Guide to Marketing for Estate Planning Lawyers

How do successful estate planning lawyers market their services? Firms used to build their reputations one case at a time and marketed their services by word of mouth. While this is an honourable approach, it can’t keep up with the speed of the modern market, which is the speed of the internet.?

While 59 percent of consumers seeking guidance in the estate planning realm do turn to referrals, the other 41 percent are hitting up Google and other marketing venues. There is also every indication that these percentages are shifting, which means that if you aren't maximizing your marketing potential, your fair share of that 41 percent may be going to your competitors.

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There’s no reason to take this lying down. Carve out 20 minutes or so to give this handy-dandy guide a read and get your marketing-for-estate-planning-lawyers groove back in the process. We’re ready to share our key strategies for helping your firm live up to its potential, so let’s get started by taking a careful look at your current marketing efforts.

Be Prepared?

This might come under the umbrella of self-evident advice, but it bears saying.?

Before a law firm throws itself into finding a solution for its estate planning lawyer marketing, it needs to know where its marketing efforts stand.

We call this process a marketing audit.

This is the only way you can identify the weak links in your marketing strategy.

In this initial section, we'll introduce you to our audit process and do exactly that, making it easy for you to determine where you stand.?

Know what you need

Start by focusing on the main elements of your company’s marketing efforts:

1. Website?
2. Social media
3. Paid ad campaigns
4. Goals

Your website is your firm’s digital storefront. This is where most of your clients are likely to meet you, and if first impressions aren’t everything, they’re close.?

If your website is more of a mess than a delight to navigate, you’ve got work to do. Well-constructed websites hit all the following high notes:

• They are visually pleasing
• They are straightforward and easy to navigate
• They are inviting?
• They instil confidence

If your website is a patchwork of outdated stock images that lacks style cohesion and offers your visitors little guidance, it’s time for a refresh. A good point to keep in mind is that potential clients who land on your site will give it about 0.05 seconds before deciding whether to stay or go, which means you have only that brief moment to make the right impression.?

Take a look at this firm’s site, which has something to teach us about what not to do:

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While the large photo does hit the right tone – family sentiment – it’s not particularly well executed. Further, the page has a messy feel that does nothing to support the hero copy, which is Planning for Your Family. Finally, all those CTAs are distracting at best.?

None of this is to say that the firm itself isn’t dynamite – they simply aren’t hitting their marks when it comes to their website. Visitors take one look and are very likely to keep moving.?

Now let’s do a bit of comparing and contrasting by taking a peek at a website that’s doing everything right:

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Let’s count the ways this site gets it right:

• The colour palette is coordinated and attractive.
• The image is not only appealing but sends a direct family-forward message.
• The homepage offers a clear, easily navigable structure.
• The lead-generation form is ideally located, inviting potential clients to reach out and connect with Shoup Legal today.

The difference is like night and day, which underscores exactly how important it is to maintain a shipshape website.?

Your website itself, however, isn’t the end of your marketing concerns. There’s also the site’s performance to attend to – because, for every second of load time, there is a 20 percent drop in conversions. No matter how beautiful and well-executed your website is, visitors will show no mercy if it’s sluggish.

Social Media

Lest you doubt the relevance of social media for your estate planning firm, it’s important to know that more than 58 percent of the global population imbibes, which makes getting on board the social media train something of a gimme.?

The numbers don’t lie. Consider the following telling stats:

• 96 percent of lawyers use social media, and 70 percent of them include it in their overall marketing strategies. LinkedIn is their preferred platform.
• When in the market for a lawyer, one in five people turn to social media platforms.
• 35 percent of lawyers in private practice obtain clients through social media.?

If you are working under the misguided belief that social media marketing is best left to the highfliers with well-known brands backing them up, it’s time to dispel it.?

If you already have a social media presence, analyzing the results your efforts are achieving is in order. The idea is obviously to drive engagement and leads, but even if you’re happy with your firm’s overall performance on social media, there is almost always room for improvement.?

Some quick tips include:

• Post frequently, the online attention span is fleeting
• Share meaningful content
• Carefully answer readers’ pressing questions

The stronger your social media game, the more likely you are to be considered a thought leader in your field. Once you've earned a reputation for thought leadership, your firm will be well-positioned to generate calls and connections with prospective clients who need your services.

