With the average small business spending $75,000 a year on digital marketing, it’s essential that you’re making smart choices with online marketing. With all of the pay-per-click and native advertising options that are available, you could be racking up a huge bill before you know it. Online marketing for law firms can be done on a shoestring budget if you know how to take advantage of online searches.

Most of your clients will come from frantic searches online. People will either be looking to get compensation for a suit or panicking in response to being sued. They’ll quickly search for a law firm and if you set up your site correctly, you can easily end up in the top results.

Here are 5 ways you can get a competitive edge in online marketing.

1. Start A Blog

When people are searching for something online, they’re either looking for a specific service or the answer to a question. You can capture both types of searchers by starting a blog. Your blog can focus on answering lots of common questions about legal services while offering your own legal services as the solution.

A blog gives you the opportunity to show off your authority and your experience. You can talk about the kinds of work you’ve done in the past and how you’ve dealt with unique cases. Without going into specific details, you can help show people how they could benefit from hiring an experienced lawyer from your firm.

The most important thing people will want to know about any lawyer is whether or not they can handle their type of case. Your blog can showcase not only your capability but your innovation when dealing with special cases. Your lawyers have had some interesting and unique cases and talking about them can help potential clients decide whether or not to hire you.

2. Use Lots of Local SEO

Search engines use web crawlers to help index every site on the internet. Those web crawlers then rank each site for how they use keywords, how fast they load, and how well organized they are. Taking advantage of what search engines want to see will help you stay ahead of the pack.

Search engines also love to show sites that have a local relevance to where the user is searching from. They know that when someone searches for “pizza”, they’re usually looking for nearby pizzerias. When people search for legal services, they’re probably looking for a lawyer nearby.

Use lots of references to your city or the neighborhood you’re located in. You’ll show search engines where you’re located and help them to serve you those users most local to you. Search engines will use user data, account information, and past searches to help direct users your way.

3. Stay Active On Social Media

Social media is a great way to build a relevant following for your law firm. If you connect with lots of other local businesses, you can show your potential clients where you’re located and who you associate with. Combining your social media approach with your SEO strategy can also add up to big results.

You can use this as a way to promote your blog posts. You can get valuable backlinks to your website. The more links and clicks you get to your blog posts, the higher they’ll rise in the search rankings.

Social media is a great way to show that your law firm is staffed by real people. Have professional photos taken of everyone who works there and add a short bio of their work experience with a little bit of personal character. People don’t want to walk into a law firm afraid to talk to the people on the other side of the desk.

Social media helps to break stigmas about getting into certain legal trouble or being able to talk in an authentic way about certain types of arrests. People make mistakes all the time or need legal defense for all kinds of reasons. Whether they’re trying to get damages from a deadbeat landlord or recuperating expenses from a car accident, they’ll want to deal with someone approachable.

4. Video Is The Future

In just a few years, video will dominate over 80% of all traffic on the internet. If you’re not creating videos for your site or your social media profiles, you need to start as soon as possible.

There are a lot of ways that law firms can create videos. You can offer discounts to your clients who are willing to give a testimonial. Ask them to talk briefly about how your law firm helped them, why they chose you, and what they learned from working with you.

You’ll find that people are more than willing to sit down with you after a successful case and talk about their experience. Take advantage of the positive mood they’re in and get your video shot soon after the case wraps up.

5. Claim Your Business Listings

Your listing on Google My Business, Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and Avvo are some of the first contacts that potential clients might have with your business. There might be partially filled in information from customers or from other business directories. You need to claim every listing so you can have control over them.

It’s essential that you have consistent information listed on every site. You need to add photos of your offices, your staff, and any other information that seems relevant. The more you share with your clients from the get-go, the more they’ll feel like they know and can trust your office starting with their first phone call.

Online Marketing For Law Firms Takes Savvy

If you take advantage of all of the cheap and free solutions available, online marketing for law firms can be done efficiently and easily. Knowing the right tricks is part of the game. So long as you can devote the time and energy to building your profile online, you’ll be able to stay ahead of most of your competitors.

If you need help with your online presence, check out our guide to how a consultant could bring you much-needed assistance.

With the number of social network users expected to exceed 3 billion by 2021, it should be no secret that your social media strategies need to be a part of your marketing plan.

