Top 3 Legal Marketing Strategies for 2021

Like in other industries, change is the dominant fact of life in the marketing industry. It’s a fair bet that there’s no lawyer today who isn’t continuously reminded of how quickly the legal marketing landscape is evolving. The bottom line is that what worked in 2020 may not work in 2021. So, buckle up lawyers, the pace of change in legal marketing is only going to get faster.

As a legal professional, you’re probably wondering – what legal marketing strategies should we adopt for our legal firm in 2021? Or, how best can we integrate the newest trends into the overall legal marketing strategy for our legal practice?

Implement These Top 3 Legal Marketing Strategies

Well, this article tells it all. Explore the top legal marketing strategies that your law firm should implement this year. Continue to keep pace with, or better yet, stay ahead of the competition.

#1: Focus on Performance Marketing

In 2020, pay-per-click marketing was one of the must-try marketing strategies. It’s a marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee each time their ads are clicked. If you’ve hopped on the PPC bandwagon, you can attest that PPC marketing generally has one of the steepest learning curves compared to many other marketing methods. That’s not all. PPC marketing campaigns are among the costliest to run.

Lawyers and marketers have come to learn, with regret, that a percentage of their target audience has far fewer interactions with ads of any sort. This is even after spending time learning how PPC marketing works and investing lots of money in PPC campaigns. An online survey conducted between April and June 2020 revealed that 41% of internet users were using adblocking software.

The popularity of ad blockers among customers fundamentally shuts out conversions. This makes lawyers lose capital on paid ads when their ads get blocked. To jump this hurdle in 2021, you should focus less on pay-per-click marketing and more on pay-for-performance (P4P) marketing.

Unlike PPC marketing that requires advertisers to pay whenever their ads are clicked, P4P marketing requires advertisers to pay only when the marketing agencies they hire deliver desired outcomes. Knowing that you only pay for performance, the marketing agency you’ve hired will tweak your marketing campaigns accordingly to deliver you the best results.

The biggest advantage with P4P marketing is that it gives you peace of mind knowing that if the marketing agency doesn’t perform as you expect, you won’t have to pay. In other words, it means zero risks for your legal practice.

#2: Keep an Eye on the Growing Popularity of Semantic Search

A decade ago, optimizing for search engines meant including as many keywords and backlinks on your content as possible. During those times, search engine optimization meant fathoming how search engines displayed results that marketers could reverse-engineer content that ranks high on the SERPs.

Fast-forward to 2021, SEO has evolved, with search engines doing a lot more than considering the number of keywords and backlinks used. Today, search engines try to generate the most accurate possible understanding of the query context, searcher intent, and relationships between keywords. In other words, semantic search attempts to understand natural language in the same manner that humans do.

Since search engines are striving to connect people with the most relevant and complete content possible, you should pay more attention to semantic search. Here are some tips on how to optimize your legal website for semantic search:

• Craft content that addresses your target audience’s concerns. If you’re targeting wealthy men seeking divorce assistance in Florida, for instance, create content this target persona would possibly look for when using search engines.
• Create concise content, straight-to-the-point, and easy-to-understand. In other words, avoid heavy legal jargon that a layman cannot understand.
• Try to optimize your content for topics instead of keywords. You can focus on a specific high-level topic and build out clusters of helpful content around it. For instance, you can take ‘divorce law’ as the main topic and include subtopics such as divorce law procedure, divorce law cost, divorce law timeline, etc.

#3: Optimize Your Legal Website for Mobile

According to Statista, mobile website traffic accounted for 50.81 percent of global website traffic in the third quarter of 2020. If this statistic is anything to go by, it’s right to say that mobile-friendliness is a key factor in SEO.

Lawyers may have started creating mobile-friendly websites a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean that this trend is going to be obsolete anytime soon. To ensure that you reach the high number of users that use mobile devices to search for answers to their legal questions, you’ll need to adopt a mobile web design for your legal website.

If you’ve joined the legal fraternity recently and are launching your first legal website, you’re probably wondering – what is a mobile web design? In simple terms, a mobile web design is a highly responsive design that no matter how big or small a screen is, the website will fill the screen and display the content. So, whether users are using their smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktops, they’ll be able to navigate your site and view its content without a hassle.

The next question that’s probably on your mind is – how do you optimize your legal website for mobile?

Tips to keep in mind when optimizing you legal website

• Use large enough font sizes to ensure that users won’t need to zoom your content.
• Use attractive colors to grab the attention of users and compel them to take a desirable action.
• Design each webpage for optimal load speeds to ensure that users get the information they need quickly.
• Create a consistent user experience across all devices.

After taking care of all design elements that make your legal website mobile-friendly, you should subject your site to a test to verify that it’s indeed mobile-friendly. There are tools available for this task. However, it’s always advisable to rely on a professional mobile website designer to conduct the test for you. Be sure to get involved in the testing exercise so that you can address any issues you may discover.

Let a Professional Execute the Top Legal Marketing Strategies 

Lawyers are among the busiest professionals on the planet. Plus for those who love their work, they are always showing their busy-ness as a badge of honor. If you find you don’t have the time, having a professional implement the top legal marketing strategy is a smart move.

If you’re having a hard time figuring which marketing strategies to implement, and how to implement them, BrandCraft is here to help. We will execute the best legal marketing strategies curated to your legal office’s goals. All while you focus on other crucial activities that drive your business’ growth.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you market your legal practice effectively.