Paid ad campaigns

Paid adverts (often referred to as PPC) drive 58% of all website traffic.

This means that, if combined with an optimized website, they have the potential to put your law firm in front of thousands of potential clients and become one of your main acquisition methods.

So ask yourself:?

• What kind of paid ad campaigns have you run in the past??
• How effective did they prove to be?
• Did they drive significant traffic to your site?
• Did they generate a positive ROI??

Once again, your goal is to determine whether you need to revisit your current strategy. If you find yourself unsatisfied with any aspect of your PPC campaigns, then this is an area where you need help in the future.

Goals

You knew it was coming. The question about goals is inescapable because it’s that important. If you don’t know where you’re going, getting there is next to impossible. Your firm obviously has things it wants to accomplish, and while some of them are probably quite clear, others may be more elusive – though still important. By taking some time to consider your goals, you help pave the way toward accomplishing them.?

While a legal firm’s goals can come in every shape and size, most fall into categories like the following:

• Generating higher revenue
• Establishing greater brand awareness
• Building your firm’s reputation as a thought leader in the industry

Each of these requires its own marketing strategy, and while there’s no rule that you have to pick just one, it’s important to dovetail multiple efforts accordingly. Further, each of these bolsters the others. For example, as you build your reputation for being a thought leader in the industry, you’re also establishing greater brand awareness, which in turn helps generate revenue.

Evaluate your budget

This header suggests that marketing for estate planning lawyers is an expense.

While this is technically true, the reality is that you should think of your marketing budget as an investment.

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Unfortunately, this point of view isn't shared by the majority of law firms, as 54% don’t have an annual marketing budget, clearly indicating they only see marketing as an expense.?

Strange, right?

It gets even stranger when you consider that high-growth law firms spend 26.9% of their revenue on their marketing budgets, while no-growth law firms only spend 18.2%.

Everything points to one conclusion: law firms need to invest in marketing if they wish to grow.

So sit down with your partners, and decide how much you’re willing to set aside for your marketing efforts.

One other thing – make sure the number you have in mind correlates with your goals. In other words, is it realistic to expect to generate 300 leads per month when you only spend $500 a month on marketing?

Choose the Right Marketing Agency for Your Estate Planning Firm

You’ve come a long way so far. You’ve identified your firm’s marketing strengths and challenges, you’ve set clear goals, and you’ve established a budget. What’s next?

The surest path forward is with a team of marketing experts by your side. You're looking for a team with proven marketing expertise in the estate planning space. Their know-how, experience, and savvy can help save you all the trouble, time, and expense associated with learning things the hard way.??

You have expertise in estate planning, and while clients with estate planning needs don’t have to engage your services, they fail to engage them to their own detriment. The same is true for estate planning legal marketing – you can try to do it on your own, but in the process, you'll be burning up hours that would otherwise have been billable, and you're unlikely to achieve anything even close to the same level of results.?

Lawyers say it all the time – do yourself a favour and hire a lawyer – the same can easily be said of legal marketing agencies.?

While there’s also the option of hiring an internal marketing manager, you lose the advantage of having a team of experts in your corner – and all the actual managing will fall to you. As such, it probably won’t surprise you to learn the following:

• 21 percent of firms with 2 to 9 lawyers turn to consultants for their marketing needs.
• 19 percent of firms with 10 to 49 lawyers turn to consultants for their marketing needs.?
• 23 percent of firms with 100 or more lawyers turn to consultants for their marketing needs.

It comes down to the fact that working with a legal marketing agency is simply a good idea.

Now we’ve come to the point that it’s time to choose the right agency for your estate planning firm.?

Put out your feelers to create a shortlist of prime candidates, then carefully consider each in relation to specific variables.

Case Studies

There is perhaps no better way to get a clear reading on a marketing agency than by carefully considering their past efforts. Case studies demonstrate – in black and white – the degree to which the agencies you’re considering deliver on their promises and successfully wield their expertise. We invite you to use our track record as a ruler by which to measure other agencies.

