Estate Planning Marketing
Gain Insight into Sustainable Tools to Attract Clients
Are you struggling with inconsistent growth in your practice? Estate planning services often grapple with reaching the right audience and demonstrating value beyond referrals.
Valve+Meter revolutionizes how you attract estate planning clients and turns your marketing from a challenge into a measurable asset.
Performance Marketing
Creating Measurable Marketing for Estate Planners
Performance marketing can be the catalyst that activates the flywheel in your estate planning practice.
At rest, a flywheel needs external force to accelerate. Paid advertising, referrals, and other traditional marketing can capture sporadic gains for your law firm. But the moment you stop running paid ads or when referrals slow, you lose momentum.
Performance marketing uses data to identify the marketing activities that help you earn more estate planning clients. By unlocking tactics that win and eliminating programs that don’t yield results, you create a self-sustaining cycle of growth. Each marketing success fuels the next, building momentum that continuously accelerates your estate planning firm forward.
In this article, Valve+Meter Performance Marketing explores the tools your estate planning practice can utilize to reach prospective clients, stay engaged with existing ones, and grow your legal practice marketing.
What Are The Keys To Estate Planning Marketing?
Building Your Strategy: 3 Core Steps
The foundation of estate planning law firms is preparation and foresight in asset protection planning. Interestingly, developing a marketing plan runs parallel to the meticulous process of estate planning.
Like delving deep into estate planning documents to secure your clients’ futures, research, planning, and analysis are crucial in crafting a marketing strategy that yields sustainable results.
Research
Just as you wouldn’t draft an estate plan without understanding every facet of your client’s assets, proper research into your current situation and goals is key to success.
Who are your prospective clients?
What are their pain points and preferences?
How are you positioned against other local estate planning firms?
This research forms the bedrock of your marketing plan, ensuring every tactic is relevant and impactful to past clients.
Planning
Just like laying out a detailed plan to safeguard your clients’ assets, a marketing strategy requires a clear pathway to success.
There are dozens of marketing tactics to choose from but estate planning attorneys need to focus on the specific marketing activities that will increase client consultations and heighten brand awareness.
Planning specific efforts that are most likely to succeed in your unique situation and establishing measurable goals and timelines help you achieve your full potential.
Analysis
With data and tracking, estate planning attorneys gain insights into which marketing activities are working best. Just as estate planning adapts to changing circumstances, such as new estate laws or shifts in clients’ financial situations, marketing must also evolve.
Measuring the return on marketing spend (ROMS) for both paid advertising and organic marketing guides future marketing efforts.
Your estate planning law firm’s marketing strategy isn’t a one-time endeavor. It evolves, adapts, and grows in sophistication.
Data-Driven Decisions
Achieving Better ROI
The payoff of employing these core elements is substantial. As marketing activates the flywheel within your law office or firm, you can repeat the most successful tactics and experiment with new ideas.
Research, planning, and analysis drive your online marketing forward in the most competitive markets.
Understanding Estate Planning Marketing
Why Estate Planning Attorneys Are Unique In Law Firm Marketing
While some practices benefit from brash advertising and dynamic online marketing, prospective clients seek an estate planning lawyer based on trust and legal expertise.
Marketing your estate planning law firm involves communicating the unique value your firm’s name brings to prospective clients.
What is Estate Planning Marketing?
Promoting your estate planning law firm’s services to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right way.
In the age of the Internet, prospective clients search for estate planning services and other legal assistance through search engines. A powerful online brand presence is essential for attracting more clients.
Estate planning lawyer marketing is distinct from many other practice areas, though. While a recent study showed nearly 70% of participants paying closer attention to their finances, 67% of Americans still lack an estate plan.
Marketing an estate planning law firm educates the public about the importance of estate planning, clarifies complex legal jargon, and highlights the peace of mind that comes with a solid plan.
Effective marketing strategies then underscore the unique value of your specific estate planning law firm. While digital marketing techniques like website design, content marketing, SEO, PPC, LSA, email, social media, and traditional marketing are similar to other practice areas, the content for estate planning marketing services has distinct differences.
Key Differences From Other Legal Marketing
While marketing for criminal or personal injury attorneys may be more aggressive and centers on the attorney, estate planning marketing requires a more empathetic and educational approach.
Trust and likability are among the primary reasons clients choose an attorney. Building trust and demonstrating expertise in a field that deeply impacts people’s personal lives is crucial in estate planning marketing strategy.
