If you work for a law firm or run one, you should consider your marketing strategy. You know marketing means you’ll attract some new potential clients and retain old ones. Getting your firm’s name out there isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary.

That’s why you should know about digital marketing and its various components. We will talk about that in the following article. Lawyers who don’t use digital marketing can easily fall behind their competitors, and the wrong strategy could put them out of business in this ultra-competitive industry.

SEO

You might know about SEO as a lawyer, or maybe you’re never heard of it before. SEO means search engine optimization. You modify your website based on analytics-driven data that tells you what keywords or keyword phrases should appear on that site.

Google accounts for 90% of online searches, so you need to ensure you and the Google algorithm get along. You must hire someone who knows about SEO to modify your site in appropriate ways so that it comes up when an individual Googles certain terms or phrases. If you don’t, the other sites that appear before yours will likely steal that business from you.

Other lawyers and sites use SEO techniques, which is why you must do it too. You should regard it not as optional but mandatory.

You can hire a freelancer to modify your site using basic SEO principles, or you can hire someone full-time to do the work if you have the money to pay them a competitive starting salary. Offering them perks will also help if you want an SEO specialist to work for your firm exclusively.

Email Marketing

You can also set up an email marketing campaign that will reach anyone who you feel can use your services. You probably practice a particular kind of law, and you want to generate an email list of potential clients that fit your ideal model.

You can create that list by offering something enticing on your site. You might write an eBook or hire someone to write it for you. You can offer that if someone who visits the website gives you their email address.

Once you’ve made that list, you can start crafting emails that will get the attention you want. You can make the subject lines conversational to strike the right tone. You can also use analytics to see how many people open the email and engage with it.

If you don’t use email marketing, you should know you’re missing out on potential customers, just like with SEO. Other law firms use this tactic, and you should too if you want to compete with them. Every tool they use that you don’t will likely cause you to lose ground.

Social Media Marketing

Digital marketing must include social media in 2022. You will need to look into what social media platforms your ideal client uses. They might use platforms like Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. You must hire someone who knows how to craft ad content for all of them.

However, you can’t spread yourself too thin when creating social media ads. You need to figure out what platforms your potential clients use so you can target those and not the many others that exist.

You can’t possibly do targeted marketing on all social media platforms. You need to pick and utilize only the ones where your ideal clients spend their time.

Accordingly, you’ll need to contact and hire someone who can do the appropriate research for you. They can use the latest tools to pinpoint the right social media platforms. Then, they will create the content and run your ad campaign.

They might employ pay-per-click advertising. That’s a way to save money on your ad campaigns on social media.

The marketing team creates ad content for you, and then they make sure it shows up when they know someone needs legal services. However, you don’t have to pay anything unless someone clicks on your ad. If you can get someone to click on that ad, you stand a good chance of making them your client.

Use Digital Marketing to Your Advantage

Lawyers and law firms that don’t use social media, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and anything else digital marketing-related don’t stand a chance in 2022. In the old days, maybe all you needed was the word of mouth to attract the clients that kept you prominent in your legal niche. Perhaps you also used radio spots, TV commercials, billboard advertising, etc.

You can definitely still do all of that, but most lawyers know to dedicate more of their ad budgets to digital marketing. It’s where you can find more people and connect with them. You just need to make sure you have the right content and team backing you up in this endeavor.

When you hire your marketing person or team, whether you hire them as freelancers or full-time employees, you can have them study your business model and everything you do. You can have them look over your website with SEO in mind. They can add images and videos if they feel your site needs that.

They might add a company blog where you can connect with your client base and humanize your company. They may suggest you add a way for someone to find your social media accounts via your website.

Your marketing team will more than likely suggest and craft an email marketing campaign. They will spend some time creating an ideal customer profile so they can know what social media platforms to use. They might create pay-per-click ads if you have the money for that. They’re worth thinking about since they often generate new leads.

Simply put, law firms need digital marketing to stay ahead of their competitors because you know other lawyers use it. If you feel like you don’t need it, you might find yourself out of business very quickly. Use technology to stay ahead of others within your niche.

