Law Firm Marketing Strategy: 13 Ways to Grow Your Legal Practice

The most successful lawyers have a well-defined law firm marketing strategy. Do you have one? If you don’t, you need to start to create one now. Even if you’ve made one in the past, it’s always a good idea to revisit and update it annually. To grow your law firm into a thriving and more profitable business, you must attract new clients and cultivate new business. A solid marketing strategy and plan help you grow your firm by ensuring your firm’s marketing efforts will be as effective as possible.

In this guide, we’ll explain how to grow your law firm to the next level by creating a marketing strategy and executing an effective marketing plan based on your goals.

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a strategy?

While “law firm marketing strategy” and “marketing plan” may sound similar, understanding the difference is essential for streamlining your firm’s marketing efforts. 

Your law firm marketing strategy is where you will focus your efforts to achieve your goals and how you will succeed. For example, if your goal is to win more clients from online sources, your strategy might be “to redesign our website focused on clients’ wants and needs.” This strategy spells out where actions should be taken and what the focus should be, but it does not contain the specific elements to achieve the goal.

In contrast, your marketing plan defines the specific actions you will take to execute your strategy and achieve your marketing goals. Your solicitor marketing plan will also outline the marketing methods you’ll use to help your law firm achieve its marketing goals. In the case of our solicitor strategy example, the steps might be:

•   Engage a competent web designer to rebuild your law firm’s website.
•   Carry out market research to determine the wants and needs of your clients.
•   Set out the layout of your website to ensure ease of navigation.
•   Create an ideal client profile.
•   Carry out keyword research to determine what your ideal client is searching for.
•   Create optimised legal services content designed to attract your ideal clients to your website
•   Consider ways in which to drive additional traffic to your website
•   Include contact options to make it easy for potential clients to contact you
•   Establish a process for handling enquiries generated by your website
•   Review monthly to analyse the results – e.g. how many page visits, search terms used, number of enquiries, conversions, etc.

While your law firm marketing strategy might be short and to the point, even the outline for your marketing plan is detailed and gives you a basis on which you can act to realise your goal.

Creating your law firm marketing strategy

Now you understand the basics of what goes into a law firm’s marketing strategy, how do you create one? Remember, your marketing strategy is not just one thing. The section below outlines the different pieces you need to create your solicitor marketing strategy and what they mean:

Executive summary

Summarise your overall marketing strategy based on the following sections. Keep it clear and concise. If one of your employees or another stakeholder wants the lowdown of your marketing strategy, this brief section should tell them what they need to know. 

Core message

This is the key message you want your target audience to know about your law firm. Your core message should go beyond letting your ideal clients understand what services you offer—it should speak deeper to their legal and personal pain points and needs, addressing the potential client’s first impression and trust in your firm.

Market analysis

“Market” refers to the people, businesses, and organisations that are your actual and prospective clients. Think about the size of your law firm’s business opportunity based on your practice area(s), geographical location, target audience, etc. Target audience

This is one of the most essential foundations of a good marketing strategy. Understanding and defining your target audience—including their characteristics, purchasing habits when it comes to legal services and pain points—will go a long way toward helping you execute an effective marketing plan. 

Competitive analysis

You need to understand how and what your competitors are doing. What are the characteristics of your competitors? What is their market share? How do they try to differentiate themselves from other law firms? In addition, consider how their marketing strategies contribute to building their law firm’s reputation.

Strategic methods

A key element of setting your marketing strategy is your strategic method. This is the how of your marketing strategy. Think about this as the key pointer to the strategic direction your law firm is taking. Perhaps strategic methods are best explained by examples:

Prioritise client experience for organic growth: target high-value clients through excellent service rather than mass lead generation.

Become the go-to expert in a niche: focus on a niche area of law where you plan to stand out from the crowd.

Prioritising online client acquisition: focus on digital marketing to acquire clients without reliance on referrals or traditional advertising.

Services offered

Aligned with the strategic method are the legal services you will offer. What practice area(s) and type of clients do you offer these services? Are you providing legal help to individuals with accident injuries? Or maybe you provide legal assistance to families going through complex divorces? What are the benefits of those services, and how will you deliver them?

Pricing and promotion

Again, how you price and promote your services closely aligns with your strategic methods. What is your law firm’s pricing model, and what are the different prices? What marketing channels will you utilise, and why have you chosen them? 

Bowman’s Strategic Clock is one of the best tools for understanding the impact of price in your deliberations. You can use it to set your pricing strategy and review your competitors’ pricing strategies, which can then feed into your strategic marketing plan.

Compile your marketing strategy.

Having worked through the above sections, you should now have a robust marketing strategy. Please do not be alarmed if you have managed to distil your executive summary into a couple of paragraphs and bullet points outlining your marketing strategy. That’s simply the focus and the how. The next part of the process is your law firm marketing plan, in which you put some flesh on the bones of the marketing strategy for your law firm.

