How To Earn More Legal Leads

Most law firms have been in one of these situations:

You’ve been getting a steady flow of leads but you’re not seeing the growth you want.
You were getting a decent amount of leads but your marketing strategy isn’t getting you the payoff it used to.
You’re working with a marketing agency but you’re not totally sure what they’re doing and whatever it is doesn’t seem to be getting you leads
You’ve been losing more leads to competitors.

Whatever the challenges you’re facing with getting more legal leads and clients, this guide is here to help you improve.

10x Your Legal Leads

Download our free 77-page eBook, inc. templates and checklists, and increase your legal leads

Download my free copy

Front cover of "Earn 10x More Legal Leads".

Improve Your Law Firm’s Website and Landing Pages

Your website helps you get clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Consider the information on your website. The way it guides people towards becoming a client. If your website was a person, would they be able to get you new clients?

If they wouldn’t, then your law firm is missing out on some serious lead generation.

In just a few seconds, your website needs to make it clear to potential legal clients:

What you’re offering
Why someone should pay you for that offering
And how they can become a client.

One of the main things you need to think about is conversion rate optimisation, also known as CRO.

Conversion rate optimisation for law firms

Conversion rate optimisation is any action you take on your website to make it easier for potential clients to become leads. You’re optimising your website for conversions.

Let’s take a look at the Lawhive homepage.

Image Source

The website makes it clear what is being offered — you can find a solicitor in 5 minutes
It highlights that the service is fast, convenient and affordable
The site makes it clear this is an online process.

Then, the search box CTA asks, “What is your legal issue?” instead of just “Search”, giving the user guidance on what to search for.
Underneath the search bar are some suggestions to help the user get started.

The Lawhive website also has a benefits bar in case the user is unsure about taking the next step. There’s a price guarantee, reassurance that the quotes are fixed, that the solicitors are legitimate and you’ll get a fast response.

The user is made to feel like there are no downsides to using the search tool. Any questions or objections they might have are answered above the fold (the part of the website that is visible without needing to scroll).

If visitors know what type of lawyer they’re after, they can use the menu along the top to get to that page quickly rather than using the search bar.

Our conversion rate optimisation team know even more ways to increase landing page conversion rates, including several you can learn from our conversion rate explainer videos on YouTube, starting with this one.

Connect with Legal Clients Using SEO

Law firm SEO is key to getting your law firm in front of qualified leads.

It’s especially important for getting in front of these prospective clients when they’re looking for your services.

They’re likely to be asking questions on search engines. They could be ready to convert, searching for things like “solicitor near me”, or considering their options, with searches like “Am I eligible for a personal injury payout?”

Understanding the searches people make just before they become leads is the best place to start when improving your SEO for conversions.

You can use a tool like Semrush (which you can try for free for 14 days with our link) to see the keywords and phrases that your site, and competitor’s sites, are already ranking for.

To find more questions that potential clients ask, you should reflect on conversations with past clients or speak to other lawyers in the firm to find out what questions come up often.

You can use tools like AlsoAsked or Answer the Public to find more questions.

Law firm SEO can feel technical, but really it’s very people first.

By typing “personal injury law” into AlsoAsked, we got some great key questions that could be targeted by blog posts on your website, including:

Should I use a solicitor for a personal injury claim?
How long does a personal injury claim take to settle?
What is the average payout for personal injury claims?

Image Source

If these are the questions people are searching for on the hunt for legal services, then you want your website to appear high in the search results.

The pages on your website that you want to rank for different searches could be:

Your homepage
Legal services pages
Blog content

Your homepage should rank for your most important keyword – for example, “Lawyer Utah” or “Solicitor South London”.

The legal services pages will rank for similar but more specific terms such as “Family law Utah” or “Conveyancing services South London”.

Your law firm’s blog is the place for answering questions and will be one part of your content marketing strategy, which we’ll cover in the next section.

SEO takes time to build momentum but it’s worth it in the long run. It’s an important foundation to have and starting now will mean you have more opportunities to convert those high-quality leads from search engines.

Looking to take a deeper dive into law firm SEO? Download our free guide.

10x Your Legal Leads

Download our free 77-page eBook, inc. templates and checklists, and increase your legal leads

Download my free copy

Content Marketing for Law Firms

Content marketing refers to all the content on your website (page descriptions, blogs, your about page), as well as any content outside your website. This could be video marketing, press releases or digital PR.

Blogging for lead generation

Blogging can be a great way for lawyers to generate leads, but many firms use it solely as a source of traffic instead.

This is great, and it’s important to nurture cold traffic and move them closer to becoming clients.

But, you can also use blogs to attract prospective clients who are on the brink of converting to clients.

Image Source

Your SEO research will have given you some questions people ask just before they convert.

Use blogs to answer these questions. Some questions will need a longer answer than others, but no matter the length of the blog, it should always include a call to action.

Want to learn more about blogging basics for law firms? Download our guide.

10x Your Legal Leads

Download our free 77-page eBook, inc. templates and checklists, and increase your legal leads

Download my free copy

Writing calls to action to generate leads

This call to action should keep in mind the stage of the client journey the reader is at. If the question you’re answering often leads to someone becoming a client, then the CTA should invite them to book a consultation with you.

If the content is aimed more at people early in their journey, then you can convert them to email subscribers instead through a more relevant CTA such as an enticing email list sign-up or through a downloadable guide.

