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What is Legal Marketing?
Before reviewing the best legal marketing agencies, it’s critical to understand what legal marketing is all about. In simple terms, legal marketing is promoting a lawyer or law firm to attract new clients.
But it goes deeper than that. Marketing for law firms involves using various channels and strategies to promote, sell, and inform potential clients about your legal firm. Lawyers can use traditional law firm marketing channels like:
- Radio adverts
- TV adverts
- Print media like newspapers and magazines
- Billboards
- Events
Alternatively, law firms can use digital channels to promote their services and attract new leads. Digital marketing for law firms includes:
- Email marketing
- Pay-per-click (PPC) adverts
- Social media
- Website
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Video Marketing.
Most law firms focus on digital marketing to promote their brands in this digital era. However, you can take the hybrid approach by combining the two. For example, using social media to promote events that sell your services.
Whether focusing on one or multiple channels/strategies, you need a reliable law marketing agency to assist with your marketing needs. What does such an agency do? And how can it help your law firm to grow? Read on to discover!
What are Legal Marketing Agencies?
A legal marketing agency is a business that assists your law firm in attracting new leads, building your brand, and promoting/selling your service. There are generalist marketing agencies that work with varying clients, like lawyers, medical practitioners, and e-commerce business owners.
When looking for an agency for your firm, it’s best to work with one specialising in the legal industry. However, even a law firm marketing agency can be a generalist. How? If the agency uses all marketing channels rather than specialising in one or two.
Let’s examine the types of law marketing agencies to better understand generalist and specialised legal marketing companies.
Types of Lawyer Marketing Agencies
There are different types of law firm marketing companies depending on the service(s) they offer. Here are various types of agencies you can use for your law firm:
- SEO Agency: Helps law firms rank high on Google through various Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies.
- Social Media Marketing (SMM) Agency: Builds your social media presence, helping your law firm attract more clients from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.
- PPC Agency: Focuses on pay-per-click campaigns and ads to generate qualified leads and clients for your law firm.
- Digital Marketing Agency: Uses various digital marketing channels like email, SEO, content creation, and ads to build and promote your online presence.
- Advertising Agency: These agencies promote your business and advertise your services through online and offline channels, such as social media and print.
- Full-Service Agency: Provides numerous digital marketing services to law firms. These may include SEO, SMM, website design, email marketing, Google Ads, etc.
How to Choose the Best Legal Marketing Agency
You now better understand law firm marketing agencies, what they do, and the various types. Let’s share five tips for selecting the best legal digital marketing agency for your law firm.
- Consider Your Marketing Needs and Goals
The first step to finding the perfect agency for your law firm is understanding your marketing goals and needs. What do you want to achieve? Is it more leads, a stronger reputation, or a better social media presence? Or do you need a new or updated law firm website?
Your needs and goals will guide you to choose the right marketing partner. Write down all your marketing needs and what you’d like the agency to help you achieve. Choose a legal digital marketing agency that ticks the most or all your needs/goals.
- Do Your Research
Armed with a list of your goals, it’s time to start your research. Use Google and other search engines to scout for the best agency that’s suited to your needs. If looking for a local agency, use geo-specific search terms.
For example, if you search lawyer PPC agency in Perth, you’ll see the best PPC agencies, with Marketlytics leading the park.
You can also use social media for your research. Another research tip is asking for referrals from other lawyers.
- Budget and Pricing
Another key consideration is the pricing of the legal marketing consultant you’d like to hire. Start by setting up your monthly or annual law firm marketing budget. Your budget will depend on the following:
- The marketing service(s) you require.
- Your target market: local or national.
- Your firm’s monthly/annual revenue.
- How competitive your practice area or services are.
- Size of your law firm.
Check whether the agency charges a set monthly price or varying rates depending on results or services. The best law firm marketing agency should offer custom pricing plans for your specific needs and budget.
- Check the Agency’s Experience and Expertise
The marketing agency you choose should have experience helping legal clients. It’s also critical if the agency’s owner or team members have legal expertise. Having an understanding of the law ensures the law firm marketing strategies are on the safe side of the law and search engines.