Tailored messaging attracts a more targeted, and consequently, more qualified client base. This approach also enhances the effectiveness of tools for estate planning attorneys. More precise terms in PPC ads and SEO better reach your target audience and improve ROI.
Secure Sustainable Growth Today
Unlock the potential of data-driven marketing strategies for your estate planning firm. Transform insights into action and watch your client base grow.
Strategies for Effective Estate Planning Marketing
Audiences are fragmented both in traditional media and across the internet, rendering the conventional approach to marketing ineffective.
The power of measurable marketing helps estate planning lawyers to predict results through data and make informed decisions about the best marketing activities for gaining new business.
Website Design
Your online brand identity is anchored by a website designed and developed to convert visitors with professional design, easy navigation tools, and clear calls to action.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
PPC ads can drive immediate traffic to your site, effectively targeting specific estate planning queries and placing your landing pages before the right audiences.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO enhances your website’s visibility in organic search engine results. For estate planning lawyers, organic website traffic is key to reaching new clients.
LSA (Google Local Services Ads)
These ads appear at the very top of local search results benefitting most estate planning attorneys who serve clients in a specific geographic location.
A well-crafted email campaign keeps you connected with both prospective and existing clients, providing them with valuable information and updates about your services.
Social Media
Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram allow you to engage with your community, share insights, and build your brand’s presence online.
Traditional Marketing
Cultivating well-established methods should not be ignored. Traditional methods like networking, print ads, and direct mail can be a source of new business and referrals.
Content and Creative Marketing
The heart of your brand identity involves the words, images, videos, and graphic design that engages your target audience and improves visibility.
Building a Strong Online Presence
Assessing Your Current Brand
In the world of estate planning, having a strong online presence is more than just a bonus – it’s a necessity. Start by evaluating where you stand. This includes conducting thorough audits of your website for branding and SEO, and if applicable, your current PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising strategies.
Your website should be a mirror reflecting your firm’s identity. From the homepage to each service page, maintain a consistent brand that resonates with trust and personal connection – crucial in the estate planning business.
Brand Voice
Effective client-focused content not only boosts your visibility online but also begins building a relationship with potential clients before they even make the first contact. Such a strategy turns your website into a trusted resource, vital for attracting and engaging clients in today’s digital world.
- Consistency: Your content should consistently echo your firm’s values and appeal to your target clients.
- Personality: Develop a brand voice that is both authoritative and welcoming, establishing trust and approachability.
SEO Audit
After assessing your website content, consider your market position in both organic results.
- Keywords: Use tools to check how your site performs in search rankings and find opportunities to enhance your content.
- Performance: Assess your website’s speed, scan for broken links, and identify structural flaws. Addressing these can significantly improve user experience and search engine rankings.
- Mobile Optimization: Ensure your site is optimized for mobile users, a critical factor in today’s internet usage.
- User Experience (UX): Solid UX looks at your site’s navigation, layout, and calls to action.
- Backlink Profile: Examine the quality and quantity of backlinks to your site. Quality backlinks enhance your site’s authority.
- Local SEO: This is key for law firms. Ensure accurate local listings and location-specific keywords.
- Competitor Analysis: Compare your SEO performance with your competitors to identify improvement areas.
PPC Audit
Poor PPC management can lead to wasted advertising dollars and even poor search visibility. Consider the following element when auditing your paid search:
- Keyword Relevance: Ensure your PPC campaign keywords align with your services and what clients are searching for.
- Ad Performance: Assess the effectiveness of your ads in terms of engagement and conversion.
- Landing Page Alignment: Your PPC ads should link directly to compelling landing pages.
- Budget Allocation: Review and optimize your budget distribution across campaigns.
- Quality Score: Monitor the quality score of your ads based on relevance and performance.
- Ad Extensions: Use extensions to enhance your ad’s information and visibility.
- Geotargeting: Adjust geographical targeting to reach the appropriate audience.
- Competitive Analysis: Compare your PPC performance to your competitors to gather market insights.
Measuring and Enhancing Marketing Efforts
How to Measure the Success of Your Marketing Efforts?
Simply implementing strategies isn’t sufficient for sustainable marketing. Continuously measure your success and proactively adapt to new threats and opportunities to capture more market share for your estate planning firm.
At Valve+Meter, our team uses custom tools and reporting to track the source of every lead. A dedicated account manager regularly reviews data with you. SEO specialists, paid analysts and other marketing professionals also monitor indicators.
Internal law firm marketing teams can monitor current performance using the following metrics and tools:
Key Metrics and KPIs for Legal Marketing:
- Website Traffic: Number of visitors, source of traffic, and time spent on your site.
