Getting your law firm in front of potential clients is challenging, as competition is fierce. You need to find a way to stand out.

To do that, you need to build and follow a marketing strategy. A successful marketing campaign will get you tons of high-quality leads that you can then convert into paying clients.

Here are the main areas of marketing your criminal defense firm needs to consider investing in.

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Website design

Does your law firm have a website? If so, when’s the last time you updated the design?

Many lawyers who get their clients primarily through word of mouth don’t even bother having a website made. And if they do, it’s pretty lackluster.

This is a mistake, as your website is the hub of all of your marketing campaigns. Every digital marketing campaign you launch will ultimately drive traffic to your website.

And that’s a lot of potential traffic, as over 33% of all clients search for a lawyer online.

A quality website, like the one below, is what people expect to find when they land on your homepage.

If you’re going to invest heavily in just one area of marketing, we recommend it be your website. It should be modern and deliver a compelling message that coincides with your brand.

A mobile-friendly and eye-catching website is guaranteed to get you more leads.

When putting your site together, consider these important aspects:

• List your services, practice areas, and states/cities in which you practice as clearly as possible
• Don’t be afraid to show off — communicate to visitors why you’re the best law firm for the job. Showcase your testimonials, awards, experiences, and case results.
• Make it easy for people to contact you. Consider phone, live chat, and e-mail.

Again, Oykhman Criminal Defence’s website makes contacting them simple.

There’s also a technical side of website design that needs just as much attention. If your website is slow, unresponsive, and doesn’t work on mobile, you may as well have no website at all.

These technical aspects of website design and SEO are better left to professionals. But you can DIY it if you have the time and patience.

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On-site SEO

Once you have your website up and running, you can start on SEO. The two go hand in hand.

Specifically on-site SEO, which is the practice of optimizing your website and its pages to rank higher on Google and other search engines.

An optimized website not only tells Google what your website pages are about, but it should help visitors understand what your pages are trying to communicate and quickly answer the query that brought them there.

Ultimately, the goal of on-site SEO is to:

• Help Google and users identify what your webpage is about
• Connect each page to relevant search queries (keywords)
• Create a page worthy of ranking well on the search engine result page (SERP)

In the past, on-site SEO meant stuffing your page with as many keywords as possible. This is no longer the case.

While keyword research is still crucial to an SEO strategy, Google is now sophisticated enough to extract the value and meaning of a page without keyword repetition.

If you’re covering a topic thoroughly, you’ll naturally target and acquire relevant keywords.

For instance, Trey Porter Law has a comprehensive FAQ where they answer relevant questions. There’s no keyword stuffing involved, just valuable content.

In summary, focus on understanding who your users are and what kinds of topics you can cover to address their needs.

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Local SEO

Did you know that approximately 46% of all Google searches include a location?

That accounts for billions of searches every day, some of which are for law firms like yours.

Local SEO involves improving search engine visibility for those local search queries like “criminal defense lawyer near me” or “criminal lawyer Nebraska.”

If you type in “criminal defense lawyer Toronto,” you’ll see this.

Notice how much space these local search results take up on the SERP.

This is called a Map Pack, and it earns over 44% of total clicks for any query. But space is limited, and you have to work hard on local SEO to appear in these spots.

There are several factors that go into local SEO for lawyers, with the most important being your Google My Business page.

Google promotes content that they can verify is accurate, and they use GMB to do that.

Take a look at Oykhman Criminal Defence’s Google My Business profile.

Check out our detailed guide to local SEO for lawyers if you’d like to learn more.

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Social media

Social media is inescapable, with over 53% of the world being active on at least one platform.

Lawyers are quickly realizing the value of social media. Every year, more and more law firms create profiles.

Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook are worth looking into if you want to:

• Attract leads through social media
• Become a thought leader in your practice area and community
• Engage with prospective clients and like-minded professionals
• Build your brand and get discovered online

We recommend starting with Linkedin and Facebook, and really getting good at using those. It’s impossible to juggle every social media platform, and you’ll experience greater returns when you hone in on one or two.

Think quality over quantity.

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Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an alternative to SEO that can get you hundreds of new leads quickly.