Avoid working with generalist consultants who promise to be a jack of all trades. Work with a specialised agency with expertise in using specific marketing strategies and channels to grow and promote your brand.
For example, Marketlytics specialises in helping law firms generate quality leads through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising via Google, Meta, and LinkedIn.
- Case Studies and Client Testimonials
Has the agency helped other law firms get results? And what are current or previous clients saying about the agency? The track record of the marketing agency is a sure way to determine if it’s the right one for your firm.
Visit the agency’s case studies page to see how they helped clients achieve results, the strategies employed, and how long it took to see results. The online reviews and testimonials page lets you see what people say about the agency. Use these signals to evaluate the agency’s success and determine if it’ll help you achieve your marketing goals.
The Need For Specialist Agencies
Why choose a specialist? For the same reason why lawyers need accreditation and subject matter knowledge. To gain real expertise and true understanding of your profession and target market.
A full service marketing agency will not understand your niche the way we do and cost an arm and a leg. In Australia, there are not many law firm marketing specialist agencies, who at least have an arm for law firms specifically. Law firms spend can spend a lot of money on marketing, so specialised agencies will continue to grow and become more prevalent.
What Makes a Good Law Firm Marketing Agency?
There are a number of factors which influence whether an agency is good at law firm marketing. They are:
- Past results working for law firms
- Background understanding of the law in marketing
- Right specialisations in law firm marketing
Past Results Working For Law Firms
Unless you have fair confidence in the agency you engage to do well for other reasons than past results, past results are important. Now every agency needs that first law firm before they niche in law firm marketing, but a firm understanding of how a law firm works and how legal services are consumed is very important for an agency to deliver real results.
There is sometimes a distinction between what is called B2C, business to consumer and B2B, Business to Business. For example, family law, personal injury and criminal law practices are very B2C. There consumers are not always sophisticated, and have fewer touchpoints. Touchpoints are basically interactions with the law practice.
B2B is more complex, requiring more touchpoints. These areas of law are commercial, even employment law, and the clients tend to be more sophisticated than B2C. It is not straightforward to market for commercial areas of law, and you need to at least have an agency with a feasible plan.
Background Understanding Of The Law In Marketing
A background understanding of the law is very helpful. When understanding complex issues like trade marks, patents and designs, or areas of law where you do not get as much exposure in law school such as wills and estates, having a law degree or having practiced as a lawyer is a clear advantage.
There are a few agencies whose founders have such backgrounds in Australia, and they are better placed at making your marketing work than non-specialist agencies.
Right Specialisations In Law Firm Marketing Strategy
There are many things agencies are able to do for you. However, be wary of the agency’s size.
If an agency is run by one or a few people, there cannot be too many specialisations before inefficiencies occur.
No one person can know everything, and for a small team to profess at knowing everything, well, you should be very sceptical. Even if that one person or small team is capable of delivery, they will have scaling issues as they take on more clients and the qulity of work will drop if they do not hire more team members. It takes a 50 person team or more to be able to deliver the full service 100% internally. Agencies who niche in service as well as client, being a smaller agency, are playing a smart game. Focus, the Pareto Principle means these focused agencies can deliver more with less.
These are common specialisations or capabilities in Law Firm Marketing:
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Google, Bing Ads
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Organic Google, Bing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Facebook, LinkedIn organic and paid
- Email Marketing (EDM) – ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, Strategy
- Client Relationship Management (CRM) – InfusionSoft, Zoho
- Reputation Management – Google My Business, Facebook Reviews
- Web Design & Development – WordPress
- Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) – Improving conversions
We at Marketlytics handle all paid channels and SEO. Although we know a bit of Email Marketing, that is not the focus of our business. We are also tracking and Analytics experts, allowing us to achieve maximum campaign efficiency. We do not design websites. We do not advise on technology other than what is relevant to advertising and SEO.
What Makes A Good Law Firm Search Engine Marketing Agency?
