Your livelihood as a lawyer depends on a constant influx of new clients.

Even lawyers who are lucky enough to have clients have to work hard to find such clients.

If you don’t actively generate leads, your law firm will dry up.

The key to growing your law firm and your career is having a solid lead generation strategy that consistently captures qualified leads seeking the help you can offer.

In this article, I would like to introduce you to some of the top lead generation strategies that are currently working for attorneys. You need to make sure you have a solid basic understanding of how it works.

Create a sales funnel

Ignoring the funnel and just jumping straight into the investigation will yield (at best) average results. If you’re serious about lead generation, start by creating a sales funnel.

You may need basic information or answers to specific questions. Or you may actually be looking for a lawyer. Funnels help you filter prospects based on their stage of interest. This allows you to meet prospects where they are and ultimately convert them into customers.

A funnel can be thought of as: top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), When Bottom of funnel (BOFU). As prospects move down this funnel, their approach changes.

TOFU leads must be educated and engaged. (There’s very little sales going on here, I just want to position myself as an authoritative source.) MOFU leads are actively evaluating options, so I can do a little more positioning. You’re not making a hard sell, but you’re making them realize you’re a good option.BOFU leads are ready to take action. This is where you use a direct call to action to encourage people to schedule a free initial consultation (or whatever method you use).

7 Lead Generation Strategies

Once you have a basic sales funnel idea, it’s time to start thinking about your lead generation strategy. Here are some of the digital marketing strategies in effect today.

Identify your niche

If a law firm’s marketing strategy targets everyone, it’s essentially targeting no one. The first step is to identify your niche.

The more specific you make your niche, the better. Here are some examples of niche downs:

Professionals > Blue Collar Professionals > Warehouse Managers > South Carolina Warehouse Managers

Falling into a niche and potentially banishing other potential clients can be scary, but you need to understand the power of niches. Targeting specific niches makes your message more specific. can do. No more guessing or loosely generalizing content. You can drill down and talk specifically with prospects.

After all, it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big blue ocean.

Niching creates a much smaller pond that is more likely to stand out.

Outline your ideal lead

Once you’ve identified your niche, take the time to outline your ideal lead. Create a lead persona document that answers questions like:

• Where do my ideal clients live?
• What does my ideal client do for a living?
• How much money does my ideal client make?
• What kind of house does my ideal client live in?
• What is my ideal client’s family structure?
• What does my ideal client do on weekends?
• What is my ideal client’s biggest pain point?
• What is my ideal client’s greatest desire?

You really want to dig in and be specific. Use these details to enhance your marketing strategy, content creation, and more.

Develop USPs

A good marketing strategy should be built around your unique sales proposition (USP). This is a simple statement that describes your characteristics as an attorney. You can use the following fill-in-the-blank templates to create your own.

“I help [niche] achieve [desire] without it [pain]”

It looks like this:I help a stressed out father win custody of his kids so he never misses a baseball game or a dance recital again. ”

Note that a USP like this is much more powerful than just saying:Help you fight for custody. ” Having a USP that highlights your marketing efforts changes everything.

build a website

With your ideal lead persona and USP in your niche, you’re ready to build a website (or redesign your current website). All of these building blocks help create a more targeted site.

Don’t overcomplicate your website. Simplicity is the goal. Eliminate distractions and focus on having a fast website that speaks directly to your target prospects. The goal is to convert website visitors into leads by getting them to take a specific action.

In 2022, many attorneys are adopting a simple lead magnet opt-in strategy:

• Get visitors to your website.
• Offer them free lead magnets. (This is typically a PDF, checklist, guide, ebook, or video series.)
• In exchange for a lead magnet, prospects must submit their name and email address.
• Send an automated follow-up sequence with a series of emails or phone calls designed to convert leads into clients.

This is a very simplistic approach, but it works. The idea is to lead with value instead of asking for something right away. Whether it’s a simple checklist or a comprehensive ebook, prospects will learn something and start trusting you.

invest in SEO

There are many ways to drive paid traffic to your website (one of which we’ll discuss later), but you also want organic traffic. This is ultimately what will sustain your lead generation efforts for years to come. To do this, you need to invest in search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO for law firms It’s not as difficult as some people think. You can definitely try to do it yourself, but you’d be better off hiring a service. They conduct marketing audits of law firms, develop customized strategies, execute those strategies, and provide regular reports to make sure you’re on track.

Launch a PPC campaign

While you’re gradually increasing your organic traffic through SEO, you’ll also want to launch pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns to drive more targeted traffic to your site.

The best PPC strategies include the basic lead magnet opt-in approach described above. While you can target Facebook users based on demographics and other data, Google users can be targeted based on search intent.

You can then use your remarketing efforts to follow people around the web after clicking one of your ads. This will keep them on your mind and increase your chances of converting prospects into customers.

Pay for Lead Generation Services

Building out the entire lead generation funnel with paid leads is difficult, as many law firms try to do, but can be an effective complement if you have other organic methods in place. There are many popular ones, including:

• avo
• Noro
• Find Law
• unbundled lawyer
• Lawyers.com
• Thumbtack
• Lawyer.com
• legal match
• legal zoom

Each of these services basically sells the same thing, but you can get some different features, prices, and perks based on which service you choose.

Prepare, Set, Grow

You can’t take an irrelevant approach to lead generation. It just doesn’t work in today’s market. The industry is too saturated. Without a disciplined and strategic approach to lead generation, you’re constantly missing out on new clients from your competitors.

While no two lead generation strategies are the same, you can use some of the various tips above to create a targeted approach that works for your law firm and niche. It’s not always easy, but the hard work of building a sales funnel pays off in the long run.

Nate Need

Nate Nead is CEO and Managing Member of Nead, LLC, a consulting firm that provides strategic advisory services across multiple areas including finance, marketing and software development. For over a decade, Nate has provided strategic guidance on M&A, capital raising, technology, and marketing solutions for some of the most prominent online brands. He and his team advise Fortune 500 and his SMB clients. The team is based in Seattle, Washington. El Paso, Texas and West Palm Beach, Florida.