- Conversion Rate: How many website visitors are turning into leads or clients?
- Client Acquisition Cost: The total cost of acquiring a new client through marketing efforts.
- ROI: Return on investment from various marketing campaigns.
- Engagement Rates: On social media and email campaigns, measured through likes, shares, and open rates.
Tools and Methods for Tracking Performance:
- Google Analytics: For tracking website performance.
- CRM Software: To monitor client interactions and conversions.
- Social Media Analytics: For insights on engagement and reach.
- Email Marketing Tools: To track open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
Legal Marketing Agency For Estate Lawyers
Building vs. Buying: Deciding on Marketing Strategy Execution
Many law firms are familiar with various forms of traditional and digital marketing. Law firms who rely on multiple agencies often struggle with a lack of data. To execute the most effective marketing strategies, your law firm’s website, paid advertising, organic SEO, social media, email, and other activities should all be integrated.
An in-house marketing team can execute a comprehensive marketing strategy with the right tools, training, and wide-ranging expertise. For most law firms, the intensive resources needed are cost-prohibitive.
Valve+Meter offers the best outsourcing for legal services. Our personalized approach includes a dedicated account manager who focuses on your law firm’s goal. Operating as an extension of your business, Valve+Meter provides access to experts across all digital marketing techniques and platforms.
When you partner with Valve+Meter you gain clear insights, ongoing consultation, and an educational approach that aligns marketing efforts with your needs.
Whether building an in-house team or outsourcing, the key is to align the approach with your firm’s resources, goals, and the specific challenges of marketing in the estate planning sector.
Start With A Free Consultation
Set an appointment with our strategy team to learn more about our process.
Working With Performance Marketing
ThinkFirst Process
Performance marketing has revolutionized how estate planning law firms approach advertising efforts. Instead of designating a certain percentage of revenue for marketing, performance marketing focuses on measurable results and data-driven decisions.
There is an unlimited budget for marketing that is effective and generates results.
What Is Math Before Marketing?
At Valve+Meter, our approach emphasizes the importance of understanding the numbers behind your marketing campaigns. Math Before Marketing examines what works, what doesn’t, and where your money is best spent.
Return on Marketing Spend (ROMS) is the primary metric to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. It’s a straightforward equation: for every dollar you spend on marketing, how many dollars do you get back in new business?
Your marketing strategy should align with expected ROMS, focusing on tactics that offer the best return. It’s not just about spending money; it’s about investing it wisely.
ThinkFirst: A Structured Approach to Performance Marketing
Valve+Meter collaborates with estate planning law firms to design custom performance marketing strategies. There are four primary stages to ThinkFirst:
1 Discovery
Identifying your goals and objectives, understanding your target audience, and assessing your current marketing position are crucial steps in developing a successful strategy.
3 Launch
Implementing your marketing strategy, utilizing targeted approaches such as SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media, and monitoring the performance from the outset are key steps in executing a successful marketing plan.
Research 2
Analyzing market trends and competitor strategies, gathering data on customer behavior and preferences, and identifying opportunities for growth and improvement are essential components of a comprehensive marketing analysis.
Analysis 4
Evaluating the effectiveness of each marketing channel, measuring Return on Marketing Spend (ROMS) and other key performance indicators, and making data-driven decisions to refine and adjust strategies are critical for optimizing marketing efforts.
1 Discovery
Identifying your goals and objectives, understanding your target audience, and assessing your current marketing position are crucial steps in developing a successful strategy.
2 Research
Analyzing market trends and competitor strategies, gathering data on customer behavior and preferences, and identifying opportunities for growth and improvement are essential components of a comprehensive marketing analysis.
3 Launch
Implementing your marketing strategy, utilizing targeted approaches such as SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media, and monitoring the performance from the outset are key steps in executing a successful marketing plan.
4 Analysis
Evaluating the effectiveness of each marketing channel, measuring Return on Marketing Spend (ROMS) and other key performance indicators, and making data-driven decisions to refine and adjust strategies are critical for optimizing marketing efforts.
Growing Your Estate Planning Law Firm
How Can Estate Planning Lawyers Build A Comprehensive Marketing Campaign?
By adopting the ThinkFirst methodology, estate planning law firms can ensure marketing efforts are not just a shot in the dark but a calculated approach aimed at maximizing returns and driving growth.
Building a comprehensive marketing campaign is vital for estate planning lawyers to stand out in a competitive market.
The steps to building sustainable marketing for your estate planning law firm include:
Website Design
The first contact point for estate planning clients is your website. It should exude professionalism and trustworthiness with a modern design and performance.