Google Ads is complex. What makes a good SEM Agency are these things:
- Good tracking. Must be able to track conversions accurately
- No over reliance on automation
- No under reliance on automation
- No set and forget
- Clear, relevant reporting
- Understanding of industry terminology and how it works
- Meaningful budget projections, setting the right level of budget
- Wide testing of ad combinations
What Makes A Good Law Firm Search Engine Optimisation Agency?
SEO is a fine art, and one of the hardest forms of digital marketing. This is what makes a good SEO:
- Has a web development team to make technical changes to the website
- Has a good content team to produce good content
- Relevant backlink building (very subjective and hard to gauge)
- Good Schema (needs to be detailed, accurate and not irrelevant)
- Not sloppy
- Actual growth in organic traffic
- Able to monitor relevant KPIs
- Clear, relevant reporting
What Makes A Good Law Firm Social Media Marketing Agency?
Social media is less understood by the legal profession and their marketers. This is what it takes to be good at social media marketing for law firms.
- Able to understand social media is a passive medium, so the strategy is vastly different from Search Engine Marketing
- Knows advanced targeting strategies
- Able to formulate strategies for the six types of audiences, see here for reference.
- Able to produce graphics for social media
- Able to produce video for social media
- Able to advise on video recording shortcuts for social media
- Good tracking. Must be able to track conversions accurately
- No over reliance on automation
- No under reliance on automation
- No set and forget
- Clear, relevant reporting
- Understanding of industry terminology and how it works
- Meaningful budget projections, setting the right level of budget
- Wide testing of ad combinations
- Fresh ideas on social media your competitors are not using
What Makes A Good Law Firm Email Marketing Agency?
Email Marketing is the glue of all digital marketing, this is what makes a good Email Marketing Agency:
- Uses anything more advanced than Mailchimp
- Able to formulate good email marketing strategy like autoresponders
- Able to train you in detail on self managing your email marketing system
- Able to integrate with a CRM
- Able to integrate with marketing automation
- Can produce newsletter templates
What Makes A Good Law Firm Client Relationship Management Agency?
This is what makes a good CRM Agency for your law firm:
- Has multiple options for CRM or marketing automation
- Is able to tell if your firm is ready for a high level complexity or not, and advise honestly
- Customises your CRM and marketing automation
- Does not only rely on complete solutions, but can find niche solutions that will grow you before you are ready for more complex systems
- Not only provide matter management systems like Filepro and LEAP
- Does not use proprietary, unique systems that are hard to integrate
What Makes A Good Law Firm Reputation Management Agency?
This is what makes good reputation management by an agency:
- Able to advise on strategy dealing with bad reviews
- Has access to reputation management software
- Has a process to appeal bad reviews which are false
What Makes A Good Law Firm Web Design And Development Agency?
This is what makes a good Law Firm Web Design And Development Agency:
- Has Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) as part of their specialities
- Able to plan a logical framework for the website
- Able to create fast websites
- Designs do not just look nice but has specific function
What Makes A Good Law Firm Conversion Rate Optimisation Agency?
This is what makes a good Conversion Rate Optimiser for law firm marketing:
- Has a web development team
- Able to understand and integrate their approach with Google Analytics
- Able to plan a logical framework for the website
- Suggest design amendments that are not distracting but directing
Great Australian Law Firm Marketing Agencies
We have identified four top Australian agencies that focus on the legal industry. What they all boil down to is that they have their own approach regarding leads for your law firm. Find out the best lawyer marketing company options you have in Australia!
It is essential that you do your market research and choose the right specialist agency for your needs, an agency that can help you do what your marketing team cannot. Your brand is your responsibility, but we will show you agencies likely to deliver. Let’s dive into the top four with the first agency.
Fast Firms
Founder: Dan Toombs
Services Offered: Design, Branding, Marketing, Technology
Fast Firms have been working with law firms since 2009. Dan Toombs, an award-winning lawyer, is the agency’s founder and director. He started by launching an online training portal for lawyers and judicial officers. After finding success, he formed a team to launch Fast Firms and help law firms with their digital marketing needs.