You’ll want to change the tone of your CTA based on the blog content too. How someone feels while searching for a divorce lawyer is likely to be different to someone looking for conveyancing help.

Writing blogs for your law firm doesn’t need to be a chore. Learn how to make the most of your law firm’s blogs in our free guide.

146% increase in organic conversions for Patino Law Firm using CRO, SEO and content marketing

Let’s set the scene.

Just before Patino joined us their rankings had tanked.

They had a poor experience with another SEO agency and needed help getting back on their feet.

Our objectives were simple:

Recover from the ranking drops
Get the client found and contacted by more quality leads

So what did we do? We worked on improving their homepage using conversion rate optimisation, improved SEO across the site and helped them write lots of articles answering common questions their ideal clients had.

The results?

146% increase in organic conversions in 9 months
10 new position one rankings
Global Search Awards 2022 winner (Best Local Campaign: SEO – Large)

Get the full story in our case study.

Using PPC to Get More Leads for Your Law Firm

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is used to refer to any paid ads you see online. These could be on search engines, social media platforms or websites.

PPC is an important part of lead generation for lawyers, as it’s a way of connecting with potential clients in the places they already spend their time online, or when they’re searching for your services.

Search ads

Search ads are great for lead generation. People searching for legal services on search engines are already in the market for what you offer, they just need to find the right firm.

Using your SEO research, identify some search terms that often lead to quality leads converting.

Type these into your search engine (most likely Google or Bing) and take a look at the ads that appear. What are they offering? Which USPs do they include?

You will need to compete with these ads, so it’s important to understand what’s already out there.

Image Source

All the ads in the above image are relevant to the search for “will solicitor near me”; some even highlight a nearby location (in this case, Grantham). All of them include prices and special offers.

When creating a search ad, it’s essential to include the following:

A strong headline that’s enticing and contains the keywords you are targeting. Think back to the titles of the blogs we discussed earlier.
A compelling offering in the text. This should clarify your offering and why the viewer should choose you.
Ad extensions, including other relevant pages on your site or a click-to-call button so viewers can get in touch right away.

Remarketing

It’s unlikely that someone looking for legal help will be scrolling social media in the hopes they see an ad for a law firm.

But, social media ads are still great for generating leads for your firm.

You just need to take the remarketing route.

Remarketing, also something called retargeting, is when you reconnect with a potential client who visited your site around the internet.
You can create ads to target people who visited certain pages on your law firm’s website, meaning they get a really personalised experience.

Image Source

The above ad from Slater and Gordon is great — it has eye-catching visuals that include a question — “injured on holiday?”. This is a great remarketing ad for anyone who visited pages on the Slater and Gordon website about accidents abroad.

The ad copy (the text above the ad) highlights that Slater and Gordon have legal experts who can offer specialist advice, making it clear what the ad is for.

A CTA under the ad reinforces the text in the image, asking again if the viewer has been injured on holiday, stating that they’re an award-winning law firm to build trust and credibility.

The ad above isn’t perfect — the Trustpilot reviews are tiny in the image, and the offering is vague. A viewer might be unsure whether they’ll need to pay to speak to a professional or if they will be taken to a call or an email form.

Law firm PPC best practices

To get more legal leads from your PPC ads you should follow these best practices.

Use great visuals (in ads that use visuals)
Include engaging copy that gives the viewer a reason to click
Add an eye-catching headline
Adapt your ads for different audiences and searches
A/B test your ads to see what resonates with your audience
Monitor analytics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, engagement and return on ad spend (ROI)
Make adjustments to ad creative (that’s your copy and visuals) if you see a performance dip.

Creating Legal Lead Magnets

A great way of generating leads for any law firm is through lead magnets.

These are downloadable guides or tools that you offer potential clients, often in exchange for their email addresses.

Popular lead magnets include:

Checklists
Calculators
Downloadable guides
Templates
Spreadsheets.

Consider the ways you could add these lead magnets to your blogs. They should fit with the content, otherwise, the reader is likely to ignore them.

Offering free legal advice and consultations

Another great lead magnet for law firms is offering a free consultation or advice to potential clients.

Prospective clients are often unsure which legal services they need, or if you can even help them.

They might be wondering if they have a case or not, and they’ll be reluctant to pay for an hour of your law firm’s time if there’s the chance they won’t need your help.

You can take this perceived risk away by offering a free consultation or advice to potential clients.

It’s a great way to get more leads and will help build trust with potential clients.

If you’re worried that you’ll get lots of unqualified leads requesting consultations, then you can use a sign-up form to help disqualify people who aren’t quite right for your law firm.

Want more lead generation ideas?

Check out our lead generation video playlist on YouTube

How Working with a Marketing Agency Can Get You More Leads

Did you know that 83% of law firms outsource their marketing work?

And yes, okay, we’re slightly biased because we’re a marketing agency delivering legal marketing, but there are some real benefits to working with a digital marketing agency like Thinkplus.

Experience and knowledge

The best digital marketing agencies will have a wide range of experience in different industries and a team of trained specialists. Each specialist will have an in-depth understanding of their area of expertise.

A single in-house marketer or a small team could not possibly do the role of 9-10 specialists from a digital marketing agency.

The rapid pace of change in each marketing channel makes it impossible for any one person to keep their knowledge truly up-to-date across these two areas, let alone the 10-plus areas of marketing that businesses need to be up to speed on. Here at Thinkplus, our specialist Ninjas have 15% training time each month to keep their knowledge fresh and ensure their focus is on delivering the best ROI for a channel.