How To Get Personal Injury Clients: 23 Tested Ways
The marketing landscape for lawyers can be complex and hyper-competitive, requiring them to utilize many marketing strategies. Whether they’re rookies or not, their law firms should be known enough to gain clients for long-term growth. This is especially true for personal injury lawyers like you.
In 2018, there were about 264 law firms in the United States, with in-house legal services projected to grow to 165 billion USD by 2027. This data suggests that U.S. legal services are growing, and as they do, your personal injury law firm should keep up, too.
With the rapidly changing marketing environment for legal services, your law firm may find it challenging to acquire potential clients. For this reason, employing effective marketing strategies is necessary. Keep reading to learn more about getting your personal injury law firm more clients and bringing it to the top through various marketing strategies.
Key takeaways
- Personal injury client acquisitions can be challenging, but through various marketing ways, personal injury lawyers can attract them.
- These marketing strategies are tailored to legal branding and client personas.
- Some examples are search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), and paid advertisements (for both search engines and social media).
Defining Personal Injury Marketing
Many personal injury clients seek legal representation daily. They could need it immediately or are still seeking the best lawyers to represent them. Whichever it is, your law firm should come to their mind, making the role of personal injury marketing crucial.
These clients could either be looking for legal representation regarding the following personal injury cases:
- Car accidents or other vehicle-related injuries
- Medical malpractice
- Workplace accidents
- Serious injuries
- Liabilities (premises or products)
- Wrongful death
Personal injury marketing helps you reach the clients seeking legal representation for these cases. It is responsible for promoting, marketing, and getting your law firm out there, whether digitally or not, for potential clients to see. This practice involves many strategies to help your law firm obtain a high and valuable online presence and recognition outside the Internet.
Your personal injury marketing should be effective enough to attract potential clients as they find the best lawyers to help them. Being the best entails working hard to get them because you should be trustworthy enough for their standards.
How Personal Injury Marketing Strengthens Client Acquisition
While online presence and recognition beyond digital platforms are essential, there’s more to get from personal injury marketing. Here are other ways it strengthens your law firm’s client acquisition:
Gain insights through market research
The foundation of every business lies in research. Without research, companies cannot operate well and achieve their goals. It’s crucial for personal injury lawyers like you because market research is critical in getting more personal injury clients.
Market research is where you understand client behavior and personas, economic trends, and market competition to enhance your marketing strategies. These factors allow you to determine the viability of your personal injury legal services among potential clients.
In market research, you gain substantial insights from the following business elements:
- Demand – It’s where you assess how much potential clients need your personal injury legal services.
- Market size – It concerns how big of a personal injury client segment would be interested in your legal services.
- Economic aspects – It distinguishes your target market’s income range and employment rates, which helps craft your services.
- Location – It helps determine your business’s reach by emphasizing your and prospective clients’ localities. It’s critical since most personal injury lawyers operate in specific locales, and clients usually seek ones near their areas.
- Market saturation – It defines how many competitors offer the same personal injury legal services as you, establishing the options available for potential clients in their localities. This element helps you create marketing strategies to put you ahead of competitors.
- Pricing – It presents the potential pricing clients seek in many personal injury legal service alternatives.
- Trends – It provides data about the latest consumer behavior that helps create new and relevant legal marketing efforts.
Your law firm can conduct market research through in-house efforts or by hiring a marketing agency specializing in doing such. This practice involves making surveys, product testing, and research approaches that acquire consumer feedback.
Build and boost brand awareness
Putting your law firm out there may not be effective enough in gaining personal injury clients without brand awareness. Personal injury marketing is the way to build and boost it among your potential clients. The strategies employed in this practice aim to make your brand known beyond your name and the legal industry.
Brand awareness is critical in forming trust and credibility in your legal services. When prospective clients know your legal brand is trustworthy, they will likely contact you and avail themselves of your legal services. It’s because your brand suits their needs, establishing your brand equity.
Brand consistency is also connected to your brand awareness. Building a consistent image for your law firm lets potential clients know who and what you are as a personal injury lawyer. That way, they would not be left wondering about your proficiency and expertise in the field.
Establish and maintain legal authority
For many professionals, bearing credible expertise in their fields is necessary, especially when they want to be the go-to company for clients seeking their services. The same goes for personal injury lawyers because you should establish and maintain a legal authority that makes you stand out in the industry.