PPC is known as paid traffic, meaning you’re buying traffic to your website rather than earning it organically.

It’s effective if you want to appear at the top of Google without spending months or years working on SEO.

The downside is that whenever someone clicks on your ad, you pay a fee, and law-related keywords are expensive.

But a well-executed PPC campaign will earn much more than you spend. However, it’s challenging to optimize a PPC campaign.

If you hire a professional, you can appear well above the organic search results.

We cover this and much more in our PPC for lawyers guide.

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Don’t underestimate word of mouth and referrals

With all that said, certain traditional marketing methods do work.

While word of mouth shouldn’t be your only source of clients, it’s still one of the most effective ways to get high-quality leads.

As your satisfied clients of the past share their positive experiences working with you, you’ll receive more and more like-minded clients.

Consider attending networking events in your area, or volunteering your services, as a couple of ways of getting your law firm’s name out into the world.

Did you know that:

The lack of a marketing budget likely means that these firms have no coordinated or comprehensive marketing strategy. This is the logical starting place for most firms.

Ask yourself: how much are new leads worth to your firm?

This will be different for every criminal law firm, depending on current case numbers, capacity, the stage of growth you’re in, and how competitive the local market is.

Calculate your capacity for new cases, how much each client is worth, and the amount available to help you attract this new business.

Bear in mind that generating leads and new paying clients may be the main goal of your marketing strategy, but there can be other marketing goals too.

Developing brand awareness, building trust and credibility, and developing authority are worthy goals that are more difficult to put a price on. This will affect how much you’re prepared to invest in marketing your criminal defense law firm.

Attempting to market your practice without doing your homework first will prove expensive and ineffective.

All good marketing is highly targeted.

You’ll need to develop a client persona so you can laser-focus your marketing.

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Customer demographics

First, you need to establish exactly who your ideal customers are.

Think about these five demographic elements:

• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Profession
• Salary

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Going deeper

Go a little deeper by considering:

• The main legal services they require – defense for which crimes? Arson, DUI? Assault? Burglary? Cybercrime?
• The qualities they are looking for in their lawyer
• The main questions they need answered
• Their main problem(s), challenge(s), or issue(s)
• The information they’re interested in learning
• What may confuse them or be perceived as threatening
• What they want to achieve by engaging you
• How much they are willing to pay to hire you
• Any other factors that may be important to them

For most criminal defense firms, it’s a simple case of examining your current database and picking out the characteristics of your best customers.

For start-up firms, it may take a few more assumptions and best guesses at first.

Where are they looking for information?

For many criminal defense firms, your customers will come from the general public. But others specialize in corporate criminal defense or white collar criminal defense.

The ABA Journal reported in 2015 that:

One-third of all legal consumers begin their search for a law firm by using online resources.

That number is growing year on year.

You’ll find consumers looking for information in the same places as everybody else:

Online, searching through websites, reviews, FAQs, etc. 

74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action (Google Legal Services Study Sept 2013)

Checking Google & the other search engines for websites where they can find answers:

96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine. (Google Consumer Survey 2013)

On social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

Only 56% of lawyers are using social media for client development (American Bar Association Survey 2017)

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What next?

Once you know what your potential customers are looking for and where they’re looking for it, it’s a case of meeting them on their terms and solving their problems.

Why would a customer choose to hire you rather than one of your competitors?

Answer this question before investing time or resources into your marketing campaigns.

You’ve already defined what the main problem(s) of your target audience is (are).

For instance, they’re facing:

• A DWI charge
• An assault charge
• A charge for forgery
• A cybecrime charge
• A hit and run charge

With criminal defense, the problem your target audience is facing may be very clear and distinct from the start, which helps you tailor a unique value proposition like Trey Porter Law below.

The value proposition should:

• Be clear and compelling for readers
• Relate closely to at least one of the main problems of your target audience
• Speak directly to the needs, wants, and desires of your potential customers
• Demonstrate how you help solve their problem
• Convince readers that they’re in the right place and that they need to dig deeper in your website or contact you.