Now, create your law firm marketing plan.

Taking the time to create and execute a detailed law firm marketing plan gives you a clear roadmap to refer to throughout the year. A thorough marketing plan for your law firm can also save you time, effort, and marketing budget in the long run. A defined plan clarifies who on your team is responsible for what. This helps you stay on track and accomplish your firm’s legal marketing tasks that might otherwise fall through the cracks.

Plan structure overview

Just as you would write down your business plan, having a good structure for your marketing plan is essential. This way, everyone at your firm can be on the same page. Having an official marketing plan also lets you measure and track your progress. 

Overall, a successful law firm marketing plan means four steps:

1. Map your strategy to your plan
2. Define your marketing goals.
3. Write down how you plan to achieve those goals.
4. Execute the plan. 
5. Measure, tweak and repeat

You must be able to map your marketing plan directly back to your marketing strategy. If the two conflict, you will go around in circles rather than achieving your goals.

Mapping your strategy to your plan

Take each element of the marketing strategy for your law firm you developed earlier and focus on them one at a time.

Ask yourself, what do I need to do to execute this strategy? The strategic element provides you with direction. Your plan sets out the nuts and bolts and the practicalities. This starts with the goals you must achieve to successfully implement your law firm marketing strategy.

Your law firm’s marketing goals

Define your marketing goals and ensure they align with your firm’s strategy and business goals. Tracking and measuring your success is impossible Without quantifiable goals for your law firm marketing. If you’ve already created a solid law firm business plan, the good news is that you aren’t starting from scratch. Look at the overall marketing goals you laid out within your business plan and modify them if needed. 

Make sure that any goals you set are SMART and measurable. You should be able to set an objective and a time frame for your marketing goals to reasonably measure how well you’ve achieved them in the future.

Examples of achievable marketing goals include:

• Growing your legal practice’s client base. For example, you could set a goal of gaining a certain number of new, active clients by the end of the quarter.
• Raising firm pricing. Set the goal of increasing the pricing of some of your legal services to a specific number by the end of the year.
• Elevating brand awareness for your law firm. More subjective goals like growing brand awareness are more challenging to measure. However, one of the ways you could evaluate brand awareness is by looking at your firm’s organic web traffic—which is the number of visitors that arrive at your website from search results and not from paid advertising.

  Your legal marketing plan components

When it comes to putting your law firm’s marketing plan to paper, keep in mind that you’ll likely have more success if you keep it concise. 

While the details of your law firm’s marketing plan will be customised to your specific goals, it should include the following general sections:

• Overview. Your plan should outline the how and why of your law firm’s marketing. You may want to include:
  • A statement of purpose. Why are you marketing your firm? What do you want to achieve by marketing your law firm?
  • Your law firm marketing goals. You should include the goals you’ve already worked up.
• Financial investment. How much of your firm’s budget will you invest in marketing? Confidently answer this question by reading our law firm financial management guide.
• Marketing activities. What marketing tactics, campaigns, and activities will you take on to achieve your goals? When listing your firm’s specific marketing tactics, ensure they connect with one of your marketing goals. For example, if your goal is to generate five new clients each month, and your strategy to achieve that is through social media, the marketing activities could be a social media campaign through Facebook ads. 
• Measurement strategies. How will success be measured? For each marketing activity listed, have a way to measure success. For content marketing, a measure of success could be a 20% increase in organic search traffic to your law firm’s website.

Execution of your law firm marketing plan

Make sure you assign responsibility for the different components of your marketing plan. Who does what? Don’t forget to consider who will manage the project—whether it’s up to the individuals assigned or if another person will be responsible for it. Clear execution responsibilities and reporting structures will give your law firm marketing plan a better chance of success.

Consider outsourcing to a law firm marketing agency or experienced freelancers.

When looking at what needs to be done to achieve your law firm’s marketing goals, be honest about whether your firm can achieve all your goals internally. If handling marketing internally within your firm, for instance through an internal marketing department, isn’t feasible, consider outsourcing some (or even most) of the marketing tasks. You can hire an expert to help with everything from SEO to content creation—so don’t be afraid to outsource where you need it. Clio’s global network of Certified Consultants is a good place to start.

Law firm marketing plan example

Your law firm marketing plan should be tailored to your firm’s goals and strategy. Clio’s Legal Marketing Masterclass series will help you:

•   Create an effective marketing plan that’s tailored to your firm’s capacity, goals and strengths
•   Ensure you’re set up to handle new leads and property track conversions

·   Collect data and run reports to analyse the return on your marketing investments

Law firm marketing tactics

Today, there are so many ways to market your law firm. Because of this, creating your legal marketing plan can feel overwhelming. Remember to keep your firm’s goals in mind and choose marketing tactics you can successfully execute in your marketing plan.

