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Your website is likely the first place where potential clients will encounter your law firm; it sets the first impression and tells them basically what your firm is, what it does, and what it stands for.

While you don’t necessarily need to have a large, extravagant website, you do need one that’s complete. Simply put, there are certain pages that every legal website should have. In this post, we’ll run you through them, and comment briefly on what makes each one so important.

Critical Pages for Your Law Firm Website

Home Page

You can’t have a website without having a home page—the page that welcomes new users and gives them some indication of what they can expect from the rest of your site.

Your law firm home page needn’t be super elaborate, but it should have a few core components:

• A basic statement of your value proposition—what does your firm do? What’s your niche? Why should someone hire you?
• Contact information, including name, address, and phone number.
• A clear navigational structure; new users should find it very easy to locate the desired information on your website.
• A call to action, inviting the user to explore the site further or simply to call for an appointment.

About Page

On the About Page, you can go into a little more detail about the firm’s history, its services, and its value proposition. The most important thing to keep in mind here is that the About page actually isn’t about you, at least not completely; more than anything, it should be about the client, and the kind of value they can expect from you.

Attorney Bios

We generally recommend having some brief bios of each attorney at your practice, including basic information about education, practice areas, and professional experience. This can serve a couple of functions, both humanizing your firm while also establishing your credibility. These bios are invaluable for establishing trust.

Service Pages

Just as an online retailer might have various product pages, your firm can set up a few service pages, simply highlighting some of the primary niches and practice areas that you offer. Remember to keep these service pages focused on value for the end user—what’s in it for them? And, each service page should have contact information as well as a clear, simple call to action.

Testimonials Page

This one isn’t strictly necessary, as you may wish to incorporate testimonials throughout your firm’s website—but definitely include testimonials and client reviews somewhere. These are vital for establishing trust and earning client confidence.

Contact Page

Finally, we would recommend having a brief Contact Us page, which is basically there to generate some phone calls. What to include on your Contact page:

• A very brief value proposition and call to action—two or three sentences is usually fine.
• A contact form.
• A map to your office.
• Further contact options, such as phone number and email address.

Developing the Right Structure for Your Law Firm Website

As you consider the content needs for your legal website, these six sections provide you with a basic blueprint.

However, there’s much more to Web development than just deciding on the right pages. To ensure a website that establishes a strong first impression with potential clients, reach out to our team today. Driven2020 is a marketing and website design firm with ample experience helping law firms—and we’d love to chat with you more about your website development needs!

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For attorneys, a good website is essential. It’s not just your online home, but the first thing most clients will ever see with regard to your firm. In other words, it sets the first impression people have of your practice—so a professional web presence is well worth the investment.

Alas, not all law firms have exemplary sites, and we’ve seen a few particularly common and egregious mistakes. Here are some of the most common legal website errors we’ve observed—all of which can and should be avoided!

Common Website Errors Your Law Firm Might Be Making

1. Using a bad domain name. Both for purposes of SEO and professional branding, we recommend having a domain name that matches the name of your firm—so, for instance, if your firm is called the ABC Law Firm, we’d recommend a domain like abclaw.com, abclawfirm.com, etc. Some firms try to be cute or funny with their domain name, but that’s almost never a good idea.
2. Having stale content. One of the most important things you can do for your website is to keep the content fresh. That means adding new content regularly; blogging is the most logical way to accomplish that. It also means revising your main website content semi-regularly—at least once every year. This helps with Google rankings, and it can also be an important way to keep your audience engaged.
3. Not including NAP information. When we say NAP, we mean your law firm’s name, address, and phone number—and it should be included on every page of your website. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, it helps you rank in local Google searches. And two, it makes it easy for your potential clients to contact you—no matter which page of your website they happen to be on.
4. Neglecting calls to action. Along the same lines, we’d say that every page of your law firm website should have a call to action. You can’t just assume that people are going to call you for an appointment; you actually have to encourage them to do so. Keep your CTAs short and sweet; don’t forget the contact information; and by all means, have at least one on every page.
5. Failing to cover your services. This one should be a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed how often lawyers forget to go into real detail about the services they can offer—and the value they can bring to their clients. Make sure you have service pages that make it clear what your firm is all about, and why people should call you. Enumerate your areas of expertise!
6. Settling for a boring or outdated look. It’s as if some attorneys believe legal websites are destined to be boring—but they don’t have to be! There are plenty of sleek, modern design options that can help your firm appear cutting-edge, without any compromise to your professionalism. If your website looks like an antique, that means it’s time to get a revamp. Reach out to a Web design agency that specializes in attorney websites.

