Like many forms of advertising, LinkedIn often falls by the wayside in law firms. With client needs to satisfy, continuous changes to legal paradigms and a host of other factors, the power of LinkedIn is often an afterthought. However, ignoring the benefit of LinkedIn is a shortsighted tactic for lawyers.
With over 774 million users in 200 territories, the scope of LinkedIn is vast. This is important because the modern legal landscape is changing. Brick-and-mortar law firms are being displaced by agile, digital-first firms. Legal support is now a 24/7 industry. Customer demands and expectations have changed. Consequently, the premium price point associated with legal services now demands a similar premier service to be provided.
The Benefits of LinkedIn Advertising for Law Firms
Moreover, LinkedIn offers a higher return on investment (ROI) than native adverts or Google AdWords. Consequently, there is a lot of potential gains for law firms if they invest effectively. The investment ratio is roughly £17.60 return to every £1 spent on LinkedIn. This compares extremely favourably to native adverts and also is greater than Google ads.
What’s more, Linkedin is beneficial on a strategic level for getting new clients. If your law firm focuses on B2B in particular, LinkedIn is the priority social media channel. Additionally, LinkedIn audiences have significantly stronger buying power, compared to average users. Salesforce research has revealed LinkedIn audiences buying power is around twice that of a standard user. This means that LinkedIn offers a better potential overall for attracting the right users at the right time with the right needs.
Starting your LinkedIn Advertising for Law Firms
It goes without saying that your law firm shouldn’t advertise on LinkedIn without an established position already. LinkedIn is not the cheapest advertising platform and using it purely for growth is an expensive exercise.
Assuming your law firm has a reputable, complete LinkedIn page and has set up an advertising account, it’s time to ascertain your goals for LinkedIn Advertising. Although brand awareness is an option, more common uses will be client and lead generation, and talent acquisition. Like normal goal-setting, your law firm needs to make it specific and quantifiable. This means that you can analyse your advertising effectively at given points to track progress. By doing this, you are able to clearly see which adverts and campaigns are benefitting your business, and which need tweaking.
The Budget Question
Although social media advertising is cheaper than traditional methods, LinkedIn is still comparatively more expensive to other platforms. Although the minimum daily budget is £10.00, law firms should be spending more as the average cost of legal services is significantly higher. A medium to large law firm should on average look at spending £25-50 a day on a lead generation campaign to ensure they are getting a sufficient quantity and quality of inbound leads.
If you have to be risk-averse, then at least leave scope for growing your campaign. Starting off small to test different options can be effective, but you will lose out in bids and auctions against competitors if you aren’t prepared to put the extra funds in.
Defining your LinkedIn Audience
LinkedIn offers significant flexibility for law firms when it comes to defining a target audience. Lawyers have an idea of their ideal buying persona, and through a number of choices, they can formulate their audience around this. Specificity is always helpful, but ensure you don’t go too far, as this can alienate some audiences.
Some of the key criteria to consider include:
- The locations, territories, cities and countries you want to target – helping you hone in on specific geographies or locations close to your law firm
- Company connections, industry, size, name or followers – especially helpful for targeting B2B opportunities
- Demographics including age and gender of your audience – certain legal services like wills and probate will be more applicable to some than others
- Education including fields and school attended – although this is more useful if you are promoting a job advert
- Job experience and time in a role – again more applicable for job adverts
- Interests and traits – targeting based on groups, which could allow you to look for new home-buyers, interests in philanthropy, entrepreneurs who need patent guidance etc.
Choose your Advert Type
There is a range of different LinkedIn advertising options for law firms. These include:
- Text adverts – the standard sidebar advert
- Carousel adverts – featuring a range of images and text to capture audience intrigue
- Video adverts – short dynamic videos to get user attention
- Message adverts – short engagements that target active users
- InMail adverts – that send personalised messages to user inboxes
- Conversation Adverts – that combine message adverts with aspects of InMail
- Dynamic ads – personalised adverts that use profile data to populate their content
There’s no one hard-and-fast rule for which is best. Law firms may want to focus on text adverts if they want to convey a lot of information. However, video and carousel adverts can provide a sharper, more intriguing way to do this. Testing different options will help you build a strong marketing mix.
LinkedIn Advertising Tips for Law Firms
LinkedIn adverts do not have a magic formula for being successful for any industry. Law firms especially have struggled with perceptions of being stagnant or boring for a significant period of time.
As a result, it’s more important than ever to stand out through advertising. Whatever advert type you select, you should have high-quality assets that are relevant to your brand. You have to balance thinking outside the box with showcasing why your law firm is the best choice. A strong succinct call to action should always either start or end your pitch. Furthermore, there should be a clear next step if people want to take it. This could be as simple as signing up to receive alerts, or taking you to download a whitepaper explaining your legal needs.
Optimising your LinkedIn Advertising
The first thing for law firms to remember is to give campaigns time to run and collect data. Making instant changes might seem proactive, but it actually muddies the water and makes it harder to work out what is doing well.
You have the freedom to expand or contract your audience, change your budget or schedule, adjust your bidding strategy, and add or remove adverts to the campaign. As a result, you have total freedom to ensure you are only running your best campaigns for your law firm.
Final Thoughts
LinkedIn advertising for law firms offers huge potential for growth at a relatively low cost. The precise way to catch the attention of prospective clients, particularly in the B2B sphere is hugely beneficial. There is also easy mechanisms in place to help with tracking, adjustment and optimisation, to help ensure your law firm gets the best return.
For more support on LinkedIn advertising and other marketing opportunities, get in touch with Boss Digital today.
