Law Firm Marketing Strategy » Law Firm Advertising: 2024 Beginner’s Guide + Examples
Guide Chapters
Law firm advertising is when law firms promote their practice on digital and traditional advertising platforms with the goal of attracting potential clients and generating leads. It’s an important component of any law firm marketing plan.
Lawyer advertising is an integral part of a legal marketing campaign. The purpose of running these ads can vary, but it is ultimately designed for attracting potential clients (lead generation) and revenue growth.
As opposed to free law firm marketing methods like referral and networking, lawyer advertising can bring faster and measurable results. At On The Map Marketing, we refer to our lawyer ads service packages as instant traction.
To get started, you’ll need to follow certain steps to ensure you achieve your goals with the right strategy.
Before you can create legal advertising content, you’ll need to understand and identify your ideal viewers. Your target audience will depend on your practice area. For instance, a family lawyer’s audience will be different from a personal injury law firm’s audience.
Identifying your target audience helps you create relevant ads that speak to them and, as a result, can bring you quality leads and better conversions.
You can conduct your audience research by:
When you have a clear idea of your audience, you can create compelling content, attract the right people and get high-converting leads.
Having an advertising strategy is essential in helping you focus on your marketing goals and implement the necessary steps to achieve them. To come up with a successful law firm marketing campaign, you’ll need to keep your strategy clear.
Are you using paid advertising to enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts? What is the goal of your ad campaigns?
No matter your business goal, you should have a solid plan on how to achieve it. Make sure you have this strategy written down and that everyone on your team is on board with it and are working together with this in mind.
The American Bar Association (ABA) has rules when it comes to lawyers and law firms advertising their services (online or offline).
Some of these rules include:
For the rest of these guidelines, you’ll need to refer to the ABA Rule 7.2: Communications Concerning a Lawyer’s Services.
Think about the advertising methods you want to do and whether they are the best option to achieve your goal. Here are some of the goals you would have when promoting your legal services (online or offline):
Some methods, like print advertising (newspapers, billboards, etc.) are best used when your goal is brand awareness. These ads are not expected to drive traffic to your law firm website or bring you more leads (directly).
You would need to decide how much of your marketing budget you should allocate to advertising. Generally, law firms invest between 5 – 20% of their revenue in marketing. This amount should be divided into the different marketing activities you plan to implement in a year.
Tracking and measuring your ad’s performance is crucial to knowing whether they are working or not. Most specifically, tracking performance is essential to understand key advertising metrics like:
Analyzing your advertising campaign’s performance will help you make the necessary changes needed for a better law firm marketing strategy if needed.
There are different types of advertising that you can use for your legal practice. Here is a brief discussion of some of the most common types of law firm advertising using digital and traditional channels.
Video advertising is when companies use videos to promote a product or service. These are commonly seen in video-sharing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Video ads can be the video content itself or as another video (labeled as an ad) that plays within an app (in-app video ads), like YouTube.
Print advertising are ads that are seen in print media (newspapers, magazines, and brochures). Also included in this category are direct mail, billboards, and posters. Print ads for law firms often include the firm’s name, location, practice area, pricing, and contact information.
TV and radio ads (also known as commercials) appear in between television and radio programs. These ads are ideal for reaching a large audience and staying “top of mind” for people who might remember the product or service at a later time.
A type of print advertising, billboards are big, outdoor advertising structures seen along highways and anywhere that there is a huge crowd (mostly in cities). Billboards help companies reach thousands of people and build brand awareness and recognition.
Social media advertising involves the firm ads on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These ads can be a part of a bigger social media marketing plan and are made to achieve a goal such as website visits, sales, and other conversion campaigns.
Certain channels like Facebook Ads allow advertisers to target audiences by location, interests, and other demographic factors.
Search engine advertising, also called PPC (pay-per-click) ads, appear on top of search engine results (like Google Search) and are marked as “Sponsored”. The most common type of search engine advertising provider is Google Ads. The image shown below is an example of a search engine ad for the search term “wrongful termination lawyer in New York”.
Google Ads allow advertisers to bid on ad spots for a specific keyword and charge advertisers per ad click. PPC ad costs can vary depending on your law practice, with personal injury and family law being more competitive and costly as compared to other practice areas like estate planning.
Your law firm’s advertising budget will depend on a few factors including:
Having a law firm marketing budget prevents you from overspending and helps you be resourceful and creative while staying within your means.
There is not one advertising type that fits all law firms. This will depend on a law firm’s size, practice area, budget, location, and target audience.
A small law firm with a modest budget might not have the resources to run a print ad campaign, but can benefit more with Google Ads and social media ads. Alternatively, multi-location firms might afford more lucrative advertising campaigns like print, TV, and radio.
Your audience can also be a factor in choosing an advertising method. If you’re targeting a younger demographic, you might find better results with social media ads.
Lastly, you can also choose a traditional or modern approach that fits your firm’s brand.
The type of advertising you choose should make sense for your brand, your audience, your goals, and your budget.
Advertising your law firm online and offline both has its benefits and disadvantages. It’s important to consider these when deciding which method you want to focus on.
Pros:
Cons:
Pros:
Cons:
In a nutshell, digital ads are great for targeting a specific audience while traditional advertising offers massive reach and better brand recall.
If you want to ensure that your marketing efforts result in attracting prospective clients and growing your online presence, you can get help from On The Map Marketing.
We have years of experience in helping law firms get new leads from successful advertising campaigns along with other marketing tactics like search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and web design.
Get in touch with us today to get started with your custom law firm advertising plan.