Law firms typically serve a specific region. Focusing your marketing efforts on potential clients in that region is a solid tactic to get more out of your marketing spend.
With hyperlocal marketing, you can improve your law firm’s online presence locally.
Taking certain law firm SEO actions and setting up the right kinds of online ads can help your firm attract more clients from your local area.
Hyperlocal marketing targets can be as specific as within a few blocks of your law firm. Or they can be within a particular zip code, neighborhood, or city. The goal is to reach as many potential law firm clients in that area as possible.
Why Hyperlocal Marketing Matters for Law Firms
Many law firms depend upon business from local clients. Having an effective way to reach those people is a cornerstone of growing your law firm.
Hyperlocal marketing is one way to get your messaging out to more people in your local service area.
Hyperlocal marketing for lawyers has both inbound marketing and outbound marketing components. The first increases your visibility through local SEO. The second allows you to better target clients in your region through advertising.
People often look for someone close to them using a near me modifier on Google search. For example, they may search for something like personal injury lawyer near me.
As many as 82% of people on mobile have completed a search like that at least once. You can use hyperlocal marketing to attract that audience to your law firm. When you target local terms on searches, it makes it easier for your ideal clients to find you.
Focusing on local SEO tactics also provides you with an entryway to things like Google Maps.
When it comes to advertising, you can use geo-specific ads to reach your local audience. Google ads for lawyers and legal social media ads allow you to narrow the ad placement down to specific locations.
Get-targeted ads showcase who you serve in that audience. Potential clients want to work with a knowledgeable lawyer in their local region. These ads allow you to join that consideration set.
Hyperlocal marketing does have its limitations, though. It’s only one facet of a well-rounded law firm marketing campaign.
In the SEO arena, hyperlocal marketing gets you in front of people who do local searches on Google. But plenty of people in your area will also search for non-local keywords.
Not focusing on these broad terms means you miss out on local clients who might not use location-specific keywords in other searches. As a result, you could leave a lot of value on the table.
Geo-targeted ads are great if you only want local clients. If you’re trying to get more clients for a national case, such as a mass tort, they won’t be as helpful.
Despite the limitations, hyperlocal marketing still has value. The key is balancing it with other marketing activities.
To make hyperlocal marketing work, law firms need to understand and apply the right tactics.
Essential Hyperlocal Marketing Tactics for Law Firms
If hyperlocal marketing is a logical next step for your law firm, there are some main tactics you can implement to get the best results. Following these tips positions your firm to show up as a clear option for your prospective clients.
Claiming and Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile
One of the most important factors in local SEO is your law firm’s Google My Business Profile.
When people perform a local search, businesses with optimized GMB profiles show up in a map pack feature at the top of the search results.
This rich visual element only displays a few law firms at a time in the map pack. It’s also enticing to searchers and can provide them with valuable information about your business.
Having a GMB profile provides you with an entryway to the map results. Optimizing your profile gives it a chance to compete and rank in the map pack.
Your Google Business Profile shows several factors about your firm. This includes your location, phone number, ratings from clients, years in business, and hours. As a quick snapshot, it tells potential clients the basics about your firm and entices them to look more deeply into your law firm’s experience.
Beyond claiming your profile, adding regular reviews from past clients helps support the overall reputation of your firm on Google.
94% percent of people say that positive reviews influence their decision to use a business. This makes law firm reputation management a key part of staying competitive in local search.
In this example of a local search for car accident lawyers, Google displays the business profile for firms close to the searcher. Highly rated law firms are listed to the left of the map despite some firms being closer to the searcher.
For a deep dive into setting up and optimizing your GMB profile, check out our guide to Google My Business for lawyers.
Building Local Citations in Online Directories
Online directories help with your local SEO by confirming that you’re an active business in a specific location. Citations help Google understand your law firm’s context for local searches.
Google looks at numerous factors in determining whether or not your law firm shows up for a local search phrase. This includes your relevance, prominence, and distance.