Ability to Connect

Regardless of how perfect the legal marketing agency is on paper, if you don’t gel, you don’t gel. Pay attention to what the agency stands for, the tone it uses, and its overall bearing. Is this an enterprise that you can see yourself getting down to business with? If so, you may have found a match, and if not, it’s likely time to keep looking.?

Work Style

Some legal marketing agencies are regimented and take a do-it-by-the-book approach, while others take a more relaxed attitude. The important thing to consider on this one is whether or not the agency’s business style is compatible with your own. If there’s a considerable divide, the agency may not be a good fit.?

Once you have a shortlist of agencies to work from, it’s time to schedule some meetings. In this final phase, you’re certain to get a more precise reading on each company, which should help seal the choice-making deal.

Build a Strategy

Now that you have an agency, you can start working on your estate planning lawyer marketing strategy.

Ideally, this process should begin with a marketing workshop , in which the agency sits down with key law firm members and begins to professionally assess your marketing efforts and brainstorm new ways to improve performance.

This day-long meeting is usually followed by a short period of intense strategy work aimed at coming up with:

• Clear marketing and revenue goals
• A strong understanding of your target audience
• A refined service offering

Set Clear Marketing and Revenue Goals

There are two primary reasons why those in marketing are so focused on goals, and they are:

• Because they help clients like you prioritize and focus their efforts
• Because they allow clients like you to measure the overall effectiveness of their marketing campaigns?

Consider an example:

Let’s say your goal as an estate planning firm is to increase the revenue you generate from high-income clients who need to revisit their wills by 25 percent. This is a revenue goal, and for the purposes of this example, we’ll say that reaching the goal would increase your monthly revenue by $2,500.?

You obviously need a plan in order to go after this goal. The fact is that people are far more likely to put off changing their wills than they are to eagerly pursue a chance to update them. You might be surprised to learn that half of Canadians have yet to create a will in the first place.?

The first step on the daunting path forward is revisiting your website because successful digital marketing efforts begin at home, and if your website isn't leading your target audience to you, it's time to do some tweaking.?

From here, you should explore other avenues, including the following:

• Focus on content and social media in an effort to increase your authority and attract prospective clients through organic searches
• Spearhead an email marketing campaign
• Diversify by purchasing a paid PPC campaign that adds outbound marketing to the mix?

Regardless of the path you choose, however, it’s important to hold your efforts accountable with specific goals like the following:

• A specific number of impressions, engagements, and website visitors per month from LinkedIn and Facebook
• A specific number of organic clicks from your content marketing, such as blogs, podcasts, and videos
• A specific number of email and PPC clicks per month
• A specific conversion rate?

You get the idea. Once you have these numbers in hand, you can crunch them into the number of new clients you were able to generate, which you can then multiply by the average amount your firm charges per will to get a final reading on your goal. For instance, if all that extra activity boils down to about 24 leads a month and about 25 percent of them convert to clients, you have 6 new clients. If your firm’s average charge for creating a will is $500, you’re looking at increased revenue of $2,500 (6 x $500) for the month, which translates to achieving your revenue goal.

Understand your target audience

You can’t start marketing your services without first learning everything there’s to know about your target audience.?

Think of it like this: Have you ever tried to pitch your services to a client hiding behind a wall? Whose face you can’t see? Whose voice you can’t hear??

How can you possibly expect to sell your services to them?

Digital marketing works the same. You cannot succeed if you don’t have a picture-perfect image of your ideal client.?

First, identify the age and gender of your target customers.?

Given that you're focusing on estate planning, it's safe to say that your primary focus will be on older people, generally aged 55+, and gender isn't a distinguishing factor.

This piece of research gives you an idea of the number of people in Canada that have an updated will, broken down by age:

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This confirms our initial assumption, but it also shows us that people aged 45-54 are thinking about wills and should be part of an estate planning lawyer’s audience.

Next, you should consider other demographic factors that make people more inclined to prepare a will. Having a high net worth and/or multiple children are obvious ones.

Finally, you should spend some time speaking to your clients (in one-on-one interviews or focus groups) to understand the behavioral metrics that unite them.?

