The success of a family focused law firm depends on its relationship with its clients. This relationship needs to be built on communication and trust. And it begins with your firm’s marketing.
In the digital age, most marketing happens online. The star of your online marketing strategy is your website. There are five things that your website must have to make it effective.
1. Hero Image
The first thing that a potential client should see when they click on your website is an image of an ideal happy customer.
For a family law firm, this usually means that at the top of the homepage, there should be a picture of a smiling parent and child. This clearly shows that the services that your firm provides will help to solve their problems.
See an example here: https://www.hargravefamilylaw.com/
Hargrave Family Law is an excellent example of a family focused law firm with a successful digital marketing strategy. At the top of their homepage, they present a brief series of rotating images, each showing happy family members enjoying moments together.
The hero image should be accompanied by three testimonials, statements from actual satisfied customers. Three is the magic number here. If the customer sees only one or two testimonials, they may begin to doubt the quality of your firm’s service.
And if there are more than three, they may get distracted from the rest of the website. By using exactly three testimonials, you establish a pattern of success without overwhelming or confusing the customer.
2. Call to Action
Once you have drawn a customer in with reassuring images and testimonials, you need to call them to action.
For a family law firm, a typical call to action might say something like:
“Schedule a consultation”
“Request a meeting”
“Learn how we can help”
“Contact us”
There should be several calls to action on your homepage, but the most important place to put one is in the top right corner. People’s eyes will be naturally drawn to this area, so they will find it easily.
Schuster Family Law follows this rule, with a prominent button in the top right saying, “Request a meeting”, as seen here https://www.schusterfamilylaw.com/.
A less direct, but no less important, call to action can take the form of a phone number. It is a good idea to put your business’s phone number in the center of the page above the fold. This way, it stays visible as the viewer scrolls down.
Making your phone number easy to find is especially important for a family law firm. This is because people searching for a family lawyer are often experiencing a great deal of stress.
In addition, many people, especially older ones, will find it comforting to speak to a real person instead of clicking through a website.
3. Three-Step Plan
The next thing that your homepage must have is a three-step plan for what the client should do to solve their problem.
By presenting a simple course of action with a clear beginning, middle, and end, you will establish trust with prospective clients. You are showing them that you will guide them through the whole process.
This plan of action will assure potential clients that you know what to do. It will give them a sense of peace of mind that will greatly increase their interest in your services.
Hargrave Family Law uses a simple three-step plan to give potential clients an idea of what steps they can take to fix their problems.
See how they accomplish this here: https://www.hargravefamilylaw.com/
Clients feel more at ease when they know exactly what to expect.
4. Fresh Content
Your website needs a steady stream of fresh content to educate potential clients and show them that you are active and engaged. This content can come in whatever form you find works best for your firm.
One example is with blogs. Some blog posts might include even basic topics to attract clients. For example, someone looking for a family focused law firm would be greatly helped by a blog post about what to look for in a family attorney.
Hargrave Family Law uses blog posts, much like how we do here at Content First Marketing.
Check out their posts here: https://www.hargravefamilylaw.com/blog/
5. Marketing Automation
Getting prospective client’s information
Your homepage should include calls to action that call the customer to share their email address with you.
Once you have this information, you can use a marketing automation system to send them targeted emails to further market your firm to them.
To learn more about marketing automation, click here:
https://old.contentfirst.marketing/google-facebook-build-mailing-list/
Capturing contacts is a crucial element of your marketing strategy. The more contacts you have, the wider your base of potential clients.
At Schuster Family Law, they do it by saying “Request a Free Family Law Booklet”.
See it here towards the bottom of the page: https://www.schusterfamilylaw.com/
Every chance you get, you should try to obtain contact information. Every page on your website should include a link to contact you and join your mailing list.
Everybody on your mailing list should receive regular emails from you. Even if someone is not currently in need of a family lawyer, regular interaction and communication with your firm will build familiarity. This will make them more likely to turn to you in their time of need.
Keep your law firm in their minds with newsletters
When it comes to the emails that you send to your mailing list, content is again of the utmost importance. A regular newsletter with links to your latest blog posts or other types of content is a great way to maintain engagement with potential clients.
See at the bottom of the page how Schuster Family Law does it with “Get Our Newsletter.” https://www.schusterfamilylaw.com/about/
This content should be relevant and helpful to your client, and should help to cement your reputation as experts in the field of family law.
Another good example for this is Hargrave Family Law. They have blog posts on their website that address specific topics such as:
https://www.hargravefamilylaw.com/10-general-guidelines-for-helping-children-through-divorce/
and
https://www.hargravefamilylaw.com/know-premarital-agreements/
All of the varied posts on their blog contain important information about matters that their firm attends to.
More importantly, they demonstrate the firm’s knowledge of not only legal processes, but also the emotional effects of these processes on the lives of clients and their families.
Therefore, by giving advice that extends beyond purely legal matters, they show that they continue to care for their clients outside the courtroom.
How a White Paper lends to even more credibility
Finally, you can provide further tools to help potential clients discern what they need to do. Often, this takes the form of white papers.
A good white paper breaks down an issue and explains how your business can help to solve it. So a family law firm might choose to publish white papers breaking down common family law issues and outlining how the firm can help clients reach the best possible solution.
This approach to digital marketing will help you gain clients’ trust through your credibility. Hence the methods of effective and persuasive communication will lead your law firm to success.
Here at Content First Marketing, we can help!
Do you need a successful digital marketing strategy for your law firm?
We help by starting with a solid foundation:
- designing an attractive and effective website;
- capturing contacts;
- nurturing leads with great content and helpful tools.
To learn more about the 5 things your website needs, click here:
https://old.contentfirst.marketing/5-elements-every-homepage-must-have/
If your business would like some guidance on all of this, schedule a FREE business review here.