It’s safe to say that most of us think of offices full of concertina folders, dusty wooden cupboards and perhaps the odd typewriter or two when we imagine solicitors at work.
Though we need to be fair to all those solicitors that aren’t completely living in the past (such as our own clients).
Solicitors are generally pretty ‘old-school’ in the way they work. They have their own way of doing things and don’t necessarily rely on technology as much as they do their own brains and intelligence (how great that must be).
We’ve decided to write this blog dedicated to those same ‘old-school’ solicitors who are feeling the claws of the 21st century pulling them in… It’s time.
Bringing solicitors into the 21st century is likely to be playing them at their own game. By that, I mean convincing them digital marketing is only going to work in their favour, as anyone who isn’t already involved in digital marketing is likely to be missing out on a substantial amount of revenue.
I think the best way to go about this is by easing you in with the more straightforward elements of the digital marketing world.
Blogging
Writing content and ‘blogging’ is a great way for any business to generate traffic to your site, giving you the chance to connect with readers on a more personal level. With a sector like legal, it’s also beneficial because you can explain complex terms in an easier way.
Pretty much anything to do with the law frightens people, as they’re petrified of doing something wrong and spending the rest of their days in the slammer. Well, this gives your potential clients more of a reason to work with the people who have the know-how, but with that comes a little bit of intimidation.
That’s where we come up with a solution for you. Blogging in the legal sector acts as that sort of middle-man between the public (your potential clients) and solicitors. This happens because if someone comes across a blog on the topic they’re interested in, and it doesn’t have the legal jargon they’re expecting, they’ll be able to understand it.
Content marketing eases the transition of a potential client becoming an actual client, and increases the chance of a lead being generated.
Contrary to popular belief, blogging results don’t come instantly; you have to play the waiting game. In fact, over half of website traffic each month on company blogs come from posts that weren’t even published during that month. Instead, they come from much older posts.
The same principle applies to the leads that are generated in a 30-day period. Around 90% of the leads that are generated every month come from blog posts that were published several months back.
Here at Strawberry Forge, we like to think of ourselves as a digital marketing agency with a personalised edge. We want to know exactly what our legal clients want, and how they want to be perceived in terms of their tone of voice.
Social Media
Now, it’s fair enough for a legal firm to question social media for their sector of work — they might not really see that as their scene.
However, I’m here to tell you, it’s not a case of it being your scene, but about increasing your brand awareness. The best way to do that is through digital marketing, and more specifically, social media.
We’re talking about all of them. From Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and of course, LinkedIn. All of these work a little differently for a business.
Nevertheless, it’s important that you have something being posted on the platforms that are most appropriate to your business and can benefit a company the most.
So, in terms of what works for a law firm, I’d suggest working less towards Instagram, as the main purpose of this is to give an understanding through images, something which would be inappropriate in this sector more often than not.
If a legal firm were to exercise social media on a regular basis, it would be able to establish itself as a thought leader — something which they might not be able to do in this digital age (without actually enforcing the digital, at least).
If they were to do this, it would demonstrate that they’re the ‘go-to’ source for all law-related topics which you are advertising and sharing with your followers and clients.
For a law firm, media posts are a great way to drive traffic to the main website. With the combination of social media and sharing your blogs through this method, it grabs the attention of your reader as soon as you post something new.
From this, a law firm participating in digital marketing is likely to see results providing they work with an established digital marketing agency, such as Strawberry Forge.
Search Engines Are Your Friends
Finally, there is the use of our old faithful friend Google (other search engines are available), which I’m pretty sure solicitors are more than comfortable with.
Search engines actually play a pretty big part in digital marketing, and can really help a legal firm to drive some extra traffic to their website.
Without getting too complicated, there are a couple of different types of methods included in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which can increase traffic to your website.
Seeing which ‘keyword’ is ranked highest could help you to see what your main audience are most interested in and allows you to cater to those needs.
For example, if it was clear that ‘estate planning’ was ranked number one, you’d know that this was something to keep pushing for as you’re more than likely to get leads from this.
Secondly, you can also discover organic search traffic, which enables your company to see how much of your traffic comes organically every day, week and month.
This is also advantageous for solicitors as it means they’re going to be able to pinpoint their target audience a lot more and create a far more personalised situation for someone to decide to take them up and work with them.
Dust the Cobwebs Away
I’m not expecting all legal firms to suddenly become completely savvy in all things digital. If that happened, Strawberry Forge wouldn’t exist!
But I do believe that it’s important to be open-minded about the way that not only our social world, but also our business and working world is heading, and arguably already arrived some time ago.
Legal firms could greatly benefit from being more open about who they are and what they represent through social media.
I think it’s important to understand that digital marketing is extremely beneficial for any business, and perhaps, more so for those that don’t have any outside exposure whatsoever.
At Strawberry Forge, we believe digital marketing is something which is individual to each company depending on what they’re after.
If you’re in a position where you want to find out more about how digital marketing could be the making of your company with a creative helping hand from Strawberry Forge, then contact us today.