Here are seven types of legal marketing tactics to consider for your law firm:

1. SEO

Being easy to find online is one of any law firm’s most critical marketing strategies. Search engine optimisation (SEO) can help with just that. SEO strategies can improve your law firm website’s position in search engine results pages (like Google) to drive more visitors. Learn more by reading our lawyer’s guide to SEO.

2. Local SEO

SEO is essential for ensuring your law firm shows up in online searches. However, most of your clients will live relatively close to your office.  To ensure clients who live or work close to your office can find you online, you also want to optimise your firm’s ranking in local search results, aka local SEO, as part of your law firm marketing strategy.

Local SEO tactics:

• Ensure your website has local keywords. To help improve your law firm’s website ranking in local searches, add local keyword data to your website. For example, if you’re a Birmingham-based divorce solicitor, you would want to integrate terms like “Birmingham divorce solicitor” on your law firm’s website.  
• Be consistent with your NAP. Your NAP (your Name, Address and Phone data) should be consistently formatted anywhere it appears online (like your website, Facebook page, etc.) to optimise your local SEO.
• Get backlinks. Backlinks from other websites of authority can enhance your law firm website’s search rankings by building up your site’s authority online.

Generate client reviews. Positive reviews are key to building your law firm’s reputation. Good, authentic customer reviews from sites like ReviewSolicitors are a tremendous local SEO marketing strategy.

3. GEO

As people increasingly use AI to search for information, you should include additional steps in your law firm’s marketing tactics to include GEO. GEO stands for “Generative Engine Optimisation”.

A key element of GEO is creating high-quality content that addresses common legal questions. You might address clients’ common concerns and set out scenarios they might search for. You should use clear language and structured data.

4. Search advertising

While SEO is an organic way to drive visitors to your law firm’s website, you can also employ a paid online search advertising campaign to help bring potential clients to your website. 

Examples of search advertising strategies include:

• Pay-per-click (PPC). With PPC advertising, you can set up an online advertising campaign where you pay a set amount each time an online visitor clicks on your ad. This can effectively increase your website’s traffic—but it costs money for each click. This guide to PPC advertising success for lawyers explains the essentials of the model.
• Google Advertising. Depending on your practice area, a pay-per-click Google Ads campaign could effectively drive traffic to your law firm online. You can learn about Google Advertising 101 for lawyers here to determine if it’s a viable marketing strategy for your firm. 

5. Law firm website

If you’re investing in SEO, PPC, or both, your goal is to drive potential clients to your law firm’s website. Your law firm website is a powerful marketing tool in itself. 

Think of your law firm’s website as your law firm’s online shop window, and prioritise its user-friendliness (this how-to guide for law firm website design can help). Your website must be:

• Easy to navigate and accessible. Images should be adequately sized, and content should be easy to read. Contact information should also be easy to find.
• Mobile friendly. You want people to be able to navigate your website on any device, and the mobile-friendliness of your website impacts its search ranking.
• SEO & GEO optimised. Content on your website should be high quality, clear, keyword-optimised, and aligned with your law firm brand. Your content should directly answer common legal questions, address client concerns and play out scenarios clients may encounter.

6. Social

When done right, social media can be a powerful marketing tool for your law firm, helping your firm:

• Reach a large audience for little to no financial investment. Most of your firm’s potential clients use social media today, so having a social presence is a valuable opportunity to connect with people. 

Combining social media marketing on platforms like Facebook with paid advertisements can help you reach new clients for a relatively low cost. As Barry Walker, Managing Partner at Walker Law, notes, “Social media marketing is the future for lawyers. Most people perform research on their smartphones. I get one to two significant cases per year from paid marketing efforts on Facebook for a minimal investment.”

• Build community and brand authority. By sharing quality content with your targeted audience on social media, you can organically boost your connections with the community and showcase your position as an expert in the field. A strong presence on social media can also help expose your firm to new networks of people – and potential clients. 
• Give your clients another way to find your firm. Being online and on social media in a professional context also makes it easier for clients to find your law firm. 

7. Law firm branding

Finally, how your law firm differentiates itself from competitors – or your law firm’s branding – is an essential element of your legal marketing strategy. Finding ways to differentiate your firm from other law firms in your target audience can also help you grow your law firm by gaining new, ideal clients. 