But before you start randomly posting to Facebook or Twitter, take a moment to read through these tips for social media marketing.

After all, if you want to have success with social media, you need to follow a few guidelines.

1. Use Images

In the social media world, a picture is worth a thousand shares. People are naturally drawn to images and are therefore much more likely to interact with a post if it includes a picture.

This is first on our list of digital strategies because it’s the most important. If you’re not using images in every one of your posts, then you need to start doing so immediately.

2. Pick a Platform

There are too many social media platforms out there for you to become a master of every one of them. Besides that, if your target audience isn’t on Instagram, then you’ll just be wasting your time.

Figure out where your target audience spends the majority of their time, and use that platform. A good way to do that is to look at some of the biggest companies in your industry and see where they have the largest followings.

3. Post with the Right Frequency

If you post a dozen times per day on Facebook, it’s considered annoying. However, if you only post 3 times per day on Twitter, you’ll get lost in the shuffle.

Once you’ve picked your platform, find out how many times you should be posting in a day or week. Then, start posting that often.

4. Post at the Right Times

Once you know how often you need to post, you can start figuring out what time your audience is active, and most likely to see your post. After all, it doesn’t matter how great a post is if your audience isn’t around to see it.

A working man, for example, would likely be on social media in the evenings whereas a stay-at-home mom would be on more often during the day. Many sites have analytics in place where you can see when your audience is most engaging so you can target those times.

5. Automate Your Content

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the thought of having to post a certain number of times a day during certain times, take a deep breath and relax. If you want to be successful at implementing these social media strategies, you need to make it easy and automate your content.

Use websites like Canva to create your images, and Buffer to schedule posts in advance so you can’t have to be glued to your computer all day just to use social media for marketing your business.

6. Encourage Sharing

Don’t be afraid to ask your audience to share your posts. Although they may like what they read or see, they may not think of sharing it until prompted. When your post is shared, it will quickly reach a much wider audience.

The other reason sharing is important is for SEO purposes. This is because you gain backlinks to your site as people share your content on their page. Backlinks from social media sites are valuable because these big sites are authority sites.

Google ranks websites higher when people on social media talk about them.

7. Use Polls

Several social media platforms allow you to create a poll as a post. Use these to get higher levels of engagement but also to figure out what your audience likes. Don’t be afraid to ask them what types of content they prefer.

Just don’t forget to use the results of these polls to share or create the content that your audience is looking for. When your audience sees that you listened to them by addressing their concerns, they will become more loyal customers.

8. Share Killer Content

Get creative with the content you share. You’ll need a lot of it to keep sending posts out to your followers. The majority of your content should come from your own website, but there’s also value in sharing content from others in your industry as well.

Tagging another industry leader when you share their content is a great way to put yourself on the radar of their audience. This could gain you some new followers as you already know they’re interested in what you’re doing.

9. Engage With Your Audience

Social media should be just that: social. It’s why people use these platforms. They want to interact not just with people they know personally, but with celebrities and businesses, too.

It’s obvious when a company gets how important social media is to engage with customers. You see it with some of the big companies like Wendy’s who told a teen he could have a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets if he got 18 million shares.

Reply to comments, give shout-outs to loyal customers, and answer questions from your customers in videos. There are too many ways to engage with your audience for me to list here.

10. Hire Someone to Implement Your Social Media Strategies

Social media is always changing which means it can be hard to tackle it all yourself, especially if you’re running a one-man (or one-woman!) show. Before you dive in, you need to ask yourself if you really have time to master digital marketing.

Fortunately, there are people like me that make it their business to know social media marketing inside and out. I learned everything and continue to learn as changes happen so you don’t have to.

Most entrepreneurs and small businesses find that it will save them money by saving them a ton of time to outsource this part of their business. They can also make more money quicker since they have an expert at the wheel.

Your Next Steps

Now that you’re armed with the knowledge you need to use these social media strategies to grow your business, it’s up to you to implement them.

Be sure to check out the blog for more information about online marketing, or contact us to find out how I can help you expand your business using social media.

Are you interested in pursuing a career as a marketing professional?

The marketing industry is constantly transforming to fit the demands of a fast-paced and high-tech consumer base. As a result, job trends in the industry tend to rely on more than just marketing know-how.