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1. Law Business and Digital Marketing

The whole business arena has undergone a huge transformation as ever, but this time, it can be rightly labeled as the digital revolution/transformation. The digital world notched up from just being internet surfing to building a life in the virtual medium. Every business sector has taken steps to make sure their online presence is visible to their audience. Law business is no exception to making their visibility seen online. With the changing regulatory protocols, different kinds of new problems cropping up, digital marketing has become inevitable for law business now.

2. Strategies to grow Law Business online

Like every other business, in order to grow your Law Business online, you need to have a strategy. Let us now look into the strategies one by one.

Strategies to grow Law Business online

2.1. Concentrate on the Website Design and MFI

‘Website Design’ is very crucial in the present digital age. There is this saying ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, but, the fact is, cover somehow gets the first impression/look and like it or not, a major percentage of judgment does happen based on its cover. The same holds for your website. No matter how much expertise you might have in practicing the law, one of the important parameters to choose you will be based on your updated website design.

From a technical point of view, grid design fairs well. And another thing to keep in mind is, keep the design as simple as possible. If you have an old website, check if it is updated to the current website design metrics. Also, you need to make sure if it is compatible with mobile phones. The reason being, MFI – Mobile-First Indexing is seriously looked into by Google. Google crawls through your website to check if your website is mobile-optimized.

2.2. Focus on SEO and Link Building

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important in terms of getting your website noticed on the search results. The results that show up when something is typed into the search bar of the search engine drastically depend on SEO protocols. Therefore, when your law firm appears near the top engine results, that means more people will view your website. 

However, it’s a big challenge for law firms to be on top of the search results especially with the number of online law businesses available. Thus, below are some ways on how you can improve the ranking of your law firm.

• Make Sure Your Home Page is Keyword Optimized

To ensure the growth of your law business online, make sure that the primary elements of your homepage such as the headline, description tags sub-headers, and call to action uses your keywords. Google Analytics is a tool that can easily help your website track and determine the keywords that can help clients find you, therefore, you have to do this correctly.

You need to be very clear and specific about the keywords that will point to you and make sure to use them cleverly in your website. Only then, during the Google crawl, your website will be recognized and will be shown on the first page of the search results.

There are two types of keywords:

1. Long-tail keywords. These are keywords that can improve your law firm’s rank and narrow the search results to target those possible clients that are willing to get your service.

2. Short-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords contain no more than three words and cover a larger topic than long-tail ones. This causes more search results which limit your law firm to be visible to people, but still, this plays an important role in your SEO strategy.

• Include Backlinks and Off-Page Citations

Linking and Backlinking is a process by which you increase the traffic to your website. It can either be internal or external, meaning, you can backlink your own blogs in other blogs of your website and you could also work out a way to make other websites to backlink to your website. This will greatly help in increasing the Page Ranking which ultimately contributes to the overall SEO ranking of your website.

• Seek Help From SEO Experts 

Consulting with a lawyer SEO consultant can also help you dominate search engine rankings. They use a strategy to rank your law business for its main services and under other targeted and long-tail keywords. In addition to this, they also have a marketing team that creates a custom plan crafted to showcase your practice to the audience.

2.3. Work on Qualitative Content including Credible Videos and Reviews

Content is almost everything these days with regard to website designing and SEO protocols. You need to be very careful about the quality of content that goes online on your website since this is the most important factor that plays a crucial role in content marketing. Here is where keywords come into the picture. The more the keywords are present in your content, the more possibility of your website showing up on the top pages of the search results.

Credible Videos are a part of Video marketing strategy. Of the latest marketing strategies, video marketing has reasonable weightage. And especially when it comes to Law Business, a video explaining the regulatory details, case studies, Law points will be credible. Also, video testimonials of your clients on a generic view will be very helpful.

Reviews are yet another important parameter that will get you judged online. In general, detailed well-written reviews show the authenticity of the review. Also, ratings will be noted to a great extent. So, make sure that you give importance to the reviews and make that viewable on your website.

