Divorce Attorney and Family Law Marketing: How To Get More Clients

Many tried-and-true marketing formulas can work for a family law firm. As long as the campaign is nuanced to the unique features of the family law practice, it can reach the same level of success as the others have. Here are the basics of law-firm marketing in 2023:  

Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

Lawyer marketing requires considerable time, money, and effort, so the possibility of failure must be scrunched to a minimum. The best way to do that is to begin with goals. What exactly does the lawyer want to achieve from marketing? 

Growing the practice may be the general objective, but details are a must when it comes to marketing. Examples of specific goals are 40 new leads and 15 conversions monthly, the addition of 50 new newsletter subscribers, and a 50% revenue increase within a year.  

However, specificity is only one requirement according to the S.M.A.R.T method. Goals must also be measurable or quantifiable with a valid metric. For example, new client additions are measurable through the conversion rate. Measurability is necessary to prove that a strategy or technique has worked and know what areas need improvement.  

Another quality of a valid marketing goal is attainability. A marketer can’t just throw numbers around without examining the probabilities and possibilities of achieving them. Let’s take, for example, a lawyer practicing in a small city. Increasing its website traffic by 3% may sound more plausible than targeting 10% within the same period.  

Of course, a lawyer’s marketing goal must also be relevant. A new law firm in a big city may seek a 10% boost in website traffic to establish itself in a crowd of competitors.  

Lastly, a goal must be time-bound. A 20% jump in website traffic is not a goal. A 20% jump in website traffic in six months is. Attaching a time element to a goal helps keep the team on its toes, knowing they must achieve something by a specific time. 

Create a budget

Because all marketing requires funding, a campaign plan can only come to fruition with an intelligent budget. The first task is reviewing the preset goals and estimating the amount it will take to reach them. The team can then determine how many cases are necessary to meet the target budget. This number can vary depending on certain factors, such as practice area and location. 

It’s also important to consider the lawyer’s experience. Did they recently start their practice, or have they established themselves in their community? The level of competition among practitioners in the area is also crucial. Are they trying to set up a practice in a competitive city like Los Angeles? Are they one of a few lawyers in a particular town? 

Since modern marketing techniques usually require technologies, a legal marketing budget should also include these costs. Such technologies can take various forms, such as SEO monitoring apps, social media post schedulers, etc.  

Once their marketing budget is final, a lawyer must stick to it at any stage of the marketing process. No additional clients can offset the risks of not watching the bottom line.  

Maintain a blog

A blog is an excellent place for family lawyers to connect with people regularly. More than an aspect of marketing, blogging is a way for family lawyers to communicate and establish their online presence and rapport with their readers.  

The comment section is usually where the interaction happens. The better the rapport, the better the outcome for both the lawyer and the client or would-be client. Here are three other significant benefits of blogging for a family law firm: 

• It establishes authority and trust – Picture a childless couple considering adoption. After reading some blog posts on the topic from the same law firm, they will begin to see it and trust it as an authority. The more they trust the firm, the likelier they will keep it in mind when they finally decide to adopt a child.  
• It increases the firm’s organic search visibility –  Paid advertising is good, but organic visibility is often considered more credible. When content ranks highly organically, people know it’s there because of its quality, not because someone paid to get that position. Blogging is an excellent digital marketing strategy for increasing a family law firm’s organic visibility.

• It increases organic website traffic – Besides improving a law firm’s organic search engine results pages, or SERPs, visibility and blogging also help boost its website traffic. Individuals searching for a family lawyer who find a firm’s blog posts helpful will naturally gravitate to that firm’s website to learn more about the practitioners behind it. Again, this means more opportunities for the firm to gain new clients.  

Run paid ads

There are generally three routes to SERP visibility: local targeting, organic business listings, and paid Google ads. As mentioned, organic listings tend to be more credible than paid ads, but that doesn’t mean the latter aren’t valuable. In fact, it’s one of the quickest ways to get to that top spot. 

On top of that, Google’s SERPs have shown relatively more paid ads than organic results. If anything, even with high organic search visibility, paid ads allow advertisers to adjust their marketing plan accordingly. Below are two types of ads for law firms to consider:

• Local Services ads (LSAs) – LSAs are paid ads positioned on top of search results with a “Google Screened” designation. LSAs allow advertisers to target counties, cities, states, and even specific zip codes. Another advantage of LSAs is they are automatically incorporated into Google Reviews. Also, advertisers only have to pay for ads that actually bring them leads via phone, email, text, etc. 
• Pay-Per-Click ads (PPC) – PPC ads appear just above search results but below any LSAs. However, since LSAs do not show up for all search terms, conventional PPC ads may appear at the top of the SERPs. Besides creating ad text and landing pages and optimizing the marketing campaign, PPCs also require using keywords.  

When users search for those keywords, Google will decide which ads it will show. Hence, it’s crucial to be very specific when choosing keywords. For example, instead of “family lawyer,” it would be wise to use “family lawyer custody Toronto” or “family lawyer divorce Toronto,” depending on the cases the law firm handles. 

Use email marketing  

Email marketing is digital marketing that relies on emails to build relationships with an audience. This method allows a family law firm to reach out to their existing clients or those who might need a little more convincing to become one. 

There are many reasons to engage in email marketing for a lawyer or law firm. For one, it’s very cost-effective. It doesn’t require any substantial financial investment necessary upfront. Creating and sending emails becomes almost effortless with the right email marketing platform. 

Statista predicts the number of email users to reach 4.6 billion in 2025, showing that email marketing is a not-to-be-missed opportunity. On top of that, the ROI from this method is a whopping $25 for each dollar spent as of 2022.  

Of course, email marketing is also an opportunity for a lawyer to show off their expertise and build credibility. Through email newsletters, for example, practitioners can explain common legal issues that people usually find confusing. When combined with free consultation offers, email marketing becomes highly competitive. 

Leverage social media 

In 1997, Andrew Weinreich launched Six Degrees, the world’s first social media platform, so people could connect with people they didn’t know. Over 20 years later, lawyers use it to grow their practice. 

However, as protectors of the law, lawyers are expected to use social media with extreme caution. After all, even their social activities are subject to the bar’s highest ethical and professional standards. When creating a social media strategy for a family law firm, here are some tips to keep in mind: 

• Set specific guidelines to avoid ethical and legal issues – The first thing lawyers should remember when marketing on social media is that their accounts will be public. That means anything on their page will reflect on the firm itself. 

Aside from enumerating the rules, lawyers can also use this policy document directly for marketing. It can set the firm’s preferred brand tone and type of content and ensure consistency.  

• Set goals and create a strategy for achieving them – According to the SMART rule of marketing, family law marketing must anchor on goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Some worthwhile goals for family law firm marketers include improved brand awareness, more website traffic, and keeping existing customers. 

Of course, metrics play a critical role in indicating whether the law firm’s marketing efforts are paying off. For example, the number of likes or follows on the firm’s pages can show whether or not brand awareness has increased. Once the goals are set, the firm can create a content strategy around them, starting with audience identification, competitor analysis, and content scheduling.    

• Keep posts engaging and interactive – One of the things that can make any social media account engaging is spontaneity. It’s good to have a calendar of posts, but when relevant trending topics come up occasionally, it’s nice to hop on in.

When pressing issues arise, be creative instead of just sticking to traditional posting.

For example, create a poll. Family lawyers can also use the comments section to interact

with their followers, especially when people are seeking legal advice about family matters.