Like this:

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Your value proposition may also relate to:

1. The emotional value you deliver for clients:

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2. Your years of experience in the field:

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3. The unique personal qualities you bring to client cases:

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4. The volume of criminal cases you’ve handled:

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5. The testimonials and awards you’ve received:

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6. The great service levels you deliver to clients:

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Your brand

Building a family law firm brand is not just for multinational firms. And it’s not just about having the right letterheads and business cards.

It’s about shaping the right messaging to include:

• Your USPs — what makes your law firm unique?
• Your value proposition — why should anyone listen to you?
• What do you consistently do better than the rest? How do you differentiate yourself from the many competing law firms?

If you don’t have a website, you’ll need to build one. If you haven’t worked on your website for five or ten years, it likely needs a complete overhaul.

Your website is more than a first impression or an online business card. It will be the hub of all your marketing activity — your website needs to look and act the part of an always-available sales and marketing team.

This means high-quality images, professionally written copy, and interactive tools to engage visitors. These are all part of a modern criminal law website

People will visit your website for several reasons:

• To find answers and information about their criminal matter
• To hire a criminal defense lawyer
• To compare your firm with the competition

Your website should cater to potential clients at all stages of this process.

To do that, let’s concentrate on doing the things that most criminal defense law firms aren’t doing.

This involves two areas:

• Improving the user experience and making it more memorable
• Capturing leads more effectively

There are five main things to address here.

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1. Mobile-first design

Source

See how the above website is clean and uncluttered, easily readable, with large menus, text and call to action buttons?

It’s a mobile first design.

In 2016, mobile and tablet Internet usage outstripped desktop usage for the first time. That trend is continuing and it means that you need to approach website design a little differently:

• Make sure all pages display clearly on all screen sizes
• Call-to-action buttons must be easily clickable (preferably using the thumb)
• Forms should be easy to complete on a smartphone

If you’re not doing these things you’re harming both the user experience and SEO (Google will penalize you for a non-responsive website).

The Google Mobile-Friendly Test tells you how friendly your website is for mobile.

Most WordPress themes are inherently mobile-friendly. It’s the best platform for designing your website for many other reasons too.

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2. Live chat

Live chat isn’t going away.

Despite the fears of many lawyers about giving hours of free advice or contravening privacy laws, customers increasingly expect their questions to be answered immediately. Patience is in short supply online.

The option of live chat is especially useful for law firms that largely deal with the general public. That includes criminal defense firms.

It provides:

• Immediacy — you can answer customer questions there and then before they hire you
• Connectivity — you show customers that you’re progressive and prepared to meet them on their terms
• Opportunity — to turn interest into genuine leads

Live chat effectively allows you to place a sign on the front of your firm 24/7 saying “we’re open for business.”

You also get the benefits of lead generation without it taking up your time. Live chat agents do all the work.

And it doesn’t need to pop up and be an annoyance for visitors. The live chat option can be very unobtrusive like this:

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3. Speed

Nothing destroys a user experience more than slow page load times.

Visitors form a very quick first impression of your website and, if they decide it’s slow, they may well hit the back button.

We don’t need to dwell too long on this, but test your page load speeds using Pingdom or a similar tool.

Make sure that images are optimized, videos load without buffering, and your website has an overall snappy feel.

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4. Gated content

Gated content is a great way for criminal defense law firms to provide valuable content for visitors in return for their contact details.

It allows users to find the information they want. And it helps you to build your database of prospects and enhance your reputation as leaders in your practice area. It will draw people to your website.

Gated content needs to be of real value and should answer the key questions in your customers’ minds.

Think along the lines of a ‘cheat sheet’ or a brief guide to one aspect of criminal law or a fuller piece of content like an eBook.

You have a lot of legal IP in your head. Shape it into high-value content that people will willingly leave their email address and phone number to receive.

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5. Newsletter sign ups

Newsletters can be powerful resources for criminal defense law firms.

A newsletter can help you capture leads. who you can convert through a thorough email marketing campaign. We’ll talk more about newsletters later.

Demonstrating to your visitors that they’re in the right place means establishing credibility with them early on.

