Digital Marketing for DUI and Criminal Defense Attorneys.

Traditional Marketing Meets Digital

The business of any legal practice or law firm has always been to sell legal services. But how you reach those people in need of legal help has changed.

For years, criminal defense attorneys relied on traditional forms of marketing like radio, television, newspaper ads and the phone book. But marketing your law firm is different today than it was 20, 10, or even 5 years ago.

Whereas previously firms were jostling for prime Yellow Pages placement (think “A+ DUI Lawyers”), the Internet has changed how clients are finding and choosing a law firm. From a branding standpoint, traditional marketing can still help a law firm establish credibility and help them build their brand in their geographic market. But that’s about where the benefits of traditional marketing end.

There are three basic concepts to marketing. They are your brand (how you present yourself to potential clients), channels (how you reach potential clients), and execution (how you put it all together). In 100 years of marketing, this hasn’t changed. There is nothing new or groundbreaking about this. The only thing you need do to gain a massive competitive marketing advantage these days is simply apply these principals to modern digital marketing.

Getting Started with Digital Marketing for Your DUI / Criminal Defense Law Firm

Gone are the days where only big law firms with the deepest pockets dominate the market. The Internet has leveled the playing field, and if you put together a complete online marketing strategy that works together, YOU can now dominate your local market and become “the go to” DUI and/or criminal defense attorney in your area.

But, if you’re like most criminal defense lawyers, you’ve probably largely ignored the digital shift. There is an overwhelming amount of information out there when it comes to marketing a criminal defense legal practice online. It’s understandable for it to quickly become confusing and to not know where to start.

There are four key pillars to creating a successful digital marketing strategy for your criminal defense law firm, they are:

Pillar 1: Branding & Content Strategy
Pillar 2: Your Website
Pillar 3: Visitors & Website Traffic
Pillar 4: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The first pillar of creating a successful digital marketing strategy for your criminal defense firm is to demonstrate your expertise.

You do this with your brand, content strategy and message.

At its core, your brand should position you as an expert and not just a legal services provider.

Experts can always charge more.

They will also stand out and convert prospects into paying clients at a higher rate. 

You can do this by focusing on getting more online reviews, and creating high quality content designed to help answer prospective client’s questions through the creation of blog posts, web pages, and videos.

You can drive all the traffic in the world to your site, but if it lacks fundamental elements, you’ll likely convert little to none of that traffic into paying clients.

This is one of the reasons why many criminal defense attorneys believe that search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing don’t work.

For these reasons, it’s imperative that your website be built to convert prospects into paying clients before you spend any money on getting visitors to your site.

You want to feature reviews and client testimonials, anticipate and answer prospective client’s questions, and be sure the website is optimized for mobile devices and is very easy to use.

It should have features like click to call buttons, and simple contact forms.

Feature All the Criminal Charges that You Defend

While your firm might be focused on “criminal law,” there are of course many different types of criminal charges that you can help potential clients with. When most of your prospective clients search for legal services, they do so using the keyword of the charge they are facing. For example “dui lawyer Tampa.”

For this reason, you want to make sure that you feature the full range of criminal charges that you defend on your website. Do this by create pages with specific information for each of the different criminal charges you can help a potential client with, such as DUI, drug charges, reckless driving, theft, etc.

For example, if you are a criminal defense lawyer in Tampa, FL, you should have pages for each main type of charge you defend like this:

yourwebsite.com/dui-attorney-tampa-fl
yourwebsite.com/assault-and-battery-attorney-tampa-fl
yourwebsite.com/theft-and-burglary-attorney-tampa-fl
yourwebsite.com/domestic-violence-attorney-tampa-fl

…and so on.

By having a page for each type of charge you can help a client with and in each geographic area you serve, it will help your search engine optimization efforts immensely.

Internet traffic is the lifeblood of any digital marketing strategy. You can be the most qualified, most experienced criminal defense attorney in town, but if potential clients aren’t finding you online, you’re losing out on a lot of business.

If done incorrectly, getting prospective clients to your website can quickly cost you a lot of money with nothing to show for it. The key to making it work for you is to ensure you reach a positive ROI quickly. There are two main things you can do to make this happen.

First is to have pillars 1 and 2 in place before you spend any money getting visitors to your site. This will prevent you from wasting money getting people to your site that won’t convert into paying clients.

Second is to combine your traffic strategy to leverage Google Local Service Ads, pay-per-click, and SEO together. The reason for this is that while SEO for criminal defense attorneys can bring in a lot of new clients, it takes time (usually 3 to 6 months, but potentially longer in highly competitive geographic markets).

So, if you’re only running an SEO campaign, you’re left paying for those services’ month after month without any return on your investment until you reach page 1.

Google LSA for lawyers and Pay-per-click on the other hand is a more immediate way to start getting highly targeted prospective clients to call and visit your website.

The goal here is to begin getting new clients from your paid search campaigns right away so that you are also covering any costs associated with your SEO efforts from the start.

This includes the Ads positions, Google Maps listings (sometimes called the “3 pack”), and the organic results.

Also, as an added bonus, by appearing on page 1 of Google multiple times, it gives you instant credibility. People tend to automatically assume that you must be the best option without you ever having to say so.

At the end of the day, the most important thing about a marketing campaign for your criminal defense firm is for it to be ROI positive, and you should be able to measure that return on your investment.

What we’ve found is that many criminal defense lawyers have no idea where their new clients are coming from.

CRO ensures that you know and understand where your leads are coming from. It helps you know what exactly is working in your marketing strategy and what isn’t. You can track conversions using free tools offered by Google Ads, Google Analytics, and paid third-party tools such as CallRail.

By focusing on and implementing these four pillars, you will have exactly that. You can now be in front of potential clients 24/7 365 days a year as they are looking to solve their legal problems.

It’s amazing to see that even today the majority of criminal defense attorneys and law firms are still not implementing a complete digital marketing strategy like this, leaving a ton of opportunity for those who do.

By leveraging a marketing strategy like this you will no longer have to spend time trying to find new clients or compete on price because you don’t have enough clients.

This can empower you to start charging more for your services and being more selective with the clients you choose to work with.

Not having to constantly think about where your next client will come from will give you more time to focus on the business of your criminal defense law firm, enabling you to grow it at the pace that you want.