Pros
Fast Firms offers a wide range of services to law firms in Australia and internationally. These include website/brand designing, CRMs, email marketing, event planning, and SEO marketing for law firms. This “by lawyers for lawyers” full-service agency has a massive portfolio of clients they’ve worked with.
Dan Toombs’ team only serves clients in the legal industry, giving them the specialised skills needed to grow your law firm. If you need technology services like chatbots, call tracking, and API integration, Fast Firms might be your best choice.
Cons
All businesses have weaknesses. It is an inevitable fact. However, we will not be discussing negative elements of this agency as we are not clients of theirs, but we respect their work.
Pixelrush
Founder: Byron Trzeciak
Services Offered: Google Ads, SEO, conversion optimisation, web design, land pages
Byron started Pixelrush in 2014, growing it into a thriving digital marketing agency with 14 team members, serving over 150 businesses to date. The agency specialises in helping marketing law firms and local businesses in Australia.
Pros
Pixelrush is a data-driven and result-oriented digital marketing agency led by Bryon, a marketing specialist. While they offer various digital marketing services, Byron’s expertise lies in Google Ads. He’s spent over $1 million on Google Ads, backed by over 15,000 hours of studying and testing. That said, he also has a team to assist with your SEO, web design, and conversion optimisation needs.
Cons
All businesses have weaknesses. It is an inevitable fact. However, we will not be discussing negative elements of this agency as we are not clients of theirs, but we respect their work.
Lift Legal
Founder: Peter Heazlewood and Brian Hicks
Services Offered: SEO, website development/management, online marketing
Two former lawyers, Brian and Peter formed Lift Legal Marketing in 2014. The duo has a team of 14 (at the time of writing) marketing specialists, making it among the largest legal digital marketing agencies in Australia. The team includes web developers, SEO specialists, and performance marketing specialists.
Pros
Lift Legal Marketing is a full-service agency for all your law firm’s marketing needs. You’ll benefit from working with real lawyer marketers offering numerous services, from content creation and website development to social media marketing. The agency has various partners, enabling it to have an impressive track record of successfully marketing lawyers in Australia, the UK, and the USA.
Cons
All businesses have weaknesses. It is an inevitable fact. However, we will not be discussing negative elements of this agency as we are not clients of theirs, but we respect their work.
Toro Digital
Toro Digital has been around since 2014. The founder, Paul Evans was involved in marketing for HWL Ebsworth. At the time of writing, they have 11 employees listed, making it the largest leading Australian legal specialist agency online.
Pros
Paul Evans’ team covers an extremely wide area of legal marketing aspects, including business development and communications. They have a lot of industry involvement, and Paul really functioned as a marketing manager for real law firms. They have industry links with the Legal Marketing Association and Australian Legal Technology Association. This is the agency you want to consult with for your technology fit out.
Cons
All businesses have weaknesses. It is an inevitable fact. However, we will not be discussing negative elements of this agency as we are not clients of theirs, but we respect their work.
Known, Liked and Trusted
Known, Linked and Trusted is run by Chris Hargreaves. He has long been in the online space for lawyers, having started Tips For Lawyers over a decade ago. He is still a practising lawyer, being a Special Counsel and the first in Australia to be both law marketer and lawyer. His unique value proposition in this sense, is very hard to match.
Pros
Obviously, being a lawyer with significant experience, he does have some advantage marketing for lawyers. He seems to be best as a specialist content creator for lawyers, able to write on hard technical subjects with ease. You can read his perfectionist attitude by looking at his website on how clean it looks, it really shows his personality. There is a great trust factor because of Hargreaves background.
Cons
All businesses have weaknesses. It is an inevitable fact. However, we will not be discussing negative elements of this agency as we are not clients of theirs, but we respect their work.
Legalsites
Legalsites is run by Brendan Kelso. Kelso also runs the Kelso Creative, where he started his entrepeneurial journey before Legalsites. If you want to build a law firm website, Legalsites does that. They also want to be full service digital marketing for the legal industry. Legalsites tries to provide a combination of all aspects bundled into one remote work agency that apparently spreads across Australasia.
Pros
We have to give credit here, Legalsites does SEO extremely well. Their agency site has good content and rankings, much better than even Known, Liked and Trusted. If you need a blog post, or more general help with marketing to do yourself, a free guide from Legalsites could help. Legalsites has a very good general marketing guide and has a popular podcast, The Better Law Firm Marketing Podcast.
Cons
All businesses have weaknesses. It is an inevitable fact. However, we will not be discussing negative elements of this agency as we are not clients of theirs, but we respect their work.
Marketlytics
Marketlytics is the latest player in this field, after Legalsites. It is founded by Clarence Ling, a former practising lawyer from Western Australia. They only focus on Online Advertising and SEO, and they have past results to prove they are effective. Unlike all three agencies above, Marketlytics did not start out servicing the law firm niche. They started with a web development school. Doing digital marketing for law firms and getting them better quality leads was an organic development. It just so happened they found their best success with law firm clients. The main difference between most competitors, is that Marketlytics has an actual core team for delivery and many strategic partnerships.
Pros
Clarence Ling practised in a generalist law firm and has a very wide exposure to the law, including intellectual property. He was twice published in legal peer reviewed journals and has exceptional legal research skills. Clarence has been in advertising since 2015, with his record year selling $25 million of Australian real estate. He also has worked in full service marketing agency, something none of his competitors have, with Paul Evans having the closest similar experience in this regard. Ling’s advertising track record is supreme. There is little doubt that Marketlytics benefits from their founder because it is a cross between Hargreaves and Kelso. Having the legal knowledge and marketing know how, Clarence has the best of both worlds of your law marketing agency choices.
Marketlytics is also focused on Online Advertising and SEO. This allows them to focus and hone in on their best services, rather than being mediocre at all services. With law firm marketing, hiring a full service agency is ridiculously expensive. There is also no need for an agency to do all functions for your law firm. It is essential your that your law firm outsource what’s difficult rather than what is better served by a marketing manager or practice manager. There are a few options for agencies who understand the legal niche, but still the area of practice of these agencies, and their approach is different.
Marketlytics understands social media lead generation much better than any of these agencies, helping you create a captive audience and also finding relevant keywords for PPC and SEO easier than most for both ranking and monetary return.
They also have many video shortcuts that make video marketing within financial reach.
Marketlytics are professional Analytics experts and can track and measure nearly everything, allowing you to formulate strategies to engage the maximum number of leads to convert to sales. They break down customer behaviour much better and have a reputation for clear and understandable reporting for data driven marketing.
These are some key points where Marketlytics have a competitive edge, because they have taken time to develop capabilities around a focus area, which in of itself is very complex.
Cons
Outside of PPC and SEO, Marketlytics is only providing other services through strategic partners.
They are other friendly agencies who are ready to assist your needs with the same level of expertise and focus Marketlytics has.
The Importance Of An Amazing Law Firm Website
Understanding the importance of a high-quality law firm website, how to create an accessible and useful website, in addition to the basics you need to succeed, you can turn your visitors into potential clients for your firm. Potential clients are looking for online legal services every day.
For your law firm to attract new clients and stay thriving, a strong web presence is a must. The cornerstone of your web presence is your website, where to demonstrate your authority and expertise, and to generate traffic and inquiries for your law firm. Most customers start the purchasing process by first performing online searches.
This is true both for e-commerce and service providers. Potential clients want to make an informed decision when choosing a lawyer. Your website is one of the first places they will visit to see if you are the right choice. Law firm websites serve many purposes. They share information about who you are, show your service areas, and offer potential customers a way to contact these services. Beyond that, your website needs to communicate what makes your value proposition unique to your target customer.
Although Marketlytics does not build websites, we can give some feedback and inform the web designers we recommend in order to build that amazing law firm website that will make a difference.
Rough Framework For An Amazing Law Firm Website
This is a helpful framework so you know your web design agency is doing a good job with your law firm website design.