You need to show that you can help with their query, and if they’re looking to hire a lawyer, that you’re capable of providing the results they’re looking for.

Gated content and newsletters (mentioned above) help with this. But an effective criminal defense law firm website needs to go beyond this.

Focus on the following seven areas:

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Trust badges

Prominently feature trust badges that provide instant credibility to your firm:

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Awards, accolades, or media attention

Establishing credibility is vital for any criminal defense firm looking to attract and convert leads. But legal awards are another touchy subject among some firms.

There are two types of awards: earned awards and paid awards.

Some of the paid awards that you might see proudly displayed on law firm websites can be expensive and include Who’s Who Legal Awards, Martindale-Hubbell, Best Lawyers, and Super Lawyers.

However, there are also genuine legal awards handed out on merit all over the country, with many local awards available. These provide instant credibility to a firm.

Trey Porter Law features them prominently on the homepage.

If you cannot compete for genuine awards, you can display legal credentials and industry leadership in other ways, such as industry association membership badges and “as seen on…” media badges.

Here’s an example from the homepage of The Law Offices of Julie Rendelman in New York.

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Client reviews or testimonials

Your potential customers want to know what other customers think of you:

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Statistics

Get specific by using statistics to back up your claims:

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Case studies

Potential customers also want to know how you’ve helped people in similar situations to them:

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The breadth of service you provide

Illustrate the full range of criminal defense law services you provide:

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The size of your practice

Are you a single attorney firm or do you have the capability to look after multiple cases concurrently? If you have high capability, show it:

Attracting a steady flow of traffic to any criminal defense law firm website is never easy, but it should be one of your primary marketing goals.

It’s very competitive to reach number one (or even the first page) of Google’s organic rankings for legal search terms. And if you work with a criminal defense lawyer marketing agency, you can get there quickly.

But you must make that happen if you want to be “seen.” To reach these top spots on Google, you need a concerted search engine optimization (SEO) effort like DWI and criminal attorney Richard Hochhauser in Nassau County, NY.

To push for the number one spot, follow these SEO best practices:

• Keyword research according to user intent: Target both informational and buying terms with long-tail keywords
• On-page SEO: Optimize your content for readers and search engines
• Off-page SEO: Secure high-quality backlinks that demonstrate your authority
• Technical SEO: Optimize your site structure/architecture for search engines

Also, focus on the following:

• Develop content that answers specific questions from your target audience
• Target local search terms for all locations
• Develop a great user experience — a fast, informative, engaging, and mobile-friendly website will typically rank well.

Let’s elaborate.

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Build content around the right keywords

Find the phrases that best describe your law firm to your target audience.

Your customers will be searching for two types of phrases based on two types of intent:

• Informational terms like ‘DUI law in North Carolina’ where the searcher is looking for answers to specific legal questions
• Transactional terms like ‘DUI attorney Charlotte’ where the searcher probably intends to hire a lawyer

Get specific — drill down into the niche areas of your practice and build your website around the keyword phrases that you come up with.

Break your practice areas down and create a separate page targeting one specific keyword per sub-practice area, e.g. aggravated robbery, assault charges, record clearing, criminal appeals, cyber crimes, DWI, drug cases, etc.

There are three main types of keywords:

• • Head keywords: single-word general terms with high competition, like ‘lawyers’
  • Body keywords: 2-3 word phrases attracting a good search volume but more specific than head keywords, like ‘criminal defense attorney’
  • Long tail keywords: 4+ word phrases that are very specific, such as ‘Miami DUI Defense Attorneys’

In general, look for body and long tail keywords as these are usually less competitive and easier to rank for than head keywords.

One tool to help you plan your keywords is Google Keyword Planner (for which you’ll need a Google Ads account).

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On-page SEO

This is the process of optimizing a web page’s content and code to improve results in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

It revolves around keyword usage: but a variety of factors, including keyword placement, readability, dwell time, usability, image usage, URL optimization, and other factors all come together.

Note in the following example how the keywords fit naturally into the text and read well.

