The Secrets to Successful Legal Marketing Copy
One of the main questions my clients ask me is how I can get more traffic to their website. Chances are, by the time they’ve found me, they’ve already dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars into marketing companies and flashy graphic design—yet their website still fails to generate leads.
Sound familiar? It is then that I ask them the all-important question:
“What is your ultimate goal for your website?”
100% of lawyers surveyed would answer the same—to obtain clients.
How Can You Start Building Client Trust?
If you are looking to build online trust with your clients and start generating leads—start by looking at the content that is already on your site. Read through it page by page. Are you bored? Is it tedious? Is it repetitive? Is it just like every other law firm’s website? If you answered yes to any of those questions, it’s time for a fresh approach at content writing.
First Get Their Digits
In order to obtain clients, you must convince a prospective web-searcher to give you their name, their phone number, and other personal contact information. This is a huge step for many injured accident victims. Why? The best part of the Internet is that it allows you to find information with anonymity. You are asking them to reveal themselves and their problems, and discard the safety of their anonymity.
To make matters worse, the majority of Americans are untrusting of lawyers and law firms—so convincing a web-searcher to fill out your contact form is no easy feat. So how can you do it?
By talking about how accomplished you and your law firm are? —-NO
By discussing the law in all its complexity? —-NO
By bombarding them with an entire Wikipedia’s worth of knowledge about how rear end accidents are caused? —-NO
By spouting off the latest and greatest research study about the dangers of drunk driving? —-NO
You get my point?
Gain Their Trust
In order to convince a stranger you’ve never met that they should give you important and sensitive personal information is no small task. This takes time and will not happen overnight. Why? Because you must gain their trust. You must build a brand and an image that is not only likeable but also one that is trustworthy and honest. Your website and blog must give potential clients what they are searching for—the answers to their questions and information that is rich and valuable to THEM—not simply to search engines.
Know Your Audience
In order to do this, you must gear your website and its content around what is most valuable to your audience.
What are your clients most interested in learning about and understanding?
How can you appeal to them on their level and relate to what they care about?
What drives their decisions?
What motivates and captivates them?
What means the most to them?
Your content needs to give them valuable information that they can bookmark, share with friends, and remember. You need to establish that you understand what your audience is concerned about—and that you care enough to help them.
Does a motorcyclist care about the latest motorcycle crash on the I-5 or does he care about how to spring clean his motorcycle to get it ready for riding season?
Does a newly divorce mother care about what a divorce lawyer can do for her or does she care more about how to save for college now that she is divorced?
Answer their questions, address their real concerns, and offer valuable insight and guidance and slowly you will gain their trust.
Getting to Top of Google Doesn’t Count
Getting to the top of Google doesn’t matter if your website doesn’t generate leads. You could have 100,000 visitors a month, but if you never get a lead from your content, then your website is a failure. Right? Remember your ultimate goal—to find more clients. While getting to the top of Google is a first great step—it is not the end of the prize. The content on your website must HOLD clients there and keep them coming back for more. Establishing your site as the site to trust and to bookmark—establishes you as the trusted source. Why go elsewhere? Right?
Legal Marketing Companies are NOT all Equal
Call most of the top legal marketing companies on the first page of Google and they will all tell you the same thing. “We can get you to the first page of Google”. What they won’t promise—what they can’t promise is that your website will generate leads. That’s where a good legal content writer or SEO content writer can help.
SEO Content Writers are NOT all Equal
You can most certainly find a freelance writer to grind out 100 pages on personal injury for minimum wage. But that won’t do anything for generating leads and bringing in potential clients. It could get you one step closer to the first page of Google, but you will still need that all-important professional legal copywriter to turn your readers into clients. You need a legal content writer who can become your online voice—who can target the clients you want to target and create an online content campaign that is designed to gain your audience’s trust.
By choosing a freelance legal SEO content writer, you can have a website that is explosive and dynamic and that sets you apart from the rest of the cookie cutter lawyer websites that spout the same legal jargon on their page. We can write that way if you like, but I don’t recommend it for really capturing an audience and building trust.
Build Trust Through Your Blog
One of the best ways to build your brand and build trust is through your legal blog. Legal blog writing can be dry and boring to read OR it can be something that gets shared and liked thousands of times—generating lead after lead after lead. Flip the way you think of legal blogging and turn it on its head. Your blog can be interesting and fun—while promoting your firm in a non-aggressive way.
The Difference is THIS:
Instead of blogging about the divorce process or the changes in alimony law—-write a post about “Tips for Living on a Budget After a Divorce” or “How to Ask Your Ex to Help Pay for Summer Camp.”
Instead of blogging about brain injury statistics, try a post about “Caring for a Victim of Traumatic Brain Injury.”
If you wish to stand out, if you wish to gain the online trust of your clients—then you need content that is dynamic and that gives them something other attorney’s don’t.
I can help you dissect your site to determine what is working and what is not. And together, we can make it a website that begins to generate leads—all without even changing your web hosting company or your legal marketing company. Call me or fill out the contact form and I can review your website to get you started on a new and better way of marketing yourself and your law firm.
Ferrar Copywriters 