No one likes to think about their own death or that of a loved one. But planning for the future is the best way to ensure loved ones are taken care of financially and your wishes are carried out when you are no longer capable of making your own choices. All of this involves careful estate planning, which requires the help of a qualified and experienced estate planning attorney. But, estate planning is a very crowded practice area and unfortunately many estate planning attorneys don’t know where to begin marketing their estate planning law firm.

Marketing Your Estate Planning Law Firm

Taking a few simple steps can significantly impact your business results. Thinking strategically about how you drive traffic to your website and engage with your audience is a vital part of this process. Here are five tips for marketing your estate planning law firm that can produce results.

1. Define and Establish Your Brand’s Voice

If you want to reach your target audience, you need the right approach. You should start by defining what makes your law firm unique. Unlike other areas of the law, estate planning is something that impacts everyone in some way. Not only should people of every background have an estate plan that protects their interests, but most will likely face a situation where they have to navigate the loss of a loved one.

To be sure, this is a sensitive area of the law, and how you approach it will make a significant difference in your results. When marketing your law firm’s services, you want to strike a balance between remaining sensitive to your client’s needs and being realistic about the consequences of not having a sound estate plan. The voice you establish for your law firm is one you’ll carry through in all of your content and campaigns, whether it be on your website, online ads, videos, or social media posts.

2. Optimize Your SEO Campaigns

Any list of legal marketing recommendations would be incomplete without a discussion of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Few people venture beyond the first page of Google when looking for answers. That means your website must be optimized for SEO to capture high-quality leads. What does this mean?

When people enter search terms in Google, such as “What is a special needs trust?” or “How do I get guardianship of an aging parent?” you want your results to show up as high as possible in the search engine rankings. These might be in the form of blog posts, videos, or even rich snippets. A comprehensive SEO strategy will not only make sure that you have the right content on your site but also address critical issues like:

• Page load speed
• Mobile-friendliness
• URL structure
• Site usability
• Quality backlinks
• On-page keyword usage

3. Make the Most of Local Opportunities

As an estate planning law firm, most of your work is going to come from local leads. When you focus on location-specific digital marketing opportunities, it can help you stand out from the competition and bring in clients who are searching for your services.

There are several ways to accomplish this. You can start with your website. Make sure you include your location on your home page and create practice area pages that are location-specific. You can also mention your city, state, county, or other identifiers in your blog posts.

The other way to reach local audiences is through your Google My Business listing. This is a free listing that you’ll want to claim and optimize. It should include all of the relevant information about your business, such as your location, phone number, hours, business category, and website. It’s also where former clients can leave reviews about your business, which will help improve your rankings in local search, such as for the term “estate planning lawyer in Mobile.”

4. Invest in Quality Content Marketing

Content has become an increasingly vital part of digital marketing for law firms. Your estate planning law firm can benefit from publishing content that is important to its clients. But, you’ll want to remember that you probably have multiple audiences if you practice both estate planning and probate law. With estate planning, you’ll focus on clients who are in the planning stages and remain sensitive to people who are struggling with making some tough choices. You may also want to create content for families who have recently lost a loved one or need help dealing with the affairs of an aging or ill family member.

When you take a combined content approach, you have the opportunity to reach the largest audience. This means you create useful and engaging content in many different forms so that visitors to your website and other online properties can consume the content in a way that is most comfortable and convenient for them. This might include written blog posts, videos, recorded podcasts, e-books, and social media posts.

5. Optimize Your Digital Advertising Strategy

Online ads, known as pay-per-click advertising, can be incredibly effective for law firms. While some of the marketing strategies we’ve outlined can take some time to produce results, digital ads can be set up and start driving traffic to your website relatively quickly.

Popular platforms for digital ads include Google Ads and social media sites like Facebook. With Google ads, terms like “estate planning lawyer” can be costly, so you’ll want to be as strategic as possible with your ad campaigns to get the best results. You bring your costs down and drive more targeted traffic by focusing on longer tail keywords, such as “probate and trust administration.”

Google also has a new ad service called Local Service Ads (LSAs), which are pay-per-lead. You only pay for “qualified leads” sent to you from the ads and can dispute any charges that you believe aren’t justified.

Focus on the Success of Your Estate Planning Law Firm

As you can see, there are several ways you can increase the lead generation for your estate planning law firm and engage potential clients. Buy using a combination of these digital marketing strategies, your law firm’s calendar will be booked solid in no time.

But achieving this goal can be easier said than done. You have a business to run after all, and not everyone is a digital marketing expert. Find out how we can help. At Too Darn Loud Legal Marketing, we offer dedicated legal marketing solutions that produce results. We are proud to offer our clients a full-service suite of services that includes web design, SEO, content marketing, video marketing, social media marketing, and much more. Call us today at (800) 649-1764 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation.