport with the potential client, the next step is to take the time to really dive deep into their needs and goals. What are they looking for? What are their expectations? What are their challenges? These are all important questions that you need to answer in order to be able to provide them with the best possible service. Being able to answer these questions will also help you decide how you should approach their case and what kind of pricing structure to use. If you can’t answer these questions easily, it may be a good idea to refer the client to someone else. Establishing your expertise and value as a lawyer is important, but so is being able to provide top-notch service to your clients. And the best way to ensure you provide the best service possible is by being able to attract the right clients in the first place.
So you have a website. And you’re probably thinking, ‘Now what?’ Well, you can put it like that, but it’s a bit more complex than that. The next step is to ensure that your website is properly optimized for the search engines so that you can start ranking for keywords in the search engines. But that’s not all there is to it. You also need to be marketing your website among other methods, such as social media or cold calling. The choice is up to you.