It generally focuses on two main areas:

• Content-related SEO: Usually for copywriters to attend to — long format and in-depth content, optimized for universal search, and creating topical authority.
• Technical on-page SEO: Usually for web developers or SEO specialists to attend to — involves page load speeds, social media share-ability, location optimization, mobile responsiveness, image alt tags, meta titles and descriptions, indexation, sitemaps, Google My Business optimization, etc.

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Off-page SEO

This refers to all the ‘other’ techniques used to improve rankings in the search results and includes:

• Link-building — Google still uses backlinks as a major indicator of authority
• Citations — Mentions of your business name, address, and/or telephone number in quality directories will earn you valuable SEO ‘juice’ (like in the above example with the Avvo directory)
• Reviews — Used as a ranking indicator and they also help potential clients understand your services better

Many criminal defense attorneys rely heavily on local traffic for new leads and paying clients. This makes local SEO essential.

Besides, local results sit right at the top of the Google search pages when a location is specified, like in this example for ‘best criminal defense lawyer in Chicago.’

To feature prominently in local search, you’ll need to update your Google My Business profile listing with consistent and accurate contact information, photos, reviews, etc.

This is relatively straightforward to do.

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Google My Business

There’s a lot to internet marketing for criminal defense attorneys. This next step is one of the most crucial.

Your Google My Business account must be fully optimized.

It’s arguably your second most important web property after your website. And it’s more important than ever with listings showing prominently on Google’s SERPs.

Make sure that you manage the information about your law firm:

• Keep it up to date
• Fill out every field that Google allows
• Choose the correct category e.g. dui attorney, white collar crime attorney
• Include images of your law firm and add keywords to image descriptions
• Seek plenty of Google reviews
• Maintain consistent name, address, and phone number (‘NAP’) details across all your web properties

This will help people searching for a criminal defense lawyer in your local area find you first rather than one of your competitors.

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Law firm directories

The main law firm directories, such as Avvo, Yelp, FindLaw, and Justia can also help people in your local area find your law firm.

Getting a free or paid listing in these main directories can generate traffic and new leads.

The top listings in the most popular categories of FindLaw are usually paid listings like this:

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Satellite Location Pages

Generating visibility in Google’s Local Search Results is not the only opportunity for law firms.

Creating Satellite Locations Pages, web pages built for suburbs and small cities surrounding a major hub, is a tactic that can be effective in generating additional visibility in Google’s search results.

Just look at this example.

Compelling and original content should be at the center of your criminal defense marketing strategy.

Why?

Because criminal law is a mystery to most people—and when someone is charged with a criminal offense, they likely have 101 different questions.

Your content should attempt to answer these questions, as in this example from the Law Office of Adam D. Brown in Atlanta, GA.

By regularly posting high-quality content that answers key questions in prospective clients’ minds, you will:

• Improve rankings
• Improve the chances of featuring in Google’s “Featured snippets” and “People also ask…” sections
• Boost your authority and expertise as a leading criminal defense attorney
• Show prospective clients that you’re available to help them

Here is a good example of the featured snippet and “People also ask…” sections that are prominent at the top of Google search pages:

You should try to work on the following types of content:

• Blog posts
• FAQ pages
• How-to or explainer videos
• Long-form articles
• Long-form practice area power pages (one detailed page per sub-practice area)

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Create promotional and educational videos

Did you know that you’re 53 times more likely to feature on the first page of Google if you include video?

Video builds credibility and trust, and visitors often prefer to watch a video that explains a legal matter rather than read about it.

Addressing legal topics clearly and succinctly on video will help you demonstrate authority in criminal defense, promote your firm, and encourage visitors to pick up the phone and call you.

High-quality educational and promotional videos both have a place on your website: educational videos for information searchers and promotional videos for those looking to hire a criminal defense lawyer.

Here’s a simple example from Trey Porter Law in San Antonio, TX, where a video is used to answer a specific question from the target audience.

And here’s an example of a well-polished promotional video from The Maine Criminal Defense Group.

It’s a fallacy that criminal defense lawyers can’t advertise on Google. They can, but too many firms waste money on pay-per-click campaigns that don’t produce a return on investment.