Today’s professionals must be able to intertwine digital advertising and promotional skills to develop an effective internet-based marketing plan that competes with the highest ranked brands and businesses.

Although the position comes with a fair share of challenges, its skills are among the hottest in demand.

A report by Forrester Research estimates that digital marketing spending will top $100 billion and account for 35% of all marketing spending by 2019. Overall, the demand for these skills has doubled over the past five years, according to Burning Glass Technologies.

Want to break into the growing field of internet marketing?

Here’s what to expect as an online marketing consultant!

Considering a Career as an Online Marketing Consultant?

There are a lot of reasons to consider a job in the digital marketing arena.

If you have the skills, finding work probably won’t be too difficult. As more and more companies attempt to integrate traditional advertising with the growing number of digital marketing channels, the need for digital marketers is on the rise.

64% of recruiters report a shortage of skilled marketing professionals. This means that there are plenty of jobs available for workers seeking to break into the field.

FlexJobs lists marketing as one of its top seven fields among remote work opportunities.

Due to the high demand for workers and the flexibility offered to employees, Forbes describes digital marketing as a top career pick for those craving a favorable work-life balance.

As a marketing pro, you have the power to change and grow business for others, impacting their success, while adding to your own.

But, before you decide if this is the right career for you, it might help to know what a day in the life of an online marketing consultant looks like.

How a Digital Marketing Professional Spends Their Day

Although an online marketing consultant may not always be able to follow the same daily schedule, it’s important to have an established routine that includes major tasks and responsibilities. Just keep in mind that a client’s urgent request or a critical deadline can cause your routine to veer off-course.

First Things First

Many of today’s online marketers work remotely. But whether you work from an office or from your own home, it’s crucial that you set a time to start your workday.

Three things that a digital marketer should do to start their day includes:

• Prepare, plan, and prioritize your day
• Check and return emails and phone calls
• Make a daily to-do list

It’s always a good idea to spend the first few minutes planning and preparing for the day ahead. Review any upcoming deadlines, appointments, and necessary tasks that need to be tackled.

Next, check emails and phone calls. Return any that require correspondence or make a note of those that need to be returned at a later time.

A short to-do list each day can help you to prioritize what needs to be done and make sure that it gets accomplished.

Social Media Management

Make a habit of incorporating morning posts into your social media management strategy. This ensures that you maintain an active social media presence and that followers receive regular updates from you in their feeds.

Content

Creating content can be one of the more time-consuming tasks in your day. If you set a tentative deadline to begin mid-morning and wrap up around lunch time, you will be free for clients and other projects in the afternoon.

When you have several clients that you produce content for, you have to make sure that you’re techniques are time-efficient. If you get stuck, set the piece aside and come back to it later so that your day isn’t wasted working on one item.

Website/ SEO Maintenance

After lunch, it’s time to review client’s websites and make improvements.

This block of time includes incorporating SEO strategies so that clients sites will climb rankings. If you don’t produce rankings and traffic, your clients won’t be satisfied and you risk losing them to a competing online marketing consultant.

During this time, you’ll research and insert links, images, keywords, descriptions, and titles so that the site is performing at its maximum potential.

Review the content that you have written and edit if necessary. Then post and share any content to be included that day.

Customer Relations

Spend the last part of your day building customer relationships. This may include reaching out to clients, analyzing data, shifting your strategy, or whatever needs your attention in order to get your clients results.

Because you may be dealing with several clients at any given time, you may need to prioritize which clients should receive the highest priority.

New clients should always be prioritized so that you establish your competency. Also, you want to be sure that you pay attention to your major clients and make sure that they are getting the results promised.

What’s Next?

You can get a head start on the next work day by organizing your workspace, filling in your calendar, and making note of any major tasks you have looming.

One of the best things about being an online marketing consultant is that you have the freedom to create a schedule that works for you. If you have a family, an active social life, or other activities that you are involved in this can be a huge plus.

This career is great for people who are results-driven, self-disciplined, and can effectively manage time and meet deadlines.

Want to find out more about the digital marketing industry?

Check out this post on today’s top digital marketing trends!

With the average small business now spending around $75,000 a year on digital marketing, small businesses need to be smart to get a good ROI.