Legal authority can help your law firm be considered one of the market’s leading personal injury legal services. This authoritativeness can also maintain longevity and help create a huge margin against competitors for your law firm. It is possible when your recognition is proven with positive reviews from previous clients, preserving your authority in the industry.
Expand digital presence
Broadening and nurturing your digital presence is also necessary for today’s marketing landscape. Your law firm website needs effective personal injury marketing to get substantial visibility on search engines. At the same time, you need it to enhance your social media presence. Potential clients can also look for legal representation on social media channels.
Personal injury lawyer marketing boosts your digital presence through efficient online marketing strategies like SEO to help your site rank on search engines like Google and Bing. It also employs essential social media advertising tactics to help enhance your brand awareness.
Steps To Take Before Starting Personal Injury Marketing Campaigns
Personal injury marketing can be daunting for first-timers. You may feel the same, but it doesn’t have to discourage you because it’s necessary. Before you begin your marketing campaigns, here are the things you should do to craft adept marketing efforts for your law firm.
Prioritize your niche
It’s ideal to have many legal niches in your law firm venture. However, it may be counterintuitive because you focus on too many elements, driving away personal injury clients instead of attracting them. For these reasons, prioritize your niche, which is the personal injury practice area.
Focusing on your niche can help you create personal injury marketing campaigns that align with clients’ needs. It also enables you to target an exact market for increased and stable revenue.
Searching for lawyers to help with their injury-related cases can be overwhelming for potential clients. So prioritizing your niche allows them to make an easier decision upon seeing that your services align with their needs.
Determine unique selling points
Selling points are critical to your law firm’s standing in the legal industry. These aspects are responsible for defining the characteristics of your legal services and why potential clients should choose you over competitors.
In creating your unique selling points, you can highlight your services’ client-focused approach, experience, and longevity. It’s best to emphasize what puts you on edge to entice your potential clients. Not only do these attract them, but they can also make them loyal clients who will choose your law firm as their go-to source for legal services in the long run.
Establish a mission statement and brand identity
The mission statement is your law firm’s pledge to the clients. It states your purpose, client-based goals, and the ways you will do things to achieve these endeavors. This oath will help you guide your business management, marketing efforts, and client acquisition. It’s also an aspect of your brand identity.
Brand identity is how you present your law firm and services to personal injury clients. It involves your name, logo, color schemes, designs, fonts, advertising voice, and image style, which connect potential clients to your business goals. Additionally, these elements are crucial in making your law firm reputable, recognizable, and memorable.
Promote where your prospective clients are
Just because we’re giving you 21 personal injury marketing hacks to get more clients doesn’t mean you should do all of them. It’s best to prioritize promoting your law firm in areas where your prospective clients are. At the same time, not all lawyers can serve multiple locations. You may be the same, especially if you’re a rookie personal injury lawyer.
Start taking things slowly and work your way up gradually by targeting the easiest segment of your potential clients: those near you. When you become successful, and these clients trust your law firm, they will help you promote your legal services to other personal injury clients.
Create a sales system for leads
Acquiring leads will not do anything without a stable sales system to manage them. As you launch personal injury marketing strategies, there should be a system that monitors their progress to enhance every hard work you put into promotions continuously.
This system enables you to build a more efficient marketing campaign that drives higher revenue. Here, you can also fill in the missing gaps, remove what’s not working, and implement new efforts to keep the strategies working for good results.
Outline your budget
Implementing marketing efforts isn’t free because it comes with different costs, depending on your law firm’s needs. It may be easy to spend more on something that promises an increase in your client acquisition, but you still should consider many financing factors. Establishing your budget first is essential to prevent overspending that compromises your venture’s resources.
Outlining your budget is also necessary since you can calculate your estimated return on investment (ROI). That way, you know how much revenue you can get from particular marketing strategies without sacrificing much of your business’ capital.
Personal Injury Marketing Ways To Get More Clients
Personal injury marketing is not as easy as it sounds. There are tons of layers in it that you should understand to employ the best and most efficient strategies to gain clients. Since client acquisition is hard work, here are the personal injury marketing ways, both traditionally and digitally, to try for your law firm.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to optimizing your legal website for search engines to rank. It aims to increase website traffic and conversion rates by reaching your potential clients through high rankings in online search results.
SEO is one of the core digital marketing methods that utilize the following approaches:
- Local SEO – An approach that builds your digital presence in prospective clients’ local search results. This SEO marketing effort also helps build your online local business profiles for users to access.