This will help you build customer personas and select the right channels for reaching your audience.

Pro tip: don’t buy into the common myth that it’s hard to market your services to senior citizens because they can’t manage the technology involved. The truth of the matter is that 59% of adults above 65 are online, and 49% of those are using social media.?

Refine Your Service Offerings

When you genuinely understand your target audience, you’re afforded the golden opportunity to consider your service offerings from their perspective, which can be invaluable.?

Questions to ask yourself along the way include:

• Are you clearly communicating the benefits that are most important to your target audience?
• Is your writing connecting with your target audience?
• Are you pricing your services competitively but attractively for your target audience?

If you hesitated on any of these or answered with a straight-up no, it’s time to dig deeper. You want to inspire your clients and prospective clients to feel like you understand them and their unique perspectives, and this likely boils down to succinctly addressing the primary pain points that stand between them and their updated wills – or the achievement of any other estate planning goal.?

Common concerns include:

• The stress involved in changing the will is too much.
• The risk of making the wrong decisions in relation to the will is too great.
• The client isn’t sure they need a will in the first place.
• The client feels like they have plenty of time to think about their will later.

Because you understand your target audience, you have a pretty good idea about what’s stopping them from moving forward with their estate planning needs. By structuring your services in a manner that addresses their concerns, you’re well on your way to leveraging your marketing collateral to help them overcome whatever it is that stands in their way.

Execute – Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a strategy that uses valuable content to draw potential customers to your business.

Think of it as a magnet that attracts customers.

On the other hand, outbound marketing (also known as interruption marketing) is the traditional form of marketing, where a company pays to put an advert in front of an audience on a select medium at a select time. The most common forms of outbound adverts for legal firms are billboards, TV & radio, pay-per-click (PPC), and paid social media.?

Many people are proponents of one strategy over the other. The truth is more nuanced: inbound marketing should be the cornerstone of a marketing campaign, with outbound marketing playing a supporting yet pivotal role.?

So let’s start by examining the elements of inbound marketing estate planning lawyers should master.?

Web design & website copy

We’ve already explained the importance of having a fast, well-designed website.?

What we didn’t say is that 75% of people admit to making judgments about a company’s credibility based on website design.?

So leave nothing to chance and make sure your homepage looks as attractive and inviting as this example:?

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Design and speed aren’t enough, though.

You'll also need excellent website copy if you plan on converting the traffic you funnel to your site.

Every single paragraph needs to impress them. Eliminate the fluff, speak their language, and most importantly, demonstrate your expertise in the field of estate planning.?

Two other tips:

• Employ SEO writing techniques in your content to help your pages rank higher
• Include client testimonials on key pages as social proof leads to a 1% higher conversion rate on landing pages

Video

49% of adults over 65 use YouTube.

This statistic alone demonstrates why video is a key channel for estate planning law firms looking to attract more clients.

The benefits don’t stop there, though.

Since estate planning topics are often complicated, videos are an excellent way for lawyers to simplify difficult concepts and break down confusing problems.

You also benefit from the fact that videos have a 95% retention compared to just 10% for blogs and other written material. It’s simply easier and more entertaining to watch a video.

A drawback to keep in mind is that videos can be very time-consuming and highly personal.?

There is no text to hide behind, no paid ads, and no professional photos.?

Whoever you pick to represent your law firm becomes the face of the company.

For this reason, you’ll need to select a lawyer that resonates with your audience and is comfortable in front of the camera.

To make your video sound and look more professional, you should:

• Prepare a script?
• Set up a mini-studio with high-quality lighting and recording

It might sound like a lot of work, but take a look at the difference between these two videos:

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The lighting and the studio set-up were well worth the effort, don’t you agree?

Blogs

96% of people who are in the market for legal advice turn to search engines, and with these kinds of numbers, it stands to reason that every estate planning lawyer and their brother should have a blog up and running. The fact is, however, that only about 27 percent do. In other words, the doors of opportunity are open wide.?

By posting blogs on estate planning topics that resonate with your target audience, you provide them with valuable, easily accessible information right where they like it – at their fingertips.?

