What should I be including in my law firm’s marketing strategy in 2023?
By Maddie Platt, Senior Marketing Executive, Conscious Solutions Limited
Whether you are an avid law firm marketer, or a partner, solicitor or administrator, involved in marketing activities from time to time, there are lots of ways your firm can be using marketing in 2023 and to make it easier for new clients to find you and to improve client experience.
In this article, we discuss 12 tactics to include in your firm’s marketing strategy this year.
1. Leverage Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is still key for your law firm and should be at the top of the list of your firm’s strategy in 2023. There are so many different techniques that your law firm can leverage and ongoing updates that your firm should stay aware of. Let’s cover off a few important changes and tactics:
• Link Building
By having a good domain rating (DR) which is a number out of 100 that an SEO tool called Ahrefs determines, your firm’s website is more likely to be considered as credible to search engines. One of the ways to build your firm website's domain authority is through link-building which will continue to be a trend in 2023.
• Optimise your keywords
Make sure your firm is researching its keywords. You can use paid for tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush to do this, or a free tool like Google Search Console.
• Image and Video SEO
You need to make sure your firm is choosing and optimising its videos and images. This helps them to rank in Google images and search engine video carousels. Optimising images and videos includes looking at the size and compressing them, if necessary, alt text on videos and images and embedding videos into blog posts relating to the topic.
• Google’s Featured Snippets
A featured snippet looks like this:
So now, you don’t even need to click on a link to find the answer to your question, meaning that getting your firm to the top spot on a search engine is less important than getting your featured snippets previewing. If a consumer is looking to enlist the help of a law firm, being within the first 10 results on the search engine is still highly important.
Top Tip: Build a robust search engine optimisation strategy
2. Optimise your website for mobile
Think about your own habits, are you spending more time searching for products and services via your mobile? According to HubSpot, half of all annual online website traffic comes from mobile devices. So, if you want to stay in front of your competition, you need to be on-hand when potential clients need you most. If an individual is looking for a divorce, but their partner doesn’t know it yet they might use their phone to search for a solicitor. This is one of the reasons why websites need to be optimised for mobile.
As well as this, a mobile friendly website is more user-friendly, accessible, and it benefits your firm’s SEO too.
Top Tip: Have a look at your firm’s website on your phone and tablet, would you convert into a client if you landed on it?
3. Interactive Content
Two-way experiences are more memorable than static content, which is why marketers are expecting to see interactive content in 2023. This could come in the form of conveyancing calculators, interactive maps showing your firm’s offices or questionnaires where clients can determine what services they might need. Interactive content helps to enhance audience engagement, improve client learning on your firm’s services and lead to more conversions.
Top Tip: Add a calculator or a smart form to your website to engage your clients
4. Infographics
As a law firm, you have lots of information to hand that potential clients might be interested in. Visual content is a great way to share information with your clients that is easier to digest than a blog post but still covers valuable points and goes into lots of detail.
With credible data designed in a visually appealing way, your law firm can stand out from its competitors and provide value to its clients.
Have a look at an infographic we made for one of our clients showing the 10 most popular counties to move to in 2021.
Top Tip: Repurpose your existing statistics, blogs, or service pages into visual content
5. Social Media
Whether you love it or loathe it, social media, is key to any marketing strategy. We know that it’s a time-consuming activity, but focusing your efforts you can showcase your firms’ expertise, experience, and knowledge. Concentrating on two or three platforms is likely to be more realistic for your firm.
As well as this, social media is beginning to become a customer service tool, with clients expecting immediate replies so it’s important that you have a means of monitoring the reviews, direct messages and comments your firm is receiving. And of course, you need to make sure all your staff are using LinkedIn to build their network and promote themselves and your services.
Top Tip: Don’t try to do it all, be consistent with your social media presence
6. Short-Form Video Content
If the incredible rise of TikTok shows us anything, it’s that consumers are looking for short, entertaining, and original video that gets the point across, and it’s likely this will continue in 2023. As well as telling your clients what they want, video marketing is great for your firm’s search engine optimisation (SEO) too, Bristol Creative Industries state that video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engine rankings (SERPs).