- Technical SEO – This approach is responsible for improving your website design to ensure the best user experience for potential clients. It optimizes website features like images, texts, and navigational buttons to prevent your web page from loading slowly.
- Link-building – Backlinks are among the determining factors of your domain authority, which is the job of link-building. Link-building is an approach that acquires high-quality backlinks from link prospecting, outreach, or natural linking for your site.
- Keyword research – Users use specific words when searching search engines. Keyword research is an approach that provides valuable search terms to include in your content. Here, you find keywords high in search volume and long tail. Most importantly, these terms are aligned with your legal services and search intent.
- Content marketing – Content creation in SEO is aligned with search engine algorithms and keyword research. This content should be written based on potential clients’ needs and be engaging enough to attract them.
- Site audits – SEO isn’t an overnight process that generates results in one snap. It’s the job of site audits to monitor the progress and performance of SEO campaigns on your website.
End to End Solutions for
Grey Smoke Media is North America’s only full-service legal marketing firm, offering:
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radio, tv, Out of Home
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Reputation Management
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We elevate law firms to the highest echelon through a multi-pronged, unified approach.
2. Social media marketing (SMM)
Besides search engines, you can market your personal injury law firm on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Many potential users could also seek personal injury lawyers through social media accounts, making social media marketing (SMM) a helpful marketing technique.
SMM is an ideal marketing tactic if you’re looking for ways to connect and build valuable relationships with existing and potential clients. It’s also excellent for brand expression that helps clients become familiar with your legal services. You can use it by posting infographics and leveraging user-generated features like stories and short-form videos.
3. Pay-per-click ads (PPC)
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are paid advertisements that can be used for both search engines and social media. These ads mean that every user’s click is paid for. For search engines, this strategy can put you at the top and bottom of search results. For social media, your paid ads can blend into the content of potential clients’ feeds, allowing them to interact with them.
Some of the most common PPCs are the following:
- Google ads
- Facebook ads
- Microsoft ads
- Amazon ads
4. Online legal directories
Legal directories are one way to inform potential clients of your personal injury legal services. They are focused on building profiles for lawyers. Although they’re usually phone book directories known as yellow pages, online ones have come out to meet the evolving digital needs of potential clients.
With an easy account setup process, many online legal directories can be free and cost-efficient. Some may even give badges or awards if you pass their selection requirements. Among the online legal directories you can use are Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, and Super Lawyers.
5. Local services ads
Local services ads (LSAs) are paid advertisements that bring your law firm’s credentials to the top of Google search results. Unlike PPC, where you pay for every click, LSA only makes you pay when potential clients contact your law firm directly through the ad. This ad type is also called “pay-per-lead.”
LSAs allow you to receive direct leads and manage them anytime through the Google Local Services Ads mobile app. When potential clients interact with the ad, you receive them as phone calls or text messages. You can reply to the messages and track the bookings made by clients.
The edge of using LSAs is in their verification process. Google undergoes a license, background, and insurance check to ensure your law firm’s credibility. Upon verification, a “Google Guaranteed” badge will be given when you meet the requirements. LSAs are also location-driven, helping you reach your target audiences better.
6. Retargeting
Not all clients will contact you immediately when they encounter your law firm while searching for personal injury lawyers. They’re likely to seek options and choose the best among them. This is how retargeting ads play a significant role in keeping their interest in your law firm.
Retargeting ads work through cookies that are part of the browser’s cache. When potential clients visit your site, they get these cookies that trigger ads about your law firm. These ads are shown when they visit other sites to retarget them and reinforce the value of your brand in their decisions.
You can retarget through Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other digital platforms. Leverage them to create more client loyalty, connections, and sales.
7. Geo-targeting
Although part of local SEO, geo-targeting can still be a separate marketing entity. It allows you to determine the locations you want your advertisements to show. For example, you can use this to target your potential clients at your law firm’s location. If you become well-known outside your locale, you can use geo-targeting to reach clients in more local areas.
8. Email marketing
Email marketing is a direct advertising type where you can use emails to promote your legal services. Using this, you can update your site subscribers with promos, offers, or discounts. At the same time, you may also leverage this by sending them informational emails about your business and legal services. That way, you can show your professionalism and expertise in the legal industry.