2.4. Enlist yourself on Legal Directories

Getting yourself enlisted in authentic directories will increase your credibility. Directories like FindLaw, Avvo, etc helps you to be noticed by the people who are looking out for authentic Law support. So, make sure you enlist yourself in such credible directories to increase your visibility and thereby help your business grow.

2.5. Check for Lead conversion protocols & Implement them

Lead conversion is the technical term that is used to describe a potential opportunity/client who might become your client and ultimately help in your business growth. There are a couple of technical details that you need to look into in order to make sure you don’t miss out on potential clients who check you out online. CTA – Call to action button is very important as this helps to make sure you are contacted by your potential client through your website. Make it clearly visible; probably you can use fluorescent colors to highlight the CTA button. Also, make your contact details easy to view.

Follow-up with the inquiries that you get over your website through emails and phone calls. Make sure that you provide your clients with the required Non-disclosure Agreement in the initial stage itself. Since your business is Law, confidentiality matters the most. Therefore you need to be very careful in all these minute details since a procedural and detailed approach will earn the trust of your clients which will help in your business growth.

2.6. PPC and other digital campaigns

In addition to the above-mentioned strategies, running a PPC campaign will help you to build your client base in the initial stage. Once you start ranking well in the SEO protocols and build a law firm’s brand, then it is okay to curate on organic search ways, but until then, it is important that you build your client database and brand. You should plan out the budget and run PPC campaigns from time to time. Also, you need to reach out to the public on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. There are options to run ad campaigns on each platform as well. So, make the best use of the available options.

2.7. Grow your offline profile

Though it is super important to make your presence online legit, it is equally important to make your offline presence noticed among the public. Hence when there are protests try to gain the significance of it with respect to the law and start voicing your points and opinions. Make videos on those lines, probably carry out debates and other activities that will bring the situation to limelight and will portray the significance of it unbiased. Carry out workshops and participate in awareness programs. This will get you noticed among your local public. Once you start building such a reputation, this will go hand in hand with the brand that you keep creating online. Now, both the online and offline efforts will add value and will boost your reputation/brand altogether.

3. Conclusion

The above-discussed strategies will be of huge help in starting your presence noticed online. You need to take special care in building your brand first for which good website design is inevitable. Once a good website is built, then, you need to build your brand. For this, running campaigns from time to time will be very beneficial. Trace out important ‘international days’ and try to mingle, meaning, try to identify the significance of it with respect to the law and write featured blogs, and conduct contests, etc. These will help in branding and will make sure to get you noticed from a different perspective. And ladies and gentlemen, this is how you strategize the online Law business.

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The post How to Strategize the growth of your Law Business online? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Unfortunately, copyright law has a reputation for appearing opaque and incomprehensible to outsiders.

Fortunately, this guide will help you understand the basics of copyright and trademark law.

Trademark 101

Let’s start at the very beginning – what is a trademark?

As defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a trademark is a symbol, word, phrase, or design that serves to identify and distinguish the goods and services of one party from another. A “service mark” is something that is the actual mark that serves as a stand-in for the company – think the Golden “M” for McDonald’s or the “swoosh checkmark shape” for Nike. That said, “trademark” is often used to collectively refer to the company, goods, services, and marks.

What about copyright?

Where a trademark typically refers to a company, copyright typically refers to media and art. Books, films, plays, video games, songs – when produced by professional commercial artists, can all be covered by copyright.

The Requirements for Registering a Trademark in the United States

If you have read all of that and think you’re ready to file a trademark, you may want to hold that thought – there’s a lot more to it than that.

For one thing, if you are “a foreign-domiciled applicant,” you need to make sure you go through the application process in the United States. While the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and other countries and political blocs are signatories to The Paris Convention, copyrights and trademarks that exist in one country do not immediately transfer over to the US system. Moreover, a UK or EU solicitor may not be able to file on your behalf, as you will need to have a US-licensed attorney represent your trademark filing when sending in your application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

That requirement does not extend to US citizens, though it is highly advisable to hire someone who is a specialist in US trademark law.