Get Help with Your Law Firm Website

These are all significant errors—but they’re not insurmountable. You can get a truly fresh and effective website for your legal practice today, and it starts when you call us at Driven2020.

We’re seasoned experts in helping law firms grow and thrive, and one area where we specialize is in website creation. Learn more by reaching out to the legal marketing pros at Driven2020 at your next convenience.

News

You probably know the old saying: You have to spend money to make money. When it comes to marketing your law firm, those words can seem all too true—but the good news is, you don’t always have to spend an arm and a leg to increase your firm’s visibility. Here are some examples of relatively low-cost, high-impact marketing options for your legal practice.

Send Out an Email Newsletter

Your clients have their phones on them more or less all the time—and the quickest, most direct way to reach them is by shooting them a quick email. You only need to send your newsletter once or twice a month for it to be effective. In it, you can include:

• A brief greeting
• Firm news items
• A quick list of interesting links/news stories you’ve seen
• A closing CTA

It doesn’t cost much, but it can go a long way toward building loyalty to your firm.

Do Some Marketing Videos

Video marketing is all the rage—and for good reason. A quick video clip is more compelling than plain text, and setting up your own YouTube page to host videos is easy and free.

As for creating videos, all you need is an iPhone and a well-lit room. Simply talking for a minute or two about a particular legal issue, giving clients some general insight, is all it takes. Just focus on adding value—telling them something they can actually benefit from, whether on the topic of estate planning, succession planning, or whatever else your firm does.

Seek Positive Reviews

The average client is going to do plenty of online research before choosing your firm—so it’s important that you put your best foot forward. That means collecting positive feedback and five-star ratings on sites like Google and Facebook. Doing so isn’t always easy, but it is inexpensive.

Our advice? Just send a quick email to your best, most satisfied clients, letting them know how much their feedback would mean to you. You might be amazed at how effective it is to just ask for reviews.

Start a Blog

When it comes to choosing a law firm, clients want expertise. They want thought leadership. They want to know they can trust you, and that you know what you’re talking about.

You can develop thought leadership by simply starting a firm blog. This will take a little time, perhaps, but it doesn’t have to cost you very much. (Even if you outsource to a ghost blogger, it’s still fairly inexpensive.) Remember everything we said about video marketing: Just focus on saying something your clients will find to be valuable.

Get Social

Yes, social media can be an important way for you to interact with your clients and to keep your firm at the forefront of their mind. And no, you don’t have to worry about being present on every platform under the sun. We recommend focusing on the two or three where your clients tend to congregate—for most firms, that means Facebook, Twitter, and possibly LinkedIn.

Should you augment your organic reach with paid ads? On Facebook, the answer is yes—but you can always start small, with a very modest budget, and work your way up. By no means do you have to break the bank with paid social media promotions.

And with that, you can see five smart, effective, and low-cost ways to boost your firm’s online image. To learn more about cost-effective law firm marketing, don’t hesitate to call our team at Driven2020 to set up a consultation!

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Goal-setting is square one for any successful marketing campaign. There’s a simple reason for that: You can’t declare success until you first define what success actually is. For law firms, this means setting some clear, measurable, and attainable goals, then creating a marketing plan to help reach those goals.

As you think about the way you’re going to spend your firm’s marketing budget in the year to come, start at the beginning: Choose worthy goals that will help you to use those resources effectively. Here are some of the most valuable goals your firm can reach for in 2019 and beyond.

Thought Leadership

Legal services aren’t like consumer products, where the cheapest and most convenient option tend to reign supreme. When people hire a lawyer, they’re usually not looking to cut corners; instead, they want legal expertise they can truly depend on.

As such, there’s real value in establishing your firm’s thought leadership, casting your attorneys as seasoned experts within their field. That’s something a good marketing campaign can help you with. Whether it’s through blogging or via Webinars, you can use informative content to showcase just how much you know.

Local Search Presence

When local people or business owners need a lawyer, the first place they’re likely to turn is Google. A quick search will show them all the firms in their area—and if your practice isn’t on the short list, it might as well be invisible.

It’s simply never been more critical to have a prominent placement in local search results, and a solid website, combined with ongoing SEO efforts, can get your firm the localized visibility it needs to succeed. Aim for better rankings in the coming year!

Client Loyalty

Client loyalty is a big one. If the people you serve feel a sense of allegiance to your company—or just to you personally—then you’re much likelier to win their repeat business, as well as referrals. In fact, you may even see loyal clients turn into evangelists for your law firm.

There are a number of metrics you might use to measure loyalty to your law firm—ranging from social media engagement to the size of your email subscription list. These metrics also highlight the sheer number of tools available to you as you seek to cultivate a more loyal client base.