9. Videos
Most people are visual learners and don’t have time to read lengthy articles when looking for urgent things. For this reason, you can use video content to give them the necessary information. Although it sounds easy, creating videos to promote legal services still involves strategic planning.
The first thing to do is write a script with understandable, engaging, and professional approaches. Make sure that you align this with client needs. As a personal injury law firm’s mouthpiece, the speaker should also sound confident in explaining the answers to clients’ legal service queries. Combining it with empathetic words and tones is best because personal injury clients are likely stressed about their cases.
10. Podcasts
Some people like listening to explanations, which you can leverage by marketing with podcasts. Podcasts are digital audio files that can be a series that listeners download and listen to whenever they want.
You can create podcasts by writing scripts about personal injury-related topics for potential clients that love listening to podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. You may also sponsor a podcast or have guest appearances and share your expertise about personal injury practice areas.
11. Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is an ideal platform for building an online legal profile for your personal injury law firm. This digital business tool can help you verify your information and online presence on search engines. Potential clients can also see valuable reviews of your service by using it. Bing Places and Yelp can also do the same.
12. Client reviews
Reviews from previous clients are essential to building your law firm’s reputation. They’re also critical to improving your personal injury legal services. You can even use them to promote your law firm to potential clients.
You should make your client reviews accessible to the public, especially when they’re positive and genuine. You may even use them as captions on your social media posts. Legal directories and Google Business Profile can also store and show them on search results, allowing more engagement with potential clients.
13. Answering questions
Most legal directories and informational websites allow people to ask questions. Some of them could be your potential clients seeking answers to their personal injury-related queries. You should create accounts on these websites and answer questions about personal injury cases. You can show your expertise, credibility, and knowledge about personal injury legalities through this.
When your answers satisfy the potential clients, they will likely contact you and eventually avail themselves of your legal services to help represent them.
14. Community outreach
You can try community outreach to promote legal services outside the digital space. Community outreach is an in-person way of reaching your potential clients in specific areas. You can do this through monetary donations, offering pro bono work (free consultations), volunteering, and mentoring aspiring lawyers.
Community outreach is an excellent approach to building relationships with potential clients beyond the Internet. Being with them physically can help them trust you and your legal services. You can also give them in-person legal advice to help them understand their rights regarding personal injury cases when these events happen to them.
15. Local bar associations
Your local bar associations can be included in your marketing strategies. You should try to be active in these associations, as they can help you form more professional connections. More connections mean more opportunities to promote your legal services. They may also be a way to verify your business and expertise in the industry.
16. Speaking events and networking groups
Participating in legal-related events can offer you opportunities to connect with other legal professionals in the industry. You can access them through local bar associations or research the ones you want to join. These events typically have speakers that engage with audiences through interactive means. So take the opportunity to become a speaker to be known by more potential clients.
In speaking events, you engage with the audience by answering their personal injury-related questions and providing them with more information about legal matters related to your practice.
For networking groups, join them to meet more people and tell them about your personal injury law firm. It may be best to join business-related networking groups to gain more clients. You shouldn’t limit yourself to legal-related groups only by joining every possible niche because your potential clients could be anywhere.
17. Television advertising
Using television is a traditional advertising method, but it still has valuable audiences that can include your potential clients. Here, you may even get full-screen advertisements, with viewers seeing them entirely. You can also try guesting in educational and informational TV programs that tackle legal concerns.
Below are the following television ads to leverage:
- Television commercials (TVC) – The most popular television ad types, ranging from 15 to 60 seconds. They usually air during commercial gaps or breaks.
- Product placements (PPL) – These are TV ads that feature products in programs (e.g., characters using a specific product in a scene) or prominent placements through close-ups.
- Brand integrations – Ads that make brands part of a television program. Brands usually offer products and services as special prizes here, typically in game shows.
- Infomercials – TV ads that air late at night and last 30 minutes or more. They aim to showcase a product or service to drive call-to-actions to customers, such as contacting phone numbers and visiting websites.
- Overlays – These are short ads, typically around 10 seconds, that appear at the bottom of TV screens during a program. They’re usually used to promote new shows and products.
18. Radio marketing
You may have potential clients who are not on social media or don’t regularly watch television. For this reason, you can try radio marketing. Although a bit dated, radio marketing can still bring in prospective clients. This tactic is often affordable and can reach older target audiences.