Spending a considerable amount of your budget on marketing without the right strategy could result in no returns at all. You need to follow digital marketing tips to trends to spend wisely.

New business online is generated by business directories and search engines. Search engines use tools called “web crawlers” to look at, rank, and index every site on the internet. That’s how they can return results so quickly and accurately.

If you want to get in front of the right customers, you need to prepare your site to be found and to offer what your clients need when they arrive.

Follow these 10 digital marketing tips to ensure you’re on the right track.

1. Prioritize SEO

If there’s one acronym that rules the internet right now, it’s SEO. Preparing your site to be found by search engines and ranked highly will ensure you get to the top of relevant search results.

Search engine optimization takes advantage of the algorithms used by search engines to rank sites. High rankings are about more than the use of a keyword. Mentioning where you’re located, organizing your site well, and using keywords in your metadata will help search engines know how to rank your site.

2. Create Good Content

One thing that search engines love is a site that is updated often. Creating a blog is a great way to connect with your audience and to please search engines. You can share your knowledge about your field and tell your customers new ways they can use and engage with your products.

Strong content will be shared often by your audience and will end up being seen by a wider audience. The more your content is shared, the stronger your reputation will become. Search engines rank sites based on the strength of their site’s reputation.

3. Use Social Media

You should have separate social media accounts for personal use and your business. Create a polished profile and include a few elements of criteria every post to your profile should meet. Making a specific goal and standards to reach that goal will help you to build a following.

Don’t be afraid to have a niche. The biggest mistake you can make for your business is to think that your audience is “everyone”. You’ll inevitably have an ideal, core customer who you should be building your base around.

4. Try Permission Marketing

It might sound strange, but asking your customers for their personal information and permission to send promotions really works.

With most people inundated with spam in their inboxes, it’s not only polite, but it’s sure to work for you. Sending text messages can allow for some high-impact promotions. Respecting your customers’ ability to opt-in or opt-out at any time will make customers respect you in return.

As mobile traffic has surpassed desktop, people spend hours a day on their phones. Getting into your customers’ pockets is a great way to increase engagement.

5. Do Some Online PR

One of the best places to perform public relations online is through video platforms. Use sites like YouTube to market your business with ads. Create content that’s relevant to your customers but save the ads for the pre-roll or mid-roll of your video.

Promotional infomercials are too obvious to sell anything to anyone but your most dedicated customers. To get new customers, make videos that might have nothing to do with your products but about topics trending in the news or celebrity culture.

6. Don’t Skip Email Marketing

Email marketing still has a great ROI. While most digital marketing tips might focus on social media channels, emailing your customers great deals never gets old.

Email marketing is a low-cost way to engage with your dedicated audience. If you’ve offered the right incentives to get them to sign up in the first place, they’ll pay attention to your marketing efforts.

7. Stay Local

One of the hottest digital marketing tips is to keep an eye on your backyard. When you type “pizza” into a search engine, you might have noticed that you’ll get results for pizzerias that are nearby, whether you intended that or not. That’s because search engines assume you want to know about businesses that are close by.

Adding local keywords to your website gets you those results. Mentioning local landmarks or photographing your products in a nearby environment boosts your profile with a local customer base. Build a strong foundation nearby and you’ll have a great customer base to start off from.

8. Stay In Touch

You need to make sure that all of your contact information is up to date and available to your customers at all times. If they leave a comment on your videos or on your social media account, respond within 24 hours. Even if you get negative criticism, responding quickly looks better for your company than not responding at all.

On every business directory, make sure you’ve filled out your profiles entirely. Once incorrect information enters one of the major directories, it can be bought and redistributed by other directories trying to build their audience. Claiming your listing also allows you to post photos of your storefront, products, or your services as people use and explore them.

Be sure to get your most loyal customers to leave reviews of your business on these accounts. This will keep your rating from slipping if you end up with a negative review.

Follow Digital Marketing Tips For Better Impact

With the share of digital marketing overtaking traditional marketing year after year, taking advantage of trends and tips will keep you on top. Most marketing tactics can be implemented cheaply or even for free. While trends change every year, currently the most powerful tactics can be implemented with tools already at your disposal.

If you’re interested in finding more ways to build your impact online, contact me for even more tips.