Online Reviews

Believe it or not, the reviews your firm gets on Facebook and Google really matter. As potential clients research your firm or your attorneys, they’re going to take this feedback seriously. What’s more, reviews are important SEO ranking signals—so the more reviews you have, the more it helps you get that local search dominance.

We highly recommend a proactive approach to online reviews. Don’t just wait for them to happen; actively seek them out, asking your satisfied clients to kindly leave you a word or two of appraisal.

Referrals

We mentioned referrals before, but it’s worth highlighting again here; after all, this is how many law firms get the bulk of their clients.

Do your marketing efforts coax clients to send you referrals? There are a number of ways you could make this happen—through entreaties in your email newsletter, through the encouragement of social media shares, and so on. Certainly, it’s a worthy goal for your law firm to pursue.

Indeed, all of these are goals worth taking seriously as we enter a new year, and as your law firm regroups around its marketing efforts. As you consider the ideal alignment of goals and methodologies, we hope you’ll loop us into the conversation. Reach out to the legal marketing experts at Driven2020 and let’s talk!

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Social networking has provided innumerable opportunities for marketing and outreach. For some businesses, though, those opportunities can actually be daunting. This is an experience that law firms know fully well: With so many social platforms to choose from, how do you pick the one that’s most valuable to your firm?

While your firm can strive to maintain a presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat, doing so typically isn’t advised. For one thing, it’s liable to stretch your time and your resources much too thin. At the same time, the payoff can be minor; simply put, your audience may not be present on all of those platforms, which means some of them might be wasted investments.

With that said, which social media platforms should your law firm embrace?

Deciding Which Social Platforms are Right for Your Firm

There’s ultimately no one answer here, as it depends somewhat on your firm and its target clients; you’ll obviously get the most value by being wherever your clients and potential clients are, and that’s something that can vary from one practice to the next.

With that said, there are some social platforms that we can recommend more highly than others—in general terms.

Facebook

We’ll start with Facebook, which continues its dominance as the most popular social media platform in the world—some recent bad publicity notwithstanding.

On the basis of numbers alone, Facebook is a must: It’s simply the social platform where your clients are more likely to spend their time. What’s more, it is the most popular social platform by far among older demographics, including Boomers and Gen X-ers—and those tend to be the folks, more so than millennials or Gen Z-ers, who law firms court.

Twitter

If you’re only going to be active on one platform, you’re probably wise to choose Facebook. If you can handle two, our next choice would have to be Twitter.

Twitter isn’t quite as popular as Facebook, but it is a great place to engage with influencers within your field, including other attorneys—and doing so can ultimately be a powerful way to build your firm’s reputation and its name recognition.

Additionally, Twitter can be used to have real-time discussions with potential clients, an invaluable way to do outreach.

LinkedIn

Some firms may also see some value in LinkedIn.

LinkedIn definitely isn’t the flashiest of all social media platforms, but it’s enjoyed steady growth over the past few years—and it’s a popular site among attorneys, who use it for professional branding and development.

Indeed, you probably have a personal account already. Creating an account for your firm can help enhance your professional branding. It also affords you the chance to connect with other lawyers and can potentially generate some referrals.

Other Social Media Platforms

If your favorite social network isn’t listed here, it’s not because we think it’s inherently pointless; if you have a lot of younger clients who you know to be on Snapchat, for instance, then maybe that’s something you should embrace.

Again, though, it’s best for most small and mid-sized firms to be judicious in their social media use, allocating their time and resources prudently—and that means sticking to two or three platforms. The ones here are, all else being equal, the ones we recommend the most.

Develop a Custom Social Media Plan

Now that you have selected your platform – what’s next? The best way to proceed with social media is to create a strategy that’s tailored to your firm, its audience, and its marketing goals—and that’s something the Driven2020 team can help with! Contact us today to schedule a consultation about social marketing and beyond.

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You know what they say about the power of first impressions—and for most law firms, first impressions happen on the Web. Potential clients may discover you through the phone book or a billboard ad, but they’re exponentially more likely to discover you through your website. As such, if you’re going to invest money on any aspect of your marketing and brand outreach, your website is probably the best place to do it.

But what does a good law firm website actually look like? What elements are critical to its success? Here are some guidelines for what a truly effective law firm website should encompass.

Best Practices for an Effective Law Firm Website

Keep it simple. The last thing you want is a website that overwhelms or confuses. No, what you want is a site that gets right to the point, laying out your brand identity and your value proposition with clarity. A clean, unfussy aesthetic is usually best. Look for a design that incorporates “hero” areas—big, bold, and simple text that immediately draws the reader’s eye.

