Features of advertising lawyer services

The article will be of interest both to lawyers seeking to improve the visibility and demand for their services in the market, and to marketers who want to better understand the specifics and nuances of advertising in the field of legal services.

It is important to understand that advertising of legal services not only informs the public about the availability of legal assistance, but also plays a key role in shaping public perception of the legal profession. This requires a special balance between the effectiveness of advertising messages and strict adherence to professional and ethical standards.

About free consultations

Considering offering free consultations in your law practice? This decision may have unexpected consequences! Let’s see if it’s worth it.

1. Free consultations may reduce the perceived value of your services. Customers may perceive free services as being of lower quality than paid ones. This can lead to decreased trust in your practice and fewer clients willing to pay for quality legal services.
2. Free consultations require significant time investment, which could be spent working with paying clients. This can negatively impact your income and work efficiency.
3. Avoid offering free consultations unless you have a bulk process for handling inquiries and calls. This is especially true for lawyers and attorneys specializing in services for end consumers, b2c.
4. Legal services are in high demand in all regions of Ukraine. People are actively looking for contacts of lawyers and advocates, so free consultations will attract many requests from freebie lovers. Most of the questions will be incompetent due to the low legal literacy of the population.
5. Free consultations will attract the attention of clients from other regions, which can overload your service. For private lawyers or attorneys, this may mean the need to wind down their practice.

In this regard, I really like the explanation of our Client, Arthur Blaer

However, in some cases, free consultations can be an effective marketing tool. For example, to quickly attract new customers. In such situations, it is important to clearly limit the scope and terms of free consultations to avoid overload and ensure quality of service.

Ultimately, the decision to provide free advice should be based on a thorough analysis of your business, market and the needs of your target audience. This will help you find a balance between attracting new clients and maintaining the high quality of services and reputation of your legal practice.

Filter non-target audience

When promoting legal services using contextual advertising, use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant search queries. In the legal field, many are looking for abstracts, ready-made papers, legal forums and free consultations (see point above). If your goal is to increase online advertising revenue, target this audience first.

Our agency has special lists of such negative keywords that we have developed over the years specifically for legal topics.

Calls and requests may vary in terms of conversion into sales

This is especially important if you are targeting mass demand for free legal advice.

In our experience, calls usually result in office visits for a free consultation twice as often as applications. This is due to the fact that when calling, the client immediately begins communicating with the manager, and the time between contacting and processing the request is minimal.

In the case of applications, even with strict processing regulations, there is always a time gap between the submission of the application and its processing. Even if it only takes 5 minutes, users often continue to look for other lawyers and leave requests on other sites.

Usually in the legal field, the ratio of calls and requests for incoming requests is 60/40, and both types of requests are often considered equal. However, the effectiveness of applications may be significantly lower than direct calls, especially in the case of free consultations. Therefore, it is important to analyze the performance of advertising campaigns, taking into account not only the total number of calls, but also the sources of calls and requests. It may be worth reallocating your budget to campaigns that generate more calls or changing your bidding strategy.

Use Google Business Profile and phone numbers for contextual advertising

4.1. Ads with phone number only

If a user clicks on this type of ad, they can instantly make a call. In this case, an intermediate stage, such as visiting a site, is excluded from the user’s path to the target action, which increases the conversion of calls from advertising, since the loss of users on the site is eliminated, especially if the site is poorly optimized for mobile devices and has an unfriendly interface (UX).

4.2. Google Ads Phone Number extension

The “Phone Number” extension adds a “Call” button to ads, giving the user the opportunity to either go to the site (by clicking on the ad) or initiate a call (by clicking on the call button).

However, if you work in a complex legal niche where the user’s need is not urgent and he needs to make sure of your expertise, study cases, practice and reviews (for example, in the topics of reducing cadastral value, copyright protection or repatriation), in such In cases where it is important to provide the user with the opportunity to go to the site, review the information and make an informed decision about contacting you.

4.3. Adding a Google Business Profile

address

Adding Google Business Profile to your Google Ads for Law Firms campaigns can provide the following benefits:

• Enables law firms to effectively target clients in their region, increasing local visibility.
• Having a full profile on Google Business increases the trust of potential customers by showing information about location, opening hours and reviews.
• Teaming advertising campaigns with a local business profile often results in increased ad click-through rates.
• A profile allows you to respond faster to reviews and questions, improving customer service and strengthening the company’s reputation.
• Google Business Profile provides additional analytics about how customers find your business, which can help optimize your advertising campaigns.

Remarketing/retargeting

Legal services often involve a high level of responsibility and require a deep understanding by the client of all aspects of the assistance offered. That is why remarketing and retargeting are becoming not just tools for increasing conversion, but also tools for building long-term relationships with customers.

Remarketing allows you to re-reach users who have already expressed interest in legal services, but for some reason did not take action (for example, did not fill out the consultation form or did not enter into an agreement). This is important because in complex legal matters, clients often need additional time and information before making a decision.

In the screenshot above we can see the chain of contacts between users and a law firm until the final decision on an application or call. We see that 73% of leads visit the site more than 2 times before converting on the site.

The use of these tools is especially important in situations where complex and specialized legal services are involved, such as corporate law, real estate or intellectual property. In these cases, potential clients often spend considerable time researching information and comparing different offers before making a final decision. Remarketing and retargeting (which are basically the same thing and are used in both contextual and targeted advertising) help maintain contact with such clients, reminding them of your services and providing additional useful information that can speed up the decision-making process.