When it comes to blog writing, your firm has much to recommend it, including:

• Expertise in the field
• The ability to answer further questions
• The integrity to provide free legal information on topics that readers care about

In fact, there are a lot of benefits to blog writing, including the fact that the traffic they generate can spill over onto your homepage via the embedded backlinks, which – in turn – lead to increased domain authority and improved search engine results for your site.?

Have a look at MacMillan’s The Strongroom Blog , which is a stellar example of an estate planning legal blog that hits all the right notes, including:

• Relevant and appealing visuals
• An attractive design
• An inviting layout
• Content that’s tailored to its target audience
• Well-written blogs that are posted regularly

There’s a lot to learn from this blog space.

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We’re not suggesting that you change course and start churning out crackerjack blogs on top of all the legal work you have on your plate. Your area of expertise is the law, and you’ve got the technical writing skills to prove it. Blog writing is an entirely different animal that requires a different skill set and would eat into your billable hours. Fortunately, the best legal marketing agencies come with their own cadre of talented writers with tight legal blog skills. You pick the topics, you determine the number of posts, you set the word count, you choose the tone and voice, and a professional writer does the rest – in other words, it’s a win-win.

Organic social media

Organic social media consists of non-paid posts you publish on your page.?

You can post about anything you like, but lawyers tend to focus on:

• Explanations of legal principles
• Legal examples and scenarios
• Blog posts
• Videos
• Webinars
• Case studies and testimonials

Social media has enormous potential when it comes to creating trust with your audience and building your brand.?

This fact is well understood by Mike Hiner , a lawyer who’s amassed more than 25,000 followers on TikTok by taking the time to explain the intricacies of estate planning.

Bookmark his profile and go back to it for inspiration and content ideas when you’re building and planning your posting schedule.?

Execute – Outbound Marketing

Are you getting tired yet??

We understand. We’ve gone through a lot of material.

So here’s a bite-sized summary of the next two sections about outbound marketing:

Feel free to jump to the next section, Connect With the Community , or continue reading for a deep dive into outbound marketing.

PPC for Estate Planning Lawyers

Pay-per-click advertising is a powerful marketing tool that too many legal firms ignore. The idea is to connect with those online searchers who type in keywords that correlate with your estate planning firm. The pay-per-click ads are the ones at the top of the queue with the word Ad attached. Anytime a user clicks on one of these PPC ads, Google charges the firm that purchased it.?

This advertising is sold on an auction-based model, which means the price depends primarily on variables like the following:

• The amount of competition for the specific keyword
• The firm’s geographic area
• The quality of the content afforded Google users

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The first four results are paid PPC adverts.

Every single time a user clicks on one of these ads, Google charges the law firm that placed it on Google.

The fee itself varies because the PPC system works on an auction-based model, meaning the price largely depends on:

• The competition for the specific keyword
• Your firm’s geographic area
• The quality of content you offer Google's users

In other words, Google doesn’t simply sell ads to the highest bidder. Although they are happy to take your advertising money, they are committed to providing their users with quality results. As such, you’ll be charged according to how well you fulfil searchers’ needs, which is yet another reason why creating attractive, high-quality landing pages is so critical.?

The basics include:

• Including client testimonials
• Including an About Us section?
• Showcasing your legal expertise
• Including contact information, such as your firm’s phone number, email address, and contact link

Augulis Law Firm is a fine example of what you should be aiming for:?

In order to ballpark PPC costs on Google, consider the following:

• The cost per click tends to run from $5 to $300.
• ?A firm in the small to medium range should budget for about $1,000 to $3,000 in PPC ads each month.

Paid social media ads

Let’s say you are looking for a quick way to grow your social media presence and leverage your range of blog posts.

Paid adverts are the way to go.

Simply create a post (for this example, on Facebook), write an enticing summary, and link to a detailed article that covers all the information people should know about when structuring their wills.?

Next, publish it. It’ll look something like this:?

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Once it’s live on your profile, you can boost it.?

Simply look for the blue button that says “Boost Post” and click it.

Here you can select from a wide range of demographic and behavioral factors, and advertise your post to a very specific audience.?

For example, you could only show it to people over 65 who live within 30 miles of your office and have children.?

