If you’re a family law attorney looking to generate more clients for your firm, or are stuggling to generate family law leads from your current marketing efforts, here is a review of the most common methods for generating family law leads online and how well they actually work.

Referrals

Referrals are always the best source for generating family law leads for law firms. But building up a referral base takes time. Communication to your satisfied clients can help remind them of your services and who they may consider referring others to for family law matters.

Online reviews

Before making a final decision on which family law firm to call, internet searchers often look for the validation of others to confirm their choice of attorney. Online Business Listings often have sections where people can leave comments and reviews about the business. Yelp and Google+ are also great sources of user reviews. Make sure your family law firm is listed on these sites, and encourage your clients to post reviews about their experience with your firm. The more reviews people see, the more likely they will choose to call your firm.

By themselves, these sites will not generate enough family law leads for law firms to rely solely on this strategy. They are best used in combination with your other online efforts.

Pay Per Click

Also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), this strategy works well at generating family law leads for law firms. But it all depends on how well it’s done. Many family law firms have lost a lot of marketing money with this strategy. Well-written text ads, placed on strong keywords with a well-designed landing page and call-to-action can often be the most cost-effective of any one strategy for generating family law leads for law firms. But beware – not every campaign may be successful. Even marketing professionals can fail in their PPC efforts — resulting in expensive upfront costs to you and disappointing results.

Map listings

This may be the least used, yet most effective strategy for generating family law leads for law firms. Search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo have free Local Business Listings in which law firms can supply their own content, contact information and offers, and then have that information indexed and found by potential family law clients. It is well worth the effort to submit your firm’s information for these listings.

SEO 

Search Engine Optimization is the art of working to get websites to rank higher in organic (free) search results for a specific keyword. Work by legitimate SEO experts can help your site’s search engine visibility over the long run – typically 3-6 months – which may help generate more family law leads for your firm. SEO services may cost as much as several thousand dollars per month, so even though the website visitors you receive from the efforts are free, the cost of SEO should also be considered.   

Blogging

This can be another useful way to generate family law leads for law firms as well as helping the organic ranking of your firm’s site. However, writing relevant blog posts, publishing them, and attracting visitors to your blog on a regular basis can be very time intensive. To be successful, blogging requires some additional professional coaching for best results. If you choose to write regular blog posts, be aware of who your audience is (usually people considering or dealing with the aftermath of divorce), and promote your blog in places where these people are most likely to find it (which can be a challenge in itself!).

Mobile

This may be the fastest growing way of generating family law leads for law firms. Just since May of 2013, LeadQ has seen general Google searches for attorneys on mobile phones increase to 30% or more of all online searches for attorneys. This may even surpass 40% in 2014 in some markets across the U.S.  Make sure to have a well-optimized mobile site for your family law firm that is easily found by online searchers on mobile phones.

Your law firm’s website

Of course, your law firm’s landing page strategy is just as important as the other online strategies listed here. For more on this area, read our blog article about what works best for law firm websites. The points discussed in this article apply to all consumer law firm websites.

Social media

Social media (such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter) are best used to support your referral efforts, and to connect with like-minded people. Social media generally will not drive new family law leads to attorneys by themselves. The goal of social media is to remind people already familiar with you and your firm to recommend you to others in need. 

Directories

Generally, people do not visit online directories (such as lawyer associations, or yellow pages) to find a family law attorney. They do, however, sometimes check out these secondary sources to determine if an attorney they’ve found is someone they may consider working with. There is value in being listed, but the listings themselves will not generate new family law leads to your firm without other initiating strategies.

Email

Email is best used to keep in touch with past clients, reminding them to refer you to others. As it is difficult to determine which people on a list may have a need for a family law attorney, blasts to purchased lists rarely generate new family law leads and are not worth the effort and expense.

Common content website programs

We have never seen a viable version of this strategy for generating quality family law leads for law firms. Typically these programs use a single website with general information about divorce and family law matters, and an email form encouraging site visitors to request a return call from a local family law attorney. Some lead generation companies may charge $50-$100 for family law leads from these programs, but may also sell those leads to a number of different attorneys. Since site visitors are simply searching for information (not specifically for a family law attorney to contact), they may not be very motivated to become paying clients for the attorneys buying those leads. Conversion rates on these leads are typically very low.  

You Tube videos

This strategy sounds like it might be successful, but rarely works at generating new family law clients by itself. While a You Tube video of you may give a prospect a better idea of who you are, it can just as easily turn away a potential prospect – especially if the script, production value, or your performance is not up to par. Generally, people watch videos for entertainment value, or to learn how to do something, not to search for a family law attorney. That being said, if you have a well-produced video of yourself, absolutely post it to You Tube and include a link to view it directly from your law firm’s website. 

Hire a marketing or lead generation firm or do it yourself?

Many small consumer law firms initially consider marketing their firms themselves. In most cases, a specialist in the field of generating family law leads for law firms, such as LeadQ, can produce a much higher return on expenditures for your firm — and many times more new clients than DIY marketing.

To learn more about how LeadQ’s Pay-Per-Qualified-Inquiry lead generation program can cost-effectively bring your law firm new family law clients, call us at (800) 662-2888.