Campaigns usually fail due to one or more of the following:

• Competing for ultra-competitive keywords (terms like “lawyer” and “attorney” are among the most expensive keywords around)
• Unoptimized ad campaigns
• Lack of research
• Failure to hire the right professionals to manage your campaigns

Pay-per-click can be expensive. You pay for every single click you receive. Therefore, you need to:

• Define the search terms to target
• Create the right ads to target these keywords
• Create a professional landing page for each ad
• Constantly test and improve the ads/landing pages using A/B testing

Local Service Ads are similar to Google Ads, but are pay-per-lead rather than pay-per-click, which may make them more attractive.

These ads are designed to generate telephone leads and are ranked according to the number of positive reviews, proximity, bid, and a few other factors.

Here’s what they look like.

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Build high-converting landing pages

An effective Ads campaign focuses not only on ad copy but also on landing pages that convert leads.

These pages are where people who click end up. It’s where you continue the process of converting them into paying clients.

So, how do you convert more clicks into clients?

Every landing page should be unique, optimized, professionally written, and designed with the following in mind:

• Focus on the visitor taking one action
• It’s the difference between simply getting more traffic and getting more paying clients
• When visitors land, give them what they expect — copy related directly to the ad they’ve clicked on
• Provide visitors with an immediate and compelling value proposition — why should they click the call-to-action button?

You can check out these best law firm landing pages for some ideas.

Many law firms turn their eye to social media, mainly because of the time it takes to create and comment on content.

But now’s time for criminal defense firms to get more serious about social media in their marketing plans.

All criminal defense attorneys should have profiles on LinkedIn, as it’s the main social platform for professionals to connect with other professionals.

It’s also used by prospective clients to check attorney profiles, like this one from a managing partner at Stahl Criminal Defense Lawyers in New York.

It’s also worth considering Facebook and Twitter for sharing useful content, joining groups, and building your reputation (and your law firms).

Notwithstanding the strict confidentiality and privacy laws, criminal defense attorneys generally target members of the public who have been charged with a crime. There is a high likelihood that your target audience uses social media daily in one form or another.

While Facebook Ads may not be right for criminal defense attorneys (because of privacy restrictions), optimized social media profiles can help drive considerable amounts of traffic to your website.

You can find more ways to use the platforms in our guide to social media for lawyers.

Digital advertising (Google Ads) may be more targeted and cost-effective than billboards or TV/radio advertising. Webinars can be delivered more cost-effectively than seminars. But don’t discount all traditional marketing methods.

Word-of-mouth marketing, traditional billboard advertising, newspapers and magazines, attending industry events… non-digital channels can still be effective lead generators.

Attending bar events, public speaking, and handing out business cards can be used alongside other law firm marketing strategies outlined in this article. Pro bono volunteer work and participating in local community events is an effective way to promote your firm locally.

Andrew H. Stevenson, a criminal defense lawyer in Ohio promotes his public speaking events on a dedicated page on the firm’s website.

Remember, people talking positively about you to friends, relatives, work colleagues, and peers will drive leads to your firm, no matter where they’re talking. As part of your marketing plan, a referral strategy with clients and fellow attorneys can send high-quality leads your way.

The adage from Peter Drucker “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” rings true with criminal defense marketing.

Did you know that:

You must know the key metrics to look for, have the right tools to measure them, analyze the results, and then adjust campaigns based on your observations.

Yet almost two-thirds of lawyers never even look at their web analytics to tell them what they need to know. This can get expensive, especially with paid advertising. Lost opportunities from a poor strategy are another hidden cost of the failure to measure and analyze.

Here’s what you should see when you pull up your Google Analytics panel.

The metrics you need to measure will depend on the marketing strategy used, but here are some good examples:

• Brand sentiment
• Landing page conversion rates
• Referring domains
• Engagement (social media posts)
• Search engine rankings
• Organic SEO traffic
• Total sales leads
• Blog article sessions
• Visits, clicks, views, or comments
• Time on site
• Visitor/attendee numbers
• Total new clients
• Cost-per-click

By tacking the right metrics using Google Analytics and other tools, you can adjust campaigns or halt them and invest time and money into the highest-conversion channels.