The choice between a large website and a landing page for advertising legal services depends on your specific goals and marketing strategy.

Which is better, a multi-page website or a landing page for advertising legal services?

Landing page is usually a one-page site, the purpose of which is to encourage the user to perform a specific action, for example, leave a request for a consultation or download information material. Landing pages are effective for specific advertising campaigns and offers, as they focus the user’s attention on one action.

Landing page advantages:

• high conversion due to a focused message and a single call to action;
• easy to create and update;
• better suited for short and targeted advertising campaigns.

Multi-page site, containing many pages, is suitable for a broader presentation of legal services. It may include sections describing services, company information, blog, contact information, customer reviews and other useful resources. A larger website is better suited for a long-term strategy aimed at building a brand and establishing trust with potential clients.

Advantages of a large website:

• Detailed presentation of all services and competencies.
• Improved search engine optimization (SEO).
• Possibility of providing extensive information support and resources.

Ultimately, the choice between a landing page and a large website depends on your marketing goals. If your goal is to quickly generate leads for a specific service, a landing page may be more effective. If you are striving for long-term business development, building trust and brand awareness, a large website will be more preferable. Ideally, an effective marketing strategy will include both, using landing pages for specific campaigns and a large website for general presentation of the legal practice.

Alternative conversion methods

For the successful operation of a website in the legal field, it is important to provide alternative conversion methods, especially in complex topics. An alternative conversion method is to offer useful material, such as a PDF guide or sample document, in exchange for the user’s contact information.

Often, users researching legal issues put off making a decision until the last moment. For example, someone found out that it is possible to reduce land taxes and is looking for information on the site. He sees an offer for consultation, but is in no hurry to apply. Instead, the user can close the site and leave.

Adding useful content to the site, for example, instructions on reducing the cadastral value of land, will help attract the interest of such visitors. They leave their email to receive the material, and we receive their contacts.

I liked this example on one of the sites:

This allows you to create an additional base of potential clients. Later, you can use it for email newsletters or advertising campaigns (a database of 1000 emails can be uploaded both to the Google Ads advertising account and to Meta), gradually leading users to seek legal services.

It is important that the material offered is truly high quality and useful. This demonstrates the lawyer’s expertise and reliability. Some visitors will prefer to figure out the issue on their own, but others, realizing the complexity and many nuances, will most likely turn to professionals.

Choice of legal services for contextual advertising

The effectiveness of contextual advertising largely depends on the specifics of the services offered and the target audience. It is important to understand that different areas of legal practice have their own unique characteristics and require different approaches to advertising.

For some areas, such as family or inheritance law, contextual advertising can be very effective, since potential clients often search for information and solutions on the Internet. In such cases, advertising will attract the attention of clients actively seeking legal assistance.

However, for more complex and highly specialized areas, such as corporate law or international arbitration practice, contextual advertising may not be as effective. Clients in these areas often rely on reputation and personal recommendations when choosing a lawyer rather than online searches. In these cases, strategies aimed at strengthening the brand and developing partnerships may be more effective.

In addition, the advertising budget is not infinite, and it must be distributed effectively. Investments in contextual advertising must be justified and focused on achieving specific marketing goals.

Promoting all legal practices at the same time can lead to a dissipation of resources and a decrease in the overall effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

The choice of directions for promotion in contextual advertising should be based on a thorough analysis of the specifics of legal services, the needs of the target audience and general marketing goals.

Contextual advertising based on competitor keys

This strategy involves using keywords associated with competitors’ brands to attract audiences.

Cons:

• legal risks: using other people’s trademarks in keywords can lead to legal disputes, especially if you auto-substitute keywords into the ad text.
• negative perception: Some users may have a negative perception of such methods, perceiving them as aggressive or unreliable advertising.
• decreased traffic quality: traffic may be of lower quality because people were looking for a specific competitor rather than your brand.
• high competition and cost: Keywords associated with popular brands can be expensive and highly competitive.

This strategy can be effective in attracting attention to your brand, but requires careful approach and assessment of all possible risks.

The screenshot shows how competitors advertise using the MAVR brand.

Advertising using your brand keywords

This strategy involves using keywords that are directly related to your own brand. This strategy has both advantages and potential disadvantages.

Pros:

• High relevance: Ads closely match the needs of users searching for your brand, increasing your chances of conversion.
• Image control: You can control how your brand is presented in search engines and prevent confusion with competitors, especially those who use the strategy described above.
• low cost per click: Branded keywords often cost less than generic or competitive keywords.
• protection from competitors: using your own brand keys helps protect your audience from competitors’ advertising.

Cons:

• Limited reach: targeting only brand keywords limits your audience reach and does not attract new users who do not already know about your brand.
• Brand dependent: If the brand is not well known, the volume of search queries for brand keywords may not be sufficient for effective advertising.

An advertising strategy based on your brand keywords is an important element of contextual advertising, which allows you to strengthen your brand’s position in the search engine, protect yourself from competition and increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Despite its limited reach, it plays a key role in the overall brand promotion strategy.

Specialists of the MAVR marketing agency will offer the most effective way to promote your legal business and provide a full cycle of project implementation. For questions about the cost of services, please call +38 (067) 645-10-78 or write to us: info@mavr.ua! We’re in touch!

Vladyslava Rykova

Expert in legal marketing. Head of marketing agency MAVR.

Business degree “Master of Business Administration” (MBA).