Citations help Google understand where your firm is situated. This helps their algorithm determine when your firm should show up in local searches and in Google Maps.
Claiming and updating these directories is a relatively simple but important step.
One of the most important places for lawyers to start is with online legal directories. After that, there are a few local business directories that are critical to any business.
Creating Location-Focused Service Pages
If you want to reach people in a certain location, sometimes it’s as simple as calling out that you operate there.
You can do so by creating service pages for each of your practice areas in your city. For example, you could create a page targeting the term car accident lawyer houston.
When people in and around Houston search for help after a car accident, your page could be in the search results. This is true whether or not they use the Houston modifier.
If your city has smaller towns that surround it, you may also create service pages for them too.
Deciding whether to do this depends on two factors. First is whether you want to target that area. Second is whether the search results for that area differ from those for your city.
In larger cities, you might even expand this to neighborhood service pages. If there’s an area within your city with a common name, you may want to create a location page for that area. The same considerations apply here as to targeting surrounding towns.
Launching Geo-Targeted Ad Campaigns
Outside of local SEO tactics, lawyers have a few options for hyperlocal advertising. On both social media platforms and Google, you can create ad campaigns designed to reach ideal clients.
On social media, you can target audiences in specific cities or zip codes. You can also create graphics and ad copy directed to your local market. This allows you to put your services directly in front of your audience.
On Google Ads, you have two different options for reaching your target audience.
Google PPC for lawyers lets you create ads that only show up when someone in a specific area searches for a keyword you bid on. Google local service ads are, as the name suggests, locally targeted by default.
As with all law firm advertising, hyperlocal ads should still follow certain best practices. For example, they need to conform to attorney advertising rules. For the best results, they should also take things like the law firm PPC funnel into account.
Highlighting Local Involvement on Social Media
Attorneys aren’t constrained to just advertising on social media. There are plenty of opportunities for local social media marketing for lawyers.
Posting occasionally about your connection to the community is a good way to build a bridge between your firm and the local audience.
If you participate in local community service or leadership events, take photos of these and share them on social media. This shows a commitment to your local region and helping the people who live there.
From fundraisers to volunteer events and beyond, you can show that your firm’s lawyers are active and compassionate about the area.
Publishing Content Focused on Local Events
Many other resources will tell you that you writing about local events on your blog is a helpful tactic. They may tell you to post things like local news pieces with relevant local keywords.
Doing so can dilute the focus of your site.
Unless the event is directly related to your law firm, it’s probably not worth it. People don’t visit firm websites to read local news. Instead, they want to learn more about their legal issue and how you can help.
If you do want to publish content about local events, there’s a better way.
For example, you can start a scholarship program for local students. You could build a landing page on your website with information on the scholarship program. Then, you could promote and post about it on social media.
In the example above, the motorcycle lawyers at Edgar Snyder & Associates get things right. The firm has a whole page on its website dedicated to motorcycle safety events and community sponsorships.
Measuring and Optimizing Your Hyperlocal Marketing Campaign
Setting goals and tracking performance is important for hyperlocal marketing. In order to tell whether your efforts are worth it, you need to:
- Set key performance indicators to track
- Analyze your website traffic and user behavior
- Optimize and adapt based on data-driven insights
Looking at these metrics helps you see how you’re performing. They also tell you whether you need to adapt your tactics or channels.
It can be hard to keep up with this on your own. That’s one of the reasons why the most successful lawyers using hyperlocal tactics work with an outside law firm marketing expert.
Reach Your Local Clients
Optimizing the dollars you spend on marketing requires thinking about where your clients live, what they want in a lawyer, and how you can stand out from your competitors. Use hyperlocal marketing to help reach these potential clients and improve your local visibility.
As one facet of a broader attorney marketing plan, hyperlocal marketing can get you more business from prospective clients. Work with an expert in law firm marketing to get the most out of every campaign.
Contact Rankings.io to learn more about your options and to get assistance with implementation.
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