The design of the law firm’s website refers to the aesthetics of a website or the visual aspects involved in creating websites. Includes the creation of the overall layout of images to text. Believe it or not, the design of the firm’s website can make or break your online presence. The first impressions of the site are mainly related to design and this first impression lasts only 0.05 seconds.
To make a good first impression using your website design, it is essential to follow some law firm website design principles. All the design features of your website should serve a purpose. A messy design makes it difficult to consume your content.
- Don’t let your audience look through many graphics and visuals.
- Keep your design simple.
- Create an easy-to-follow navigation. We have already said it and will repeat it: create an easy-to-follow navigation and place it at the top of your website. This helps your audience quickly find what they’re looking for.
- Follow an “F” pattern in your design. Most users follow and model “F” when playing online content. This means that they first read the top of the page, at the bottom on the left side, and then across the page again. Everything you want your audience to notice must first be at the top right of the page (like your logo). The rest of its elements should follow the pattern.
You should note that the above are rough guidelines and now the best web designers use eye tracking software to predict the efficacy of their website designs.
You Still Need A Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
A value proposition defines the unique value you offer to your clients that other lawyers do not. It describes why your client should choose it and should agree throughout the design of your law firm’s website.
If you don’t know your unique value proposition, follow these steps.
- Identify the main concerns of your target customer.
- Take the time to define your customer’s main concerns.
- These concerns will depend on your main areas of service as well as the customer you want to attract.
- This is the perfect place to use your customer or avatar.
- Define how your services address these concerns by listing the benefits.
- Now define how your services address these concerns.
- List the benefits of your services instead of features.
- Position yourself as the provider of the value.
By using your website, position yourself as a provider of this unique value by placing it at the front and center of your home page and across your website. Although agencies are able to assist you with finding your UVP, you may need a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Marketing Manager or similar to find this. Sometimes, this is beyond the scope of a digital marketer.
Conclusion
All these agencies are excellent alternatives to full service marketing agencies, and bring different strengths and weaknesses. There is no simple answer to which is best for every circumstance, but our advice is to give Marketlytics a try.
All discovery calls are confidential
What makes a good Law Firm Marketing Agency?
An agency with staff who have a background understanding of the law, who know how law practice works and can understand the nuances of the strategies involved is a good law firm marketing agency
Is it important to have service specialisations as a Law Firm Marketing Agency?
Yes. One person, or a few people cannot execute a full service marketing agency or full service digital marketing agency roles, so if you are after a small, specialist agency, it is better that you choose one that specialises in a few fields, rather than a small agency trying to act like they are a large agency with 50 staff
Do I need a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) when using a Law Firm Marketing Agency?
Most specialist firms are digital marketing agencies, they can advise, but are not specifically qualified to find your UVP. If you have no idea of your UVP, it may be wise to brainstorm with your Marketing Manager or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
Why should I choose a specialist over a full service marketing agency for Law Firm Marketing?
Unless you are a very large firm with a big budget, full service is very expensive, and in most cases, unnecessary. Do not go for full service even if you are dealing with a smaller agency, because that small agency is going to have scaling issues, since they have too many specialisations. Service will deteriorate until they narrow their services or become a large agency. Agencies with both client and service niches are more laser focused and able to be great at a few things.
Clarence Ling is the Founder of Marketlytics, and a guerilla marketer. Initially a trained Lawyer and Practice Development Manager, he contributed to the growth of his firm, including implementing software.
Clarence Ling is a Digital Advertising and Analytics Expert. Having a wide range of advertising experience ranging from international real estate, to legal and previously worked in full service marketing agencies, Clarence is a diligent marketer with an eye for detail and a talent for numbers.
Clarence can carefully plan out the best budget levels for the desired outcomes with projections that are more accurate than most.
His background in Analytics enables a clear, big picture assessment of both organic and paid campaigns, enabling maximum efficiency of those digital campaigns. His analytical background brings precise clarity of client or customer interaction and behaviour on online assets.
Clarence’s four fields of practice are Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Email Marketing (EDM). He is best as an Advertiser and is an avid collector of Software As A Service (SaaS) Products, avidly investing in both technology and human capital of Marketlytics.
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