Include a call to action (CTA) on every page of your website. You can’t assume that your reader will know what to do, or be willing to do it, without a little prodding. So, for instance, if you want people to call you for an appointment, you need to tell them to do so. Use some brief CTA text to make that happen, and be sure there’s a clear CTA on every page of the website.

Show off your service areas and your attorneys. Your site should go into detail about the services you offer to your clients, and the specific areas of expertise your practice has. Also consider adding profiles for each attorney at the firm, including a photo, quick career history, areas of focus, and educational background. This has a “humanizing” effect; readers feel like they know who you are, and are more likely to trust you.

Make sure the site loads quickly. You’ll remember that we advised simplicity. Part of that means a site that loads completely—ideally in no more than three seconds’ time. A slow loading time will cause potential clients to give up and Google for another firm. Check the site on multiple devices and browsers to make sure it loads promptly. If it takes too long, your site may be too image-heavy or complex.

Organize your site for ease of use. Put some thought into the architecture of your site—the different categories and sub-categories, and the way in which a potential client can navigate it. You always want to aim for accessibility here. Make it intuitive for a potential client to find whatever information they are seeking.

Include contact information. This one may seem obvious, yet you’d be surprised how often it’s neglected. If you want potential clients to pick up the phone and call you, you need to have your phone number posted on every page of the site—not just on a Contact Us page.

Don’t forget SEO. Finally, remember that search engine optimization (SEO) is key for ensuring your site is “discovered” by potential clients in your area—and SEO doesn’t have to be clunky or inelegant. In fact, a good marketing agency or partner can help you work in some SEO keywords naturally and unobtrusively.

Get the Website Your Firm Needs

A good website is the product of many hours of development, ideally with the expertise of a professional website development company. Driven2020 delivers its website expertise to law firms throughout California and around the country, and we invite you to contact us today to set up a website consultation.

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It seems like new digital marketing tools are constantly being rolled out—and each one is championed as the latest and greatest thing. To be clear, we think there’s great value in cutting-edge digital marketing platforms, whether it’s Snapchat or Instagram, but we don’t let the new hotness distract us from those things we know to be tried and true. As a case in point: Email! There’s certainly nothing flashy about email, yet many marketers will attest that it’s the single best way to stay connected with customers and clients.

In particular, lawyers can benefit greatly from a robust email marketing campaign. And the good news is, you can make email marketing work even if you’re extremely busy (which most lawyers are). It takes a relatively small investment of time to make email marketing effective, and the results can exceed what you’d get from a comparable investment in Facebook or Twitter.

Routine is Key

The most important aspect of email marketing is commitment. Simply put, starting an email newsletter and then sending it out just once a year probably isn’t going to be worth your time. It should be like clockwork—something your clients can expect to receive from you on a regular basis. Start off slow if you must, once a month is a good starting point. From there, increase the frequency as you need to, and your audience grows.

Segment Your Audience

Another important aspect of email marketing is choosing the right audience.

For example, say your practice focuses equally on personal injury and on estate planning. It can be tough to combine those two fields into one email newsletter, so we’d recommend picking one route to focus on. You might segment your email newsletter, sending it only to your estate planning clients, and make the content exclusively focused on estate planning matters.

Ambitious attorneys could even have multiple newsletters they send out, catering to different segments of their clientele—but again, you may want to start small.

Curating Content

When it comes to the content of your email newsletter, brevity is key. That’s good news, because it means you don’t need to spend a lot of time typing long messages! Some recommended approaches to your newsletter content:

• Start with a quick introduction—just a paragraph or so greeting clients and letting them know of anything new that’s going on in your firm or in the industry.
• Curate content, either from your firm’s blog or from third-party sources. For example, for estate planning lawyers, you might link to an interesting new estate planning article you saw in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, along with just a sentence or two of your commentary.
• Provide some quick “tips and tricks”—for example, a short bulleted list reminding people what they should do to get their estate planning in order, what to do if they are ever in a car accident, etc.
• If your firm is sponsoring or participating in any local events—for example, if you’re appearing as a panelist somewhere—you can quickly summarize this event and provide relevant links or registration information.
• Always conclude with a call to action, and note that this doesn’t have to be too long or salesy; just a quick sentence inviting people to stay in touch will do just fine.

Once you choose a template, get your list segmented, and develop a routine, this process can become easy to manage. With that said, you may still want to talk to a professional about the value in email marketing, and about the ways in which it fits into an integrative marketing plan.

Driven2020 is here for that conversation! We have ample experience providing marketing services for attorneys and would love to talk you through your available options. Reach out to us today to start that dialogue.