Lead generation for lawyers can be a challenging concept and process. Lead generation may even seem like a foreign concept that’s just for “people in sales.”
But it’s absolutely critical for your law firm to create a reliable lead generation pipeline, in other words, a way for clients to easily find you and book a consultation with you. Lead generation, the process of finding new potential leads, is essential to your law firm’s business development strategy, and contributes to its cash flow, financial health, and business growth.
Thankfully, with the right strategy and tactics, lead generation for lawyers can be a fruitful process, producing a steady flow of quality, reliable leads.
Let’s take a closer look at what strong lead generation processes should look like and the tools you can use to find success.
What is a lead?
The term “lead” refers to a potential client or prospect. How specific you get with defining a lead depends on your firm—it could be a prospective client, or it could simply be someone who might find information on your website useful. In any case, it should at least be someone who is interested in paying for your legal knowledge or services, and a person who has shown this interest by willingly sharing their contact information.
For law firms to be successful at attracting new clients, they must focus on developing high-quality lead generation processes to bring more visitors to their website. The goal is to convert these website visitors into new clients with engaging and persuasive content.
Of course, the process of lead generation and client acquisition can be complex and time-consuming. Yet in these difficult economic times, law firms must continue to search for new clients, so fine-tuning your lead generation processes is critical to your law firm’s continued success.
What is lead generation for lawyers?
This involves bringing in new leads through sales funnels.
A “sales funnel” is a multi-step process that guides your leads closer to becoming actual legal clients. The main stages of a sales funnel are as follows:
- Awareness: The first step to converting a lead into a client is simply making them aware of your firm and your services. This is more difficult than it sounds—you’ll need to improve your search rankings and provide numerous ways for leads to discover your firm and arrive at your website, either organically or through paid advertisements.
- Interest: Once your lead is aware of your firm, you need to capture their interest. This means you must have something on your landing pages or website that serves as a hook for potential clients and keeps them interested in what you can offer them.
- Decision: You must get your leads to make a decision to seek more information or work with you. To do this, you will need to convince them how much they’ll benefit from your offering.
- Action: The “action” portion of a sales funnel is different for every type of business. For some businesses, it might be a sale. For a law firm, it might be a potential client submitting their contact information, scheduling a consultation or reaching out for more information about services.
The lead generation process
The lawyer lead generation space is highly competitive, so it is crucial for you to implement inbound digital marketing strategies that will help you cut through the noise.
Your goal should be developing a process in which your audience:
- Discovers your firm through one of your various marketing channels,
- Clicks on your call to action (CTA),
- Goes to your landing page,
- Enters their information, and
- Receives a follow-up message from you with useful information that will benefit them
How to generate leads for your law firm
Now that you understand what lawyer lead generation is, here are a few strategies you must implement to generate more leads for your firm and maximize your lead generation success.
Have a strong law firm website
Your website is your most important tool for getting leads to convert into clients. Your website establishes your firm’s brand and tells potential clients who you are, what you do, and why they should pay for your services instead of one of your competitors.
These are some key ways to ensure you have a polished, effective law firm website:
- Professional design: Your website must look professional, be user-friendly, be optimized for search engines, and be compatible with both mobile and desktop devices.
- High-quality content: You should only use high-quality, high-resolution photos on your website. Any written content you have on your website should be client-centered, allowing you to showcase the benefits of using your firm’s services. Remember to include your law firm’s unique selling proposition.
- Personal: You should have content for the bio of every lawyer in your firm to help leads become more familiar with the actual people they will be working with. Lawyer bios and images also help increase potential clients’ trust in your firm and its lawyers.
- Calls-to-action: Include CTA buttons on each page of your website—but not too many.
There are lots of great tools out there to use for professional website design. If you’re looking for one built specifically for law firms, Clio has its own website builder. It includes built-in tools to help you connect with your clients, collect payments, and manage your cases.