Law Firm Digital Marketing: Unveil LinkedIn's Power To Win Clients

With over 810 million members, LinkedIn is the world’s largest business social networking platform. Having a profile on LinkedIn makes it easy for peers to connect with you and allows you to demonstrate both your knowledge and professional achievements.

It is a natural place to share what you and your firm have been up to, reinforcing a sense of legitimacy, trust and experience amongst clients. Additionally, LinkedIn is used by plenty of job seekers, so if your firm is hiring, a LinkedIn page is crucial.

When it comes to social media marketing for law firms in particular, setting up a LinkedIn page is a ‘top of the list’ task.

This blog post will help you get started with setting up your LinkedIn profile, understand how you can use LinkedIn to your advantage and a few best practices to grow your client base. With the right approach, LinkedIn offers immense opportunities for business development for law firms, lawyers and solicitors.

Benefits Of A Professional LinkedIn Page

Having an online presence on LinkedIn is key to every legal marketing strategy. It makes it easier for prospective clients to find you and gives you another potential channel to promote your blog posts and any other form of content you create.

The online professional network is a must-have for law firms seeking to raise brand awareness, cultivate relationships and position themselves as thought leaders in their niche.

Over 40% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn the most effective channel for driving high-quality leads, with almost 80% of all B2B leads generated online from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is built for networking. It is estimated that approximately two professionals join LinkedIn every two seconds.

While your firm will gain new clients from many different sources, some would be through referrals from professional relationships you have developed. You will be able to look for and connect with solicitors in similar fields, local bar associations etc. These connections will be valuable for sharing information, referring work and asking for help.

Having a detailed professional account on LinkedIn will also increase your visibility online. Considering the popularity of social media, prospective clients are more likely than ever to spend time looking your firm up before making a decision or even contacting you.

It has been reported that around 68% of people with LinkedIn accounts would use the platform to look for a lawyer when needed in the next week, and about 94% were likely to use LinkedIn to research a solicitor based on a referral.

Additionally, LinkedIn is vital when it comes to attracting top talent. When your firm is recruiting either a paralegal, lawyer or receptionist, LinkedIn opens up the position to a large network of qualified professionals.

Lastly, maintaining a LinkedIn page for your law firm could potentially benefit your Law Firms SEO strategy. Not only would it help with ranking your firm higher on search result pages, but it also provides valuable backlinks for content you have published.

Covering The Basics: How To Set Up Your Law Firm’s LinkedIn Page

Log into your personal LinkedIn account, then select ‘Create a Company Page’ from the ‘Work’ menu at the top right corner of your screen.

Enter some basic information about your company and confirm that you are the official representative of your business.

Set up your company’s LinkedIn URL and ensure it is clear, tidy and tied to your firm’s name. Be completely certain that this is the URL you want, as this cannot be changed later.

Then, you will be asked to add some additional information about your law firm. This includes the following details:

A company logo
A background photo for your page
Your address
An overview of your law practice (you have a 2,000-word limit for this, so be specific and write about your niche/ what your firm is best at)
The size of your firm and the year it was founded
A link to your website

Advanced Options: More LinkedIn Features For Lawyers To Use

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are a place for professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to share insights, and their experiences, ask for help and build valuable connections.

You can add a maximum of three groups to your page. To find groups your firm can add to the page, start by typing relevant keywords into the search box. These should include your practice area/area your firm specialises in. It is important to note that adding groups to your page does not mean you have joined the group. This is simply so that people visiting your page can get context to what your firm does. To be able to participate in discussions and post content on a LinkedIn group, you will need to ask to join.

Showcase Pages

Showcase pages are extensions to your company page and are used to highlight specific areas of a business. This works particularly well for companies offering more than one service. For example, if your firm specialises in corporate law as well as property law, you can have separate showcase pages for each. Just keep in mind that if your services are not overly diverse, you would want to put all your information on your main page rather than create showcase pages.

In order to create a showcase page, go to the ‘Admin Tools’ section on your company’s LinkedIn profile and select ‘Create A Showcase Page’. Then, name and create your page. Similar to creating a company LinkedIn page, you will add photos, a description and other necessary information. Your showcase page will appear at the bottom of your main company page.

Keeping Up With Your Law Firm’s LinkedIn Page

Once you have completed setting up your page, it is time to look at a few best practices for making sure your page is professional and easy to find.

Regularly update your information

Make sure you update your firm’s LinkedIn page, if, for example, you switch practice areas or expand your offices to new locations. Staying consistent across all platforms shows professionalism to your clients.

Ask staff to update their employer information

Ask staff to update their personal LinkedIn profiles and link your company page to theirs- these links will help your page with its’ search ranking.

Post updates

You should be posting content on your LinkedIn profile, just as you are on other social networking platforms. This can range from links to your blogs, insights on industry news or photos of social events held at your firm.

