Business Lawyer Marketing: 12 Tactics For 2024

What is Business Lawyer Marketing?

Business lawyer marketing pertains to different marketing strategies designed to attract potential clients. 

This includes conventional tactics like sponsoring local events and print advertising, as well as digital marketing strategies like social media advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Aside from generating leads, here are other benefits of business lawyer marketing:

• Build a desirable brand image for landing big-ticket clients. 
• Generate more referral leads from past clients, businesses, and other legal professionals.
• Unlock more opportunities for business growth.
• Establish your credibility and authority within your legal network. 
• Keep up with the latest marketing trends through ongoing marketing research.

Just keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in business lawyer marketing. To get profitable, sustainable results, you need to focus on strategies that align with your specific business goals. 

Digital Business Law Marketing Tactics

Here are the top seven digital marketing strategies for business lawyers:

Start With Local SEO

The goal of local SEO is to make your law firm website more visible to local search engine users.

These are prospective clients who are urgently looking for nearby business law firms.  

Compared to the rest of the strategies on this list, local SEO is the least demanding in terms of time and budget. It is a low-risk, high-reward strategy that can lead potential customers to your website from day one.

To kickstart your local SEO efforts, create and optimize your Google Business Profile. 

Formerly “Google My Business,” Google Business Profile is a free local SEO tool that can help you appear at the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). 

This big chunk of screen real estate is called the “Google Map Pack,” which highlights important business information like ratings, operating hours, website links, and location via an interactive map.  

Setting up your Google Business Profile can be done in a few minutes. As long as you have your Google account ready, the process mostly only involves entering your business information, choosing the right options (e.g., business type and category), and uploading professional photos.

The real work comes with optimizing your Google Business Profile. To point you in the right direction, go to Google Business Profile’s homepage, click ‘Manage now,’ and look at the different sections that demand your attention.

Here are some tips to get the ball rolling: 

• Push content updates. Establish your authority by regularly adding content updates to your Google Business Profile. 
• Enable Google Questions & Answers. Allow potential clients to ask questions and answer them publicly to nurture leads — or post your own questions to accelerate the decision-making of future prospects.
• Allow messages and set up Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Enable messages for prospects who want to reach out directly and prepare FAQs to win their trust.
• Observe NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) consistency. Make sure your Google Business Profile contains up-to-date business information. 

Build a Business Lawyer Website

Business law clients usually have a lot of money on the line. 

A well-optimized Google Business Profile may be great for providing an overview of your business law firm. But for business law prospects, that’s not enough information to make a solid hiring decision.

That’s why a law firm website is one of the most important investments you can make in the digital era. 

A law firm website helps cement your expertise and credibility to business law prospects in a handful of ways:

• Publish relevant blog posts. Put your expertise on full display with in-depth blog posts about relevant legal topics and issues. 
• Highlight your firm’s accomplishments. Spotlight your law firm’s accreditations and awards to show that you mean business.
• Share social proof. Give potential clients a glimpse of what you can deliver by publishing case results, reviews, and client testimonials.

Don’t forget to prioritize value and the user experience when designing your website. 

Tools like WordPress and Wix make it possible to put your website together without any background in web design. But if you need competitive results fast, your best bet is to hire a full-service web design agency. 

Create an Organic SEO Strategy

Building a website and publishing high-quality content are two of the most important prerequisites for successful organic SEO. 

Similar to local SEO, organic SEO aims to promote your law firm through SERPs. The key difference is, organic SEO helps you land a spot in listings for a variety of relevant keywords — not just in the Google Local Pack.

Just a word of advice: organic SEO is a multi-layered campaign that requires you to be competitive and excel in different areas of your online presence.

To give you some perspective, below is a quick SEO checklist — things to come if you decide that your law firm deserves to be discovered on Google:

• Keyword research and strategy. Identify and optimize for keywords that your target audience uses to look for law firms.
• On-page SEO. Integrate the fundamentals of on-page SEO, such as internal linking and image optimization, into your website. 
• Technical SEO. Make sure your website is optimized on a backend level, including your sitemap, loading speed, and mobile-friendliness.
• Link building. Getting backlinks from authoritative sources to get referral traffic and improve your website’s rank-worthiness in the eyes of Google. 
• SEO analytics. Keep track of SEO metrics like Domain Authority (DA), referring domains, and Click-Through Rate (CTR) to assess if your marketing efforts are working.

Try Legal Content Marketing

Speaking of organic SEO, high-quality content production is your bread and butter if you want to attain higher search engine rankings. 

Great content directly affects SEO by improving user engagement and naturally attracting more backlinks. And, by great content, we mean top-notch stuff that requires close attention to the following:

• Target audience personas. Understand who you’re creating content for and cover topics that will capture their interest.
• Keyword optimization. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs, Serpstat, and Semrush to determine viable target keywords for your content strategy. 
• Meta tags (e.g., page title and meta description). Weave your target keywords into the right places and make sure they’re formatted properly in terms of length. 
• Internal link structure. Create clusters of related content and connect them with internal links.
• Impeccable grammar and spelling. Avoid writing mistakes to preserve your law firm’s professional image and build your authority. 
• Effective use of visual content. Maximize engagement and rank in Google image searches using infographics, screenshots, and professional photos (don’t forget to use optimized image filenames and “alt text” tags). 