According to HubSpot, 90% of marketers using short-form video will increase or maintain their investment next year, and 21% of marketers plan to leverage short-form video for the first time in 2023. The rise of short-form content is good for us too when it comes to creating videos. Although long-form videos still have a value, short-form is something that should be on your law firm’s radar in 2023.
Top Tip: Canva is a great tool when it comes to social media imagery and creating video.
7. Think about your firm’s social responsibility
It’s commonplace now, that consumers are starting to be more conscious about the brands and services they are buying. And companies are beginning to prioritise their corporate social responsibility.
Therefore, it’s important that in 2023, your law firm is practicing the values it says it holds, this could be through charity work, pro-bono work, gender equality within your firm, mental wellbeing and being more sustainable – do you really need to print off that contract four times?
Top Tip: Transparency with employees and clients is key
8. Humanising your firm
It’s no secret that consumers connect with people, more than they do with brands. That’s why it’s important to humanise your firm. You firm can do this through showing its personality in its marketing material – this could be its values, charity work, community work, videos of your staff, company events and more.
Top Tip: Remember, people buy from people so showcase your staff and how great they are
9. Using Google Analytics
Analytics are key to perfecting your marketing tactics. One of the key things to note in 2023, is Google sunsetting Universal Analytics, so if this is the platform your firm is currently using to track its analytics, make sure you make the move over to Google Analytics 4 now.
As it’s the beginning of the year, make sure your firm starts as it means to go on with the rest of its marketing analytics. LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media platforms have their own way of monitoring analytics, Ahrefs is a great tool for keeping track of backlinks and your website domain authority, so make sure your firm is utilising them all.
By measuring your firm’s analytics, you can determine who your target audiences are, create more effective marketing and identify which method has the greatest return on investment (ROI).
Top Tip: Block out some time in your diary each month to monitor your analytics
10. Personalisation in marketing communications is key
It’s important to remember that consumers are bombarded by marketing on a daily basis. So, personalisation with your emails, newsletters, videos and more is a trend that is going to take off in 2023 to stand out from the crowd.
How can your law firm add personalisation to its strategy? Well, your marketing needs to engage and resonate with its clients and potential clients at every step.
Law firms could also use this technique to upsell other products – for example, if a first-time buyer has recently bought a house and used your firm for its conveyancing, do you want to check in and see if they have a will written up in a follow up email. This can be done in bulk via your CRM system, and you can change a few details by adding some different fields to your CRM. We used SuiteCRM which allows this personalisation. Alternatively, as you’ve got the details of their home and purchase you can tailor other touch points to suit them – for example, maybe you could send card or a voucher for a local restaurant. This will leave a longer-lasting impression and if your client has other legal needs, they might come to your firm first.
Top Tip: Personalisation doesn’t have to be complicated, you’ve got the data, so make sure you are using it
11. User-generated content
Firms that use user-generated content can improve the trust and loyalty your clients have with you. So, your firm should think of some ways it can involve its clients in its marketing in 2023. For your law firm, user-generated content can be in the form of videos, testimonials and longer interviews with clients. With LawLeague, you can develop client and staff feedback surveys which identify the true strengths and weaknesses of your firm whilst benchmarking your performance against others. Not only can this information help to find out where your firm can improve its service, it also means you can identify clients who might be a good fit for user-generated content for your firm, for example, someone who gives a deep insight into the positive impact your firm had might be perfect for a video interview or testimonial.
Top Tip: Take a look at the process of asking for reviews, is there anything you can improve or change?
12. Control over data
People are becoming savvier with the information they give the world, and it’s only going to get more so with Google currently set to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024. This means your law firm needs to be creating those all-important relationships now.
Top Tip: Step up your customer service so your clients want to hear from you
Need help with your law firm’s marketing?
Conscious are an agency with over 19 years of experience in the legal sector, find out more here.