Build your law firm’s brand:

As Katy Goshtasbi of Puris Consulting writes, a law firm must “resonate with the right clientele.” To develop your law firm’s brand:

• Establish a unique selling point. What sets your firm apart from the competition? Work out what makes your firm unique and what speaks to your potential clients. Then, showcase that point in your firm’s marketing to establish a distinct brand. Take the case of Qualia Law CIC, a finalist for the 2024 Reisman Award for Legal Impact. Qualia Law CIC specialises in using specialised legal services to support vulnerable populations, including those with dementia, mental health issues, brain injuries and learning disabilities. Clarify your target audience. Your target audience must be narrowed down as much as possible. If you’re targeting everyone, few people will be interested, and you could alienate potential clients with watered-down messaging.  Develop your ideal client profile and design your messages to that ideal client for that specific area of law. Where you provide a range of legal services, create at least one ideal profile for each sector.
• Determine your core messages. It’s not enough to say, “We care and are good at what we do, so hire us.” Use concise, authentic, unique language that grabs your audience’s attention. Have a brainstorming session with your team, then zero in on the right key messages.
• Make a strong first impression with the correct logo. Your law firm logo is one of the most widely used and seen visual representations of your brand. You must make sure it’s both professional and appealing. Plenty of free design tools can help you create and customise the perfect logo for your brand. Hubspot’s free logo maker is an excellent option because it has templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

8. Content marketing

Content marketing involves creating quality content related to your practice and sharing it online via multiple mediums. It is a marketing tactic that can help build your brand and establish expertise, offer value to potential clients, and help drive more people to your website. Content marketing could include blog posts, videos, infographics, or podcasts.

Embrace thought leadership

Thought leadership is a big part of content marketing. To establish your firm as a thought leader or subject matter expert for your target audience, your firm could create and share authoritative and educational content like videos (here’s a guide to law firm video marketing), blog posts, or even answers on forums like Quora. 

9. Email marketing

Email marketing for lawyers is an online marketing strategy that offers a lot of bang for minimal effort (especially if you use tools like Mailchimp to help). Sending targeted and consistent marketing emails to your network can help you build your brand, establish your law firm’s expertise, and bring value to readers. Email marketing is also easy to measure, with marketing platforms offering analytics. The reports will inform you about how many people opened your email and how many times they opened it. They will also explain how many readers clicked through a link in your email, how many times they clicked on links and, importantly, where the link took them. This way, you will know how well your marketing efforts are received. 

Sending out a law firm newsletter can be an effective use of an email marketing strategy. Here are tips for how to start an email newsletter at your law firm.

Law firm KPIs to monitor and measure success

You’ve created a targeted law firm marketing strategy, and you’re executing a killer, professional marketing plan to bring that strategy to life. What’s next? 

To grow your law firm while maximising your marketing budget, you must monitor and measure your marketing key performance indicators (KPIs). 

Tracking your efforts is critical to success and cannot be overlooked. Without measuring, you won’t know what’s working, what’s not, or what marketing efforts are giving you the best return on investment. When you have a clear picture of your results, you can make informed, data-driven decisions for better, faster marketing results for your law firm.

How to track and measure the success of your law firm marketing plan

• Ask for feedback. “How did you hear about our firm?” is a simple question, but the answers can be extremely valuable. You could train your law firm’s assistant to ask and note the answer on the phone or customise your client intake form in Clio Grow with a field to ask when new clients are filling out their paperwork.  Never underestimate your source of business information. It will tell you where your clients are coming from.
• Analyse website analytics. If your law firm’s website is the main point of contact for new clients, look at your website’s traffic analytics. Use Google Analytics to help gather data. It will provide information on:
  • Referring domains: Knowing which website clients were on before they came to your site can show where your marketing efforts are working and how effective your online advertising is.
  • Bounce rate. How long have people been staying on your site? If they leave quickly or “bounce,” that tells you that your website needs to improve new lead conversion (for example, it may appear spammy and need a refresh).
  • Traffic. Look at your website’s raw traffic and compare it to the number of new clients who come in for a consultation. If there’s a significant gap, it can reveal marketing areas that are causing problems.

Also, consider using Google Search Console. This tool will allow you to:

Find out what queries people use to find your website in Search, the volume of each query, the number of impressions and, importantly, the number of clicks through to your website.

The number of impressions each page received and how many people clicked through from that impression.

The summary report in the Search Console will also give you information on the total number of clicks your website has received over time, the total impressions over that period, the average position in Search, and the average click-through rate.

• Source data from your client onboarding software. Your firm’s client intake and onboarding software can also provide valuable insights for your marketing efforts. Clio Grow’s client intake insights software, for example, lets you identify referral sources for new clients and enables you to create custom reports on lead sources. This way, you can quickly and easily pinpoint where your marketing plan has worked and hasn’t been as successful. 

Final notes on law firm marketing strategies

New business is key to thriving for every law firm. To get new business, you must let people know you’re out there – this is where your law firm marketing strategy and plan come in. There are many ways to market your law firm, but you’ll have the most success if you build a marketing strategy based on SMART goals from which you can create a marketing plan for your law firm. By executing marketing according to a structured plan – and measuring the results – you can help potential clients reach you and help grow your law firm. 

We published this blog post in February 2025. Last updated: March 5, 2025.

Categorized in: Marketing