Getting clients can be a challenge for any law firm. Unlike other consumer-based practice areas, immigration law requires different approaches and some creative strategies since clients can come from a wide variety of places – both geographically and in terms of marketing sources.
If you find yourself in that position or are looking for ideas on how to expand your firm’s marketing efforts, then this is for you. We’ve put together a list of marketing tips for immigration lawyers that include both online marketing and offline sources to consider implementing into your client acquisition strategy.
1. Create an SEO strategy to Get Clients Online
Search engine optimization is one of the best organic, inbound marketing to generate immigration clients for your firm. There is an ocean of opportunities in terms of keywords and searches being conducted related to immigration.
From just a quick look at the keyword immigration in Ahrefs (one of our trusted SEO tools), there are over an estimated 206,000 searches for the term “immigration” per month in the United States alone and 481,000 globally.
It also reports over 799,000 keywords including the term immigration. Of course, not all of these search terms and keywords will be relevant to your firm. However, these estimates tend to be conservative and don’t even measure overseas traffic accurately.
Immigration law firms small and large can develop a plan for their organic search strategy appropriately aimed at attracting a lot of new clients, whether they’re marketing themselves as a local, state or national immigration firm. What’s important is to be very intentional about the long term objective for your firm and develop a plan for search optimization solely focused on that objective.
Our SEO for immigration lawyers article is aimed towards giving you a clearer understanding of how to break down your search marketing into tips and tactics to focus on executing.
2. Use Content Marketing as the Backbone of Your Online Marketing
Content is not just important, it is the essential part of an immigration firm’s online marketing strategy. Whether heavily invested into solely SEO or incorporating social media and other online marketing channels, content is the foundation and key component that will drive each of these channels as well as traffic to your site.
In fact, your content marketing strategy shouldn’t be seen as a standalone marketing effort, but as an integral part of your social media and search engine optimization.
There are few other practice areas where content is important than for imimgration law firms investing in their online marketing. By making your content your primary online marketing activity to invest into, other online channels you commit resources and energy to will shine with less effort while having more success.
Choosing the immigration content and blog topics your firm will produce and publish is important to align with the rest of your strategy and be as effective as possible in generating more leads and clients.
3. Promote Your Firm and Content on Social Media
Social media is an incredible marketing tool for many individuals and businesses, including law firms. Immigration lawyers have particularly benefited from social networking platforms and have been among the first of firms to adopt their newest and most bleeding edge features.
Law firms can take advantage of many useful features on social platforms to promote themselves and their content. While we all have access to the same features and tools on a given platform, there isn’t a single one-size fits all approach to social media marketing for firms.
Immigration attorneys have incorporated a number of different content formats and schedules that constitute their strategy for social. From sharing tips and news that impacts immigrants and applicants, to posting articles from their website or blog and even hosting online events such as webinars and live-streams.
When performed correctly, network effects exist on social media that allow your efforts to snowball overtime and develop an ever-increasing base of followers that have your content delivered to you and see you as their go-to authority for all things immigration.
In order to see consistent results, it’s important to have a routine and publishing schedule for your social strategy. For ideas on how to use it effectively and plan your routine, check out our social media marketing tips for immigration law firms.
4. Invest in Video Marketing For Growth-Focused Immigration Law Firms
Video is a channel that will increasingly make sense for immigration attorneys to participate in. It’s the next best thing after being able to have a face-to-face with a client. Video allows you to get in front of your audience and provide useful information and answers to questions they have about their immigration process.
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and continues to grow in popularity. Immigration lawyers that focus their practices’ positioning on serving clients nationally or large metropolitan areas are best suited to see returns from promoting their business on YouTube.
While YouTube isn’t for all immigration law firms, video marketing can still be an ideal fit for many and they should consider committing efforts to it. Social Media networks and your website are excellent ways to promote your videos.
Social networks also have a bias towards promoting video over text and images in their users’ social feeds. So you’re likely to get more reach with your videos than you are with text, links and photo-based posts.
5. Attract Clients through Lead Magnets
Not everyone is going to be ready to get in touch with an immigration attorney at the same point in time. Some will contact a lawyer early in the process, while others may wait whether they’re not ready to immigrate for personal or work reasons or just want to collect more information and continue their research first. By that time, they may have learned about your, engaged with your content and already have forgotten about your by the time to call or hire an attorney.
In order to stay top of mind and maximize the number of leads you generate, a lead magnet can help convert your one-time, earned traffic into owned traffic that you can continue engaging with in the future.
By creating and promoting a lead magnet such as an ebook or video lesson series that you give away for free in exchange for the recipient’s email address, you have a way to stay in touch. Through automated email campaigns, you’ll stay top of mind, build trust and continue to provide high-quality and valuable information until they’re ready to contact you.
6. Network with Other Lawyers
Sometimes your professional colleagues can be among your best promoters and avenues for new clients. Immigration lawyers make up a small chunk of the practice areas covered by over 1 million actively licensed attorneys in the United States.
Developing referral partners whether paid or through some other form of quid pro quo can help you develop each other’s business. Let them know exactly what type of law you practice, that you focus specifically on immigration law and what problems you help your clients solve.
You can refine and narrow your networking strategy if you’re specialized by looking at attorneys who specialize themselves in complementing industries or practice areas. For instance, if you specialize in immigraiton for business owners and investors, then perhaps you should seek out corporate lawyers that handle international business affairs.
7. Develop Business Relationships Abroad
Similar to networking with other attorneys, another self-promotional method is business development in your target overseas markets. For instance, if you handle a lot of immigration cases from Mexico, consider speaking with consultants and attorneys in Mexico that deal with expat immigration matters. You’re likely to send each other some business and strengthen a mutually beneficial business relationship referring new business to each other.
You can also get more creative with your marketing by connecting with ESL schools (English as a second language) for professional workers (i.e. doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.) looking to immigrate in the near future. Making connections with these types of organizations can be beneficial in developing a stream of leads for your law firm.