These are the types of radio ads you can try for your personal injury marketing:
- Radio segment sponsorship ads – Ads presented in radio segments that discuss particular topics. They are usually heard at the show’s beginning and end or between commercial breaks.
- Jingles – Music is one of the ways to attract potential customers, making jingle ads ideal for radio marketing. Through this, you can create a catchy, fun, and informative short jingle to promote your legal services.
- Testimonials – Testimonials are radio ads showcasing your law firm through previous clients’ real accounts. They can usually attract your potential clients because of their relatable nature, and some people are inclined to listen more to others’ thoughts than scripted advertisements.
- Host endorsements – Host endorsements can be done through spiels or casual conversations. Many popular hosts may have large followings ideal for reaching your potential clients.
- Plot-driven commercials – Ads with story and personification to meet clients’ interests. They are created with stories to hook the listeners’ attention and imagination.
19. Billboards
Billboards are printed ads that can help boost your personal injury law firm’s brand awareness. They are usually big and posted in roadside areas so people traveling can see them. For this reason, billboards can be effective advertisements for car owners, who are likely to be at risk of car accidents. Although eye-catching, they may only provide limited information to your potential clients.
20. Print ads
Besides billboards, you can have printed ads in magazines and newspapers. Since digital marketing can get oversaturated, including print ads in your marketing strategies helps set yourself apart from the competition.
In creating print ads, you should consider the color scheme, call to action, copywriting, and brand identity. It may be best to show your face in the ads to present a trustworthy aura.
21. Books
Writing and publishing books is ideal for showcasing your personal injury law expertise. In a book, you can write everything about personal injury law practice. It allows you to share and demonstrate your knowledge among colleagues in the legal industry and give potential clients something to read about.
However, book creation can be time-consuming and costly. You can start by making a digital booklet that is free to download on your website instead. This strategy can be incorporated into email marketing, allowing you to further reach those who downloaded it.
22. Emotional engagement
Most personal injury clients are usually distressed. They’re handling these unexpected injury cases, which usually come at a cost. Handling clients’ emotional stress and grief isn’t new for personal injury lawyers like you. Engaging with them emotionally is one way to market your services and can pave the way to assisting them with their legal issues.
Emotional engagement doesn’t mean exploiting and capitalizing on your clients’ suffering. It is you empathizing with their concerns. Through empathy, you can encourage and give them hope that you will get them the just compensation they deserve. Tapping into their emotions this way should work better for you, as logic may sometimes put them off.
Targeting emotions can make your prospective clients process their situations better. It will help them understand how to win and be compensated for their cases. With this marketing technique, you must assure them that you’re dedicated to supporting and guiding them to achieve fairness and that perpetrators will be reprimanded rightfully.
23. Sponsorships
Your law firm should try sponsoring local events to get more in-person exposure with potential clients. Choose a relevant event where personal injury cases are likely to happen, such as sports events. You can do this by providing promotional materials like merchandise and posters. Most sponsorships can be cost-efficient as it helps broaden your reach.
Did You Know?
Referrals are promising avenues to find potential clients, whether peer-based or client-based. Most personal injury clients seek lawyers to represent them through recommendations from friends, relatives, business associates, and legal case studies. They could also find ones from lawyers with different practice areas that they know.
Accelerate your Client Growth with Grey Smoke Media
These marketing efforts are the foundation of an effective campaign, allowing your legal venture to get a high ROI. More importantly, they are the keys to maintaining an authoritative standing and longevity in the industry. They can be mixed and matched to achieve the best results, but you don’t need to use them all. Pick only the ones you think suit your resources and potential clients’ needs.
More and more potential clients are now looking for personal injury lawyers through Google searches. This is how Grey Smoke Media can help craft proficient online marketing tailored to your law firm’s needs. We can also help build marketing campaigns that transcend the online space.
Visit our website to learn how we can help upscale your business and accelerate your client growth through competent legal marketing tactics today.
FAQs on Personal Injury Client Acquisition
Citations are digital references for personal injury lawyers, including your law firm’s name, address, and phone number. They are essential for SEO, which creates your profile listings on legal directories. Meanwhile, case studies are written proof of your expertise in the field.
Both are significant because they help establish your reputation among potential clients.
Brand equity is the value of your business beyond legal services. You can assess it through customer recognition, financial resources, competition, and marketing performance.
Generally, personal injury marketing takes a while to show results. An effective legal marketing campaign may produce the desired outcomes anytime between six and nine months.
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