For both the United States and foreign-domiciled applicants, neither foreign attorneys nor non-attorneys are allowed to provide legal advice pertaining to the application process. In addition, they may not help you fill out the form, sign the documents for you, or otherwise act on your behalf. Doing any of this could result in your application being delayed, jeopardized, or ruled invalid.

There are many additional legal guidelines and requirements you’ll have to meet before you can apply for a trademark, including:

•  Is the trademark federally registerable? You’ll need to check the rules for what can and cannot be trademarked. While this is somewhat subjective, as a general rule, the more unique and distinctive a mark, design, or slogan is, the better your chances of it being ruled as federally registerable as a trademark. For example, “We provide great service” is obviously far too generalized to be trademarked – that’s a common phrase many businesses and people use. On the other hand, the McDonalds symbol is distinctly and unmistakably for McDonald’s and only McDonalds and is thus federally registered and protected as a trademark.
•  Identifiable Goods or Services? What exactly does your service or company “offer”? What does your product “do”? Questions such as these are necessary for making sure that commercial trademarks are only given to active companies offering real, legal goods and services. The more distinctly you can answer these questions, the better your chances.
• Proper Filing? You must make sure that you have gone through the application process step by step, and have filed the right type of paperwork for the right type of trademark, patent, or copyright. There are differences between those last three, as explained below, so make sure you are applying for the specific type of Intellectual Property protection you need.

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Making Your Mark

If you look at antique books or pieces of porcelain, you’ll often find they have identifying markings that show where they were manufactured and by which company. That practice obviously continues today with trademarking. With the advent of different forms of media, the concept of a defining “mark” has been expanded to include other forms of product and service identification.

To be trademarked, your product will need to make use of at least one of these three types of identifying marks:

● Standard Character Format: This pertains to the use of standard letters, numbers, words, or combinations. For example, eBay, AT&T, and 21^st Century Fox are all examples of trademarked company names protected by trademark law.

● Special Character Format: This pertains to special unique designs or stylized elements. The spherical logo for AT&T, for example, as well as the stylized font in the spelling of “eBay”, fits into this category.

● Sound Mark: This pertains to copyrighted musical or tonal pieces. The iconic drum and fanfare at the beginning of a 21^st Century Fox film is a perfect example.

Difference Between Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents?

One major difference between trademarks and copyrights (and patents) is that the latter can expire while the former does not. Something that is trademarked can remain that way forever, as long as the mark remains in use in a commercial way that serves to distinguish your goods and services from another. Trademark registration can also last forever, as long as you continue to file the required documents and pay fees at the required intervals.

Copyright, on the other hand, can expire, though it now applies for longer than ever before. For works created by individual creators, copyright protection in the United States extends for the life of the creator plus 70 years. For works created under a pseudonym, anonymously, or for hire (such as part of a corporation like Disney) copyright extends until 95 years after the date of publication or 120 years after the date of creation, whichever is shorter.

Finally, patents pertain to inventions. These can include new or improved machines, manufactured items, chemical compositions, and manufacturing processes. The protections for patents are far more limited, with a design patent only lasting 15 years from issuance (14 if filed before May 13, 2015) or 20 years in the case of utility and plant patents.

Copyright Infringement Suits

Finally, what about copyright infringement?

This is the unauthorized use of any of the trademarked elements listed above. To constitute copyright infringement, the similarity has to be such that a consumer would be confused, deceived, or given to mistake one product for the other.

Suits for trademark and copyright infringement often wind up in federal court. The burden of proof is on the copyright holder making the claim that the offending product or service has infringed upon their copyright. If they are successful in making this claim, penalties for the guilty party can range from injunctions and cease and desist orders to the destruction of products bearing the infringed upon mark to monetary compensation.

Just like trademarks themselves, every copyright and trademark infringement case is different, you’ll want to consult with a lawyer about the particulars of your case.

With this introductory guide, you should be better equipped to navigate the world of trademark and copyright law.

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