The costs of the campaign are also entirely dependent on you. Facebook allows you to choose exactly how much money you want to spend per day.

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From there, it’s off to the races.?

Your target audience reads your posts, visits your blog, and learns everything they need to know. If they wish to take a step further, your contact information is only a click away.

Connect With the Community

The main purpose of estate planning lawyers is to help people in their community tackle difficult situations and ensure their families' financial security.

So how do you reach out to your local community and build a reputation in the right circles?

Community service is one option since 84% of consumers say it is important to them that law firms support meaningful causes.

What other options do you have?

Here are our three favourite strategies.

PR Campaigns

The driving force behind PR campaigns is ensuring that your community knows your firm, what it does, and what it stands for – and that all of this is bathed in a positive light.?

PR campaigns are flexible and can include both inbound and outbound marketing efforts that help to instil trust in your brand within your target audience – and the community at large.

Public relations campaigns afford excellent opportunities to engage in all the following:

• Shedding light on your business practices and processes
• Demonstrating that you’re committed to your community and are willing to go the extra mile for it
• Celebrating your biggest – and most meaningful – wins
• Posting reviews from clients who are happy with your services and are moved to share their experience?

A few PR manoeuvres that can help move the needle in terms of the community’s perception of your firm include the following:

• Spreading the word on your social media channels
• Giving interviews to local newspapers and radio stations
• Giving speeches about your firm’s work at local conferences and seminars
• Speaking at local colleges and universities
• Getting out and connecting with members of the community organically, whether that means at the grocery store, a place of worship, the gym, the jogging trail, a charity event, or anywhere else

Offer thought leadership

Thought leadership is nothing more than offering the public and potential clients a behind-the-scenes look at how the experts view certain matters.

There are a lot of people with opinions. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are a lot of misguided beliefs out there.?

An estate planning law firm that takes the time to set the record straight on various matters will naturally attract traffic to its website simply because it’s a trustworthy source.?

Take the Common Estate Planning Myths post from Pihl Law Corp – it’s a perfect example of the valuable insight a law firm can offer confused clients looking for guidance.?

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N.M Law also does a great job at creating thought leadership pieces. Their series of webinars offer interesting insights on how to deal with the intricacies of estate planning.

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This type of content also cements a law firm as the place to go when clients are looking for answers to niche questions.?

So if people are coming to your website (or social media profile) for answers, how likely is it that they’ll come to the same place when they need a lawyer?

The odds are stacked in your favor.

Business directories & local SEO

There are hundreds of business directories that catalog business websites. Some of them, like Avvo , specialize in listing law firms.

These are the ones you want to focus on.

Try to list your firm and all its individual attorneys in as many directories as possible to make it easy for potential clients to find you.

Being listed has the added benefit of giving your firm an extra layer of credibility. After all, you’re amongst the Top Lawyers in Canada .

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Business directories also help you improve your firm’s local SEO for estate planning lawyers, which is critical to your success as 85% of people use Google when researching law firms.?

For example, if a Toronto-based client typed “estate planning law firm” into Google, this is what they’d see:

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You know they’re going to click on these three well-rated practices first.

That’s why you want to rank in the top three – more clicks, more leads, and more clients.

Link building in business directories is only one of the many things you’ll need to master to break into this elite ranking. The others include:

1. Website optimization
2. Mobile optimization
3. Quality content creation
4. Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) Optimization

The Key to Growth Lies with an Estate Planning Legal Marketing Agency

Successful estate planning lawyer marketing requires a multi-pronged approach that involves an investment of time, patience, energy, and cost. In addition to running your firm, there are all the following marketing matters that need your attention stat:

• Website design and optimization
• SEO optimization
• Content creation
• Social media posts
• Pay-per-click campaigns
• Public relations efforts
• Thought leadership endeavours

It’s a lot, but you’re not alone out there, and having savvy marketing pros in your corner is to your distinct advantage. While you tend to the primary task of serving your clients' estate planning needs, allow us to leverage our marketing finesse in our focused efforts to achieve the highest possible return on your marketing budget.?

To help make this claim a reality, reach out and Contact dNOVO about elevating your firm to higher reaches today.