Content marketing also takes it to the next level with an added focus on distribution. 

You don’t just build quality content and wait for prospects to come on their own. To put your content to work, promote it through distribution channels like social media, email, content syndication platforms, and online communities. 

Experiment With Video Marketing

Out of all media used in content marketing, videos are the most effective in terms of engaging audiences, communicating advanced information, and convincing business law clients that you know your stuff. 

While it helps to have a professional video team for high-production-value clips, modern tools like Filmora, InShot, and KineMaster make it possible to produce good video content without advanced video editing skills. 

Hiring professionals, however, can guarantee that your content hits the mark in terms of quality, relevance, and alignment with legal marketing goals. 

You’ll also be able to create specialized video content formats with speed and spot-on efficiency, like:

• Explainer videos
• Client interviews
• Company culture videos
• Case studies
• Q&A videos

Splurge Some Budget on Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is in another category of marketing—different from strategies that target organic results like SEO and content marketing. 

It can give your law firm’s website instant exposure through search engines and other channels that are part of the advertising network.

The catch is, you need to spend money to get your traffic. 

As the term “PPC” suggests, you’ll get charged each time someone clicks on your ad or sponsored placement. And without proper research and planning, you might end up draining your law firm marketing budget.

Remember, a profitable PPC campaign has a lot of moving parts that must mesh together perfectly. This includes:

• PPC keyword strategy
• Landing page design
• Ad quality rankings
• Bidding strategy
• Ad creatives

Due to the intricate nature of PPC campaigns, the best way to ensure positive returns is to hire a law firm PPC agency. 

Look for a company that doesn’t keep you in the dark. They should be able to respond to all your questions and concerns and communicate effectively through transparent reporting or direct means.

Most importantly, they should have a proven track record in law firm advertising. 

Give Social Media Advertising a Try

While you look at PPC in search engine results, you should also look at social media advertising. 

This offers much more flexibility in terms of ad content and placement strategy. 

Facebook, for example, can serve ads natively through feeds, via in-stream video placements, and through Messenger Stories. On Instagram, your ads can blend in seamlessly with other content in the “Reels” browser. 

To advertise on Meta products (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp), you only need one account on Meta Ads. This will unlock all the tools you need to plan, launch, and manage social media advertising campaigns, namely:

• Robust audience targeting options. Create target audiences based on age, gender, language, and interests. 
• Asset customization. Optimize how your ad creatives look on placements like feeds, search results, and in-stream.
• Automatic budgeting. Let the platform decide how to allocate your budget across ad sets based on your conversion goals and budget.

Just remember that social media marketing and advertising comes with its own set of challenges—on top of managing and maintaining an authoritative social media presence.

Traditional Business Law Marketing

Now that we’ve covered digital law firm marketing strategies, it’s time to go old school.

Here are five time-tested techniques that will bolster your business law firm marketing plan:

Engage in Good Old Public Relations

Journalists and media publications are still powerful connections for budding law firms. 

To get good PR, one strategy is to use platforms like Connectively (formerly “HARO”) and leverage your expertise to help journalists polish their stories. Of course, you can also get in touch with local news publishers and media professionals for opportunities to lend your knowledge on certain issues.

Apart from these methods, here are other ways to boost your law firm’s PR:

• Establish and document your brand identity.
• Use PR monitoring and Customer Intelligence (CI) tools like Meltwater to centralize your PR management.
• Hire digital PR services to hit your objectives while you focus on running your firm.

Speak at Conferences

Another way to improve your firm’s PR is through speaking engagements. 

Use resources like the Speakers Bureau or your local bar association website to find speaking opportunities in business law. 

There may be a lot of legwork involved in seeking speaking engagements. But it is a straightforward and effective way to put the spotlight on your law firm. 

Try Print Advertising 

Your local bar association not only exposes you to speaking opportunities and other networking resources. 

In some states, bar associations also accept print advertising placements on their own magazines, events, and publications. 

That’s just a fraction of print advertising’s potential. 

Using directories like ThePrintGuide, you can find local suppliers for a range of printed marketing materials. 

Some examples are:

• Brochures
• Pamphlets
• Posters
• Branded merchandise
• Bumper stickers

Sponsor Local Events

Speaking at events is great, but sponsoring your own event for the sake of the local community is even better. 

You can host fundraisers for a local charity, offer a free seminar, organize conferences, and more. 

If you need inspiration, don’t hesitate to visit the “Events” page (or something similar) of another firm. 

It doesn’t have to be a direct competitor. Most types of local events aren’t necessarily restricted to a specific legal practice area.

Experiment With Referral Marketing

Every law firm generates clients through referrals. 

It’s just a question of how many referrals they get.

Without further ado, here are a few ways to generate more referrals for your law firm:

• Create an easy-to-use referral form on your website. 
• Network with other lawyers and forge lead exchange agreements. 
• Send referral requests to your previous clients via email (and incentivize it).

How About a Custom Business Law Marketing Plan For Your Firm?

Business lawyers are among the highest-paid professionals in the legal landscape. But even they can use some help when it comes to their law firm’s marketing strategy.

If you need help putting together a business law marketing plan, contact us here to get a free marketing audit. We’re always available to provide tailored marketing plans for law firms across the most competitive law markets in the US.