Content should demonstrate expertise, and brand personality, and be easily understood by visitors.
Ensure your law firm website is user-friendly, mobile-responsive, and loads quickly. Navigational menus should be intuitive with clear calls-to-action (CTAs), such as a contact form or phone number.
Your law firm website should not only look good but also be functional, guiding visitors smoothly toward engaging with your services.
Professional Tip: Regularly update your website with fresh content and client testimonials to keep web traffic to it relevant and engaging. Professional website design and development should showcase high-quality original photos, and client testimonials, and regularly be optimized with fresh, SEO-friendly cost.
Law Firm Web DesignPPC (Pay-Per-Click)
Initially, your estate planning website needs paid advertising to increase visibility in search engines, social media, and other online platforms where your target audience spends time.
PPC ads are a fast way to get in front of potential clients. For estate planning lawyers, targeting specific long-tail keywords related to estate planning services can drive qualified traffic to your site.
Professional Tip: Managing PPC campaigns is a nuanced balance of data and creativity. Adjusting bids, tweaking ad copy, and optimizing landing pages for higher conversion rates increases ROMS.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is crucial for long-term online visibility. While PPC can buy visibility on page one of search engines, SEO takes time and constant vigilance.
Include relevant keywords in your website content, maintain a blog with informative articles on estate planning, and ensure your site structure is search-engine friendly.
Local SEO is particularly important for lawyers to attract clients in their geographical area.
Professional Tip: While SEO takes time to succeed, it is an investment that can yield limitless benefits. While a successful PPC ad costs each time a user clicks the ad, organic search results are free. This means the right SEO strategy can earn thousands of visitors to your site for years.
Law Firm SEOGoogle Local Services Ads
These ads are great for increasing local visibility. They appear at the top of search results, giving individual estate planning lawyers in your firm immediate prominence.
Your Google Business Profile, response time, and client reviews influence your LSA performance.
Professional Tip: Google Screened is a tacit endorsement of your estate planning attorneys. Using LSA can bolster your CTR on organic search results on the same SERPs.
As a direct line to both potential and existing clients’ inboxes, email is one of the most effective tools for referrals and lead nurturing.
Share updates, legal tips, and relevant news. Segment your email list to ensure content is tailored to different groups (e.g., new inquiries, existing clients).
Professional Tip: Personalizing, segmenting, and automating your emails builds stronger relationships with your recipients.
Social Media
Americans spend hours each day on social media platforms. Using both organic and social ads can help build your brand awareness.
Sharing informative content, engaging in discussions, and highlighting client stories (with permission) help your firm build trust.
Professional Tip: Platforms like LinkedIn are particularly effective for professional networking and establishing credibility for potential clients searching for legal assistance.
Traditional Marketing
Don’t underestimate the power of traditional marketing methods like networking, referrals, and community involvement.
Attend local events, sponsor community activities, by sponsoring local events, and build relationships with other professionals who can refer clients.
In many areas, well-established print media, radio, and television are still effective methods for building brand awareness.
Professional Tip: Combine traditional marketing with digital efforts for a more holistic approach. Tracking the performance of traditional methods can be limited. Focus primarily on measurable marketing tactics.
Content and Creative Marketing
Content is key to potential clients connecting with your brand.
Memorable branding including logos, photography, videos, infographics, and collateral captures the attention of visitors across your website, social media profiles, landing pages, and physical spaces.
Developing engaging and informative content is key to user experiences and SEO efforts including blog articles, posts, thought leadership, and downloadable guides.
Professional Tip: Consistently produce quality content that focuses on the needs of your audience. An SEO specialist should optimize all content and website elements for maximum performance.
Implementing Performance Marketing Efforts
Secure Your Position as an Industry Leader in Estate Planning
Performance marketing empowers law firms to make informed, data-driven decisions. By embracing this approach, your firm can navigate the complexities of the digital landscape with precision and foresight.
At Valve+Meter, we transform abstract ideas into concrete data, providing clear insights into what resonates with your target audience. This method allows for the optimization of every aspect of your marketing campaign, from website development and design to SEO and PPC.
Moreover, performance marketing isn’t just about immediate gains; it’s about building a long-term presence in the competitive field of estate planning. It’s a strategic investment in your firm’s future, aligning your marketing efforts with your business objectives to cultivate a robust and enduring brand.
Grow with Precision
Discover the power of targeted marketing in the estate planning sector. Use data-driven strategies to connect with clients who need your expertise.