Be active on LinkedIn groups

Participating in discussions on LinkedIn groups relevant to your field is a great way to boost your firm’s profile. This is an excellent opportunity to build relationships with people in the same industry and maybe, get referrals!

Maintain engagement

Make sure you engage with your audience by reacting to their posts and replying to comments left on yours. You could reply if someone asks a question, but make sure not to give any specific legal advice over social media. Reply to your happy clients and keep an eye out for negative comments

Track your success

LinkedIn’s tool ‘analytics’, found on your company profile, allows you to view the number of people visiting your page and engaging with your posts. This gives you insights on what’s working, what isn’t, engagement rates, trends etc.

Winning Clients With LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn advertising is one way to secure clients, advertise job vacancies and generate leads.

It is an excellent platform to target audiences based on their job titles, professional experience, backgrounds and the industry they work in. It is a precise way to target an audience that is highly trackable and a great addition to a law firm’s marketing strategy.

Research shows that the return on investment (ROI) for LinkedIn marketing is 17.6, whereas Google Ads has a much lower average ROI at 3.1. Furthermore, as LinkedIn is the preferred social network for professionals worldwide, the audience on average, has two times higher buying power than the typical internet user. This makes LinkedIn full of opportunities for B2B businesses.

With over 93% of lawyers using LinkedIn, it is a great place to advertise job openings.

Understanding Your LinkedIn Marketing Goals

When advertising your law firm on LinkedIn, it is a good idea to start by thinking about what your goal is and what you want to get out of these advertisements. Some common objectives are: lead generation, recruitment, brand awareness, website traffic etc. No matter what your aim is, it is important to make sure it is specific and quantifiable. You want to be able to track your progress and measure your success!

When it comes to your LinkedIn marketing budget, you can always start by keeping it basic: $10 is the minimum daily budget for any LinkedIn ad format. However, it is recommended by experts to start with a $25 budget a day for someone who is new to LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn Ads: Identifying Your Target Audience

Once you have completed the above steps, it is time to determine who your target audience is. Ideally, who do you want to see your ad? Creating a detailed buyer persona will help you with this. The more specific you can get, the better the results.

LinkedIn allows you to target your audience based on the specific criteria listed below:

Location

This is the only mandatory field and requires an entry. This should not be difficult as most lawyers operate in specific areas of the country.

Company

This option allows you to target people based on the industry they work in, its size, their company connections and their followers.

Demographics

This allows you to select the ideal age and gender of your target audience.

Education

This option is quite useful when posting job adverts. Entering the desired field of study or the school they have attended, it lets you narrow your ads to the perfect candidate.

Job Experience

This, again, is beneficial with job vacancy adverts.

Interests & Traits

This feature allows you to target your audience based on groups they are a part of or people they follow on LinkedIn.

Creating High-Quality LinkedIn Ads

Use high-quality and relevant images and videos. Make sure the first sentence of your caption is eye-catching as well. Make sure you have an obvious call-to-action. Keep this short and simple.

Lastly, include a link that takes the reader to a new page with a clear next step. This could be a free consultation booking, a newsletter sign-up box, etc.

LinkedIn Advertising Formats

Single Image Ads

Best for tighter budgets and growing brand awareness, single-image ads will attract a lot of impressions on LinkedIn and can be used both for original content and boosting existing posts on your Page which have already performed particularly well.

Carousel Image Ads

Multi-image ads can be used to advertise several services, highlight several USPs or tell a story through several steps. Carousel ads must be designed to encourage users to spend time with and interact with your ad.

Video Ads

A well-made video advert can lead to strong engagement as long as a hook is included in the first four seconds of your video. Remember to include subtitles on any video advert you create.

Text Ads

The cheapest ad format on LinkedIn, text adverts are desktop only and feature on sidebars on the LinkedIn desktop website. These work well for beginner campaigns or testing audience engagement.

Dynamic Ads

Another desktop-only ad format, dynamic ads use personalised messaging and images, usually using the user’s name to attract more engagement.

LinkedIn Quick Tips

Create a headline and company description that will make potential connections want to know more about what you do
Make sure your page includes your address, areas of expertise and sectors of interest
Be consistent with how you talk about yourself elsewhere (for example, your website)
Focus on connecting with potential referrers rather than clients directly
Go for quality over quantity of connections
Get involved with LinkedIn groups relevant to your niche
Share content that would interest your followers
Post content often, but not too often
Interact with content shared by your connections

Law LinkedIn Pages Examples

To help your firm boost its LinkedIn presence, we have put together some examples of law firm social media done well. Click on the links below to check their pages out:

Baker McKenzie
DLA Piper
Hogan Lovells
White & Case
Norton Rose Fulbright