While years ago marketing for lawyers was still based on attractive office rooms in good locations, a large office image, the passing on of business cards, the obligatory entry in the business directory and in the best case an annual circular letter to existing clients was sufficient or had to be sufficient due to strict professional law, the Internet today offers excellent opportunities to win new clients, especially in the regional area. The professional code of conduct is always observed by means of factually formulated advertisements using focal points of interest and activity as an alternative to the name of the specialist attorney.

The basis of successful online marketing for lawyers is, of course, your presence on the Internet in the form of a professional homepage for your law firm. But the mere existence of this business card on the Internet is not enough to attract new clients. The domain of your homepage is usually only known to those who are already in contact with you and who are made aware of it, e.g. by your e-mail address and signature.

Regional online marketing is the key to new clients

The regional online marketing for attorneys consists of three building blocks, whereby here the own homepage is always presupposed as basis. Try to google yourself – not with your own name (a new client doesn’t know that yet), but just like a new client is looking for a lawyer: he enters “Anwalt Berlin” or “Anwalt Arbeitsrecht München” or simply “Fachanwalt Familienrecht” at Google. And what do you see? What do you see? Numerous colleagues but unfortunately not themselves? Please pay close attention to the following three areas of the Google results page:

1. First the most visible (but chargeable) advertisements at the top slightly colored and on the right of the page (=Google Adwords)
2. Also the (free) results next to the map under the name “local industry results” (=Google Branchencenter or Google Maps)
3. And don’t forget the organic (not actively influenced) search results on the left side, which you could reach with law firm SEO.

You still haven’t found your homepage, or only on one of the lower places or on one of the other pages? Then this would be my first starting point for your efficient online marketing for attorneys to position you well in all these areas of the first page of the search results. By the way: What used to be the industry directory for lawyers’ marketing is now Google. The target group under 50 years no more rolls industry books, in order to stand then helplessly in the forest of meaningless small announcements. Today Google is used to search and your homepage then decides whether your telephone rings and a new client wants to speak to you.

A website is only as good as the advertising for it

Consequently, your homepage must be advertised on the Internet. In this case, advertising fortunately does not mean placing advertisements somewhere in the hope that new clients will become aware of them or fall back on expensive entries in the yellow pages. No, the technical possibilities of the Internet allow lawyers to control their marketing in a very targeted way nowadays: They simply draw attention to themselves (or your homepage) where people are looking for it: In Google, the market leader among the search engines through which you have probably also reached this page. Advertising is no longer advertising, but a targeted and measurable “hand reach” for a customer who is already looking for your service.

• Successful and efficient marketing for lawyers today
• Successful attorneys today therefore base their marketing on two pillars:
• Recommendation by existing clients (as before)
• The use of the huge stream of search queries on Google

You yourself are responsible for the first point: being recommended by good services and satisfied clients. On the second point, you can either stumble away without the appropriate specialist knowledge and only fall back on an expert when success is lacking and the time required is too great, or you can give the issue of winning new customers via the Internet through online marketing into professional hands right from the start.

I do not only advise you on the best strategy for your individual marketing for lawyers and then leave you alone with the newly gained wisdom. I will implement my advice, e.g. to place appealing ads in Google Adwords, to make the homepage more search engine friendly, to be clearly visible in Google’s regional industry results etc., if you wish I can also do it for you.