Effective multi-channel marketing is a struggle for any law firm. Streamlining so many moving parts into seamless automated channels requires incredible insight, organisation, communication, and strategy. There are countless digital marketing tools, both free and paid, that exist for the legal and B2B sector today. Some of which are designed to monitor, analyse, and collect leads. Some are for client management, organisation, and planning. Some evaluate buyers’ or searchers’ intent, and some simply provide data-driven insight. 

Whether you’re focusing on a singular channel, or driving several, utilising multiple digital marketing tools will improve your legal marketing ROI. That, there is no doubt about. 

There are some I imagine you’re already using, or you absolutely should be. Take for example the Google suite of Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google ads, alongside maybe a few other ad platforms. These are all free!! They can only bring added value with the data and insight they offer. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be using them already. There might be others too, a CRM for example, to manage your clients and sales processes.

What are the other options though? Which digital marketing tools should your law firm be using? Understandably some digital tools come at a price, so evaluating the pros and cons needs to be important to determine the ROI they will provide. 

For the legal sector however, there are a few standout tools that we think warrant a mention, so let’s take a look at several digital marketing tools your law firm can’t do without.

Digital Marketing Tools Your Law Firm Should Be Using

1) Trello : Project & Campaign Management

The first tool we’ve picked out is a project and campaign management tool called Trello. Trello is a very simple tool to learn and use, and requires no particular set of skills. Its interface is incredibly simple, with the use of cards, boards, lists, and stickers to organise. It is useful for managing smaller projects and would be perfect for marketing within the legal sector. Trello allows you to manage the workflow of any projects and campaigns with simple organisation, collaboration, delegation, and communication features.

Pros:

• It has a simple-to-use interface
• It helps organise daily operation of campaigns & projects
• There is easy access from any team member to leave feedback and comments.
• Tasks can be assigned, tracked, and scheduled easily
• It’s free (premium versions are available)

Cons:

• It’s not as good for managing loads of projects simultaneously 
• It doesn’t have any reporting functionality

2) Mailchimp – Email Automation

The 2nd of our chosen digital marketing tools is Mailchimp, a mail automation platform. Whilst it is the dinosaur of online marketing, email marketing has surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, among the best ROI of all digital channels. It’s customizable, direct, cheap, and is a fantastic lead generation tool in many B2B markets, including legal. 

Whilst curating email lists can be a hassle, knowing what to do with them is relatively straightforward with an efficient mail automation platform. 

Mailchimp again has a very easy operating interface, and has useful tools to segment data, create targeted campaigns, and track ROIs, amongst other features. It is a great all in one email platform.

Pros: 

• A simple interface
• Great audience segmentation
• Easy to track and reporting KPIs
• Simple automation processes
• Customised and personalised
• Is free (up to a certain point)

Cons: 

• There are limited design features to customise email templates

3) Yoast SEO – SEO Plugin

WordPress, as one of the most popular CMS platforms available, already has an arsenal of plugins, but one of the most popular is Yoast SEO. As a plugin, Yoast has a detailed set of features that are super simple to use, and will importantly improve your website’s SEO standing. Submitting sitemaps, creating content, monitoring keywords, and using Google’s webmaster tools are all features which aren’t embedded naturally with WordPress, but are available upon using Yoast as a plugin.

Pros:

• Built-in content analysis tools
• Automatic XML sitemap creation
• Improves your content writing from an SEO perspective
• Simple to understand interface with customised on-page SEO recommendations 
• Free to use (again, premium packages are available)

Cons:

• Not much automation in-built, so pages always need manually optimising
• Doesn’t tend to recognise broader/phrase match keywords (only exact matches)
• Needs updating often to be compatible with other WordPress plugins

4) Semrush – Keyword Research

Keyword research is a critical part of any SEO campaign. Reviewing what already exists, and where the gaps in the market are, is what will help drive your content to the next level. Semrush is one of the best digital marketing tools in the keyword research arena. It uses data from your site, and your competitors to provide you with very specific, niche, keywords, to help drive your content strategy.

Pros:

• Useful ‘difficulty’ metrics to suggest ease/struggle to rank for certain key terms
• Customised research suggestions based on your, and your competitor’s content
• CPC statistics from similar key terms
• Trending keyword topics and suggestions
• Domain analysis tools & results
• Useful KPI and metric tracking and reporting

Cons:

• Expensive, there is no free plan and premium packages can be £100+ per month
• Not a lot of value unless you create lots of content, or already have lots of content

Bonus round: four more tools you should explore

You can never know too much when it comes to digital marketing. With that in mind here are five more digital tools to consider.

• Hotjar. Understand how visitors interact with your website with heatmaps and live recordings – then tweak your content and design to deliver even better user experiences (and generate more leads too).
• Screaming Frog. Audit your website with this powerful software tool that spots problems like broken links, repeated content, and 404 errors – so you can fix them and perform better in the online rankings.
• Accordion. Create dedicated and keyword-rich FAQ blocks that answer your visitors’ questions – improving brand credibility and on-page SEO at the same time.
• Answer The Public. This tool listens in to – and aggregates – search engine trends so you can identify your prospects’ wants and needs faster.

Final Thoughts

Naturally, there are absolutely tons of digital marketing tools that your law firm can use, and should already be using. Here are just 4 simple tools that can turn your ROI on its head. They don’t require much learning or prior knowledge, and whilst not all are free in their entirety, they all have free versions or trials that can help you test everything out.

Take a look at some digital marketing tools to help your law firm! If you’re interested in finding out more about other digital marketing tools, get in contact with us here for a free consultation.