Are you looking to get more divorce clients? A lot of people need help with their divorce, but how many are willing to spend $2000 on a retainer? You need to find clients that will pay your fees.

The public always assumes that family lawyers are super-rich. This falsehood originates mostly in memes that make their way around the internet. I’ve included a few of my favourite, but not accurate, family law memes in this article.

As a family lawyer, you know that it’s easy to bring in leads. You just need to spend money. However, it’s hard to bring in quality leads.

Law firms want clients that are willing to pay and are not difficult to deal with. Clients that want to pay $500 for a contested divorce and like to report lawyers to the law society are to be avoided.

I have six years of experience in the family law industry, most of which was spent as a family law firm manager in Toronto. I tried everything from radio ads, Google Ads, guerilla marketing, Facebook ads, SEO, and social media marketing.

You can learn from my successes and failures.

Wasting Marketing Dollars

Before I tell you what works, I will tell you what doesn’t work. Don’t waste money on radio advertising. You will have to spend around $500,000 before you see results. Unless you are a massive law firm, you can’t afford it.

Trying to grow a social media following as a divorce law firm can seem like a waste of time and money so you must correctly market yourself. Let’s face it, who wants to follow something negative? Do you follow funeral homes on your Facebook and Twitter?

Divorce and death are things that nobody wants to think about when they don’t need to.

That is why you need to have out-of-the-box marketing techniques, strategies, and a team to help get the word out about your firm. These strategies don’t have to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars as some can be organic marketing.

Let’s discuss everything needed about divorce and ways to better market your firm.

Divorce Statistics

Let’s take a dive into divorce rates and how they have fluctuated over the years. Unfortunately, divorces are something that continues to happen no matter the time of year. However, recent studies within the National Law Review have shown a peak in divorce rates within the year 2020.

The pandemic led to many stressors within families. For example, the pandemic was the first time, for most families, that everybody was home at once. While this may have been great for some, it sadly led to uncovered issues for others.

The pandemic made people take a hard look at their family dynamic as many adults had to learn how to be a parent, spouses, professionals, and more. Furthermore, it took a lot of people to navigate and manage these multiple roles under one roof.

The additional financial stressors the pandemic left on every person. Studies have shown that divorce rates will increase between 10-25%.

Although these may not be the main factors, they are some of the reasons why divorce rates are rising. COVID-19 left an impacting impression on families, relationships, and individuals but you must do what makes you the happiest.

With divorce rates rising, it’s important to note that you can still get a divorce during the pandemic. While some businesses closed down or moved remotely, law firms will always stay open to help you get started on the right path.

Where To Spend Money As a Family Law Firm

Where To Spend Money As a Family Law Firm

You need to be in the correct place when someone needs the services of a lawyer. Therefore, social media and billboards don’t work as effectively. Guerilla marketing can work, but I will cover that in another article.

You need to be found when someone is searching for a family lawyer on Google. It’s that simple. Someone is searching for “Family Lawyer Brampton.” They are probably looking for a family lawyer in Brampton.

If you have a big budget, you can try search engine optimization. However, you need to be willing to set aside a budget to hire a professional agency to do that for you, because it is a very detail-orientated task that needs special expertise.

Many marketing agencies are willing to work with a budget, but you must be willing to spend a majority, if not all, on SEO.

Know Your Cost Per Lead

If you are in a smaller city like Edmonton or Regina, you might be able to get to the number one spot without spending too much money. However, you will still need to pay for a high-quality website. You will also need to earn backlinks.

Most law firms that are not willing to invest big in marketing, will have to use reinforcements of organic marketing until they find a better-suited budget for SEO.

Although you don’t need thousands of dollars for SEO you should look into getting a quote from a marketing agency to see what services fit you best.

You need to be willing to spend enough to get to the top of the 1st page for highly searched keywords.

Therefore, getting a quote will help you understand what SEO services you need the most. For all we know, you might not need content creation and graphics to increase your SEO but might need something as simple as link building to boost your results.

Get More Divorce Clients

I always found the best quality leads come from Google Ads. While the cost per family law lead is high (around $110/lead in Toronto and $70/lead in Regina), the leads are very motivated and serious.

If you can find a reputable company to purchase leads from, you should consider it. Because of referral rules, this tends to be an underground community.

Know The Divorce Clients Market

There is very little reliable legal research that law firms can use. Every year, my friend George Psiharis releases the Clio Legal Trends report. Instead of talking about it here, go do a Google search and find it. It’s amazing. In October 2021, the next one will come out.

If you have limited time, then just look at the graphs. The graphs will tell you how much the average lawyer charges for their hourly rate. It will tell you what clients want the most when hiring a law firm. It will discuss where the disconnects are between lawyers and clients.

Pick a few things from the report, and work on them throughout the year. The 2020 report showed that COVID-19 has destroyed the legal market. I’m hoping that the 2021 report shows some recovery.

Use Google My Business To Get Divorce Clients

I find that Google My Business confuses law firms the most. It’s separate from the normal keyword search that you are used to on Google.

You need to have an account if you want to show up on Google Maps. I recommend hiring a professional marketing company to assist you with this. As a lawyer, you should focus on practicing law, not learning how to do legal marketing.

It’s important to note that having a Google My Business is not a recommendation but should be considered a necessity. This is how a majority of people will find a law firm within their location.

For example, when we search for ‘law firms’ Google will ask if you want to search for firms within your location, and that is how Google My Business will provide you with results.

You need to have your business set up with this account so you can appear in those search results, it will help people find your location, and hours, see your ratings, and learn more about your firm.

Furthermore, and I cannot stress this enough, you need to have a Google My Business account if you want to be seen by Google and potential clients.

Enhance your SEO

On the other hand, if you look into hiring a marketing agency or team, they can handle the back work and promotional side of your firm. For example, the marketing team can instill basic SEO skills to help with your keywords, rankings, and authority on Google.

By sticking to foundational and relevant keywords you will be able to accurately reach your intended clientele. If you want to reach your target market to the best of your ability you need to invest in SEO.

Even though content and design are important factors, SEO is the backbone of marketing success. With the help of strengthening your keywords, it can help businesses sell on Amazon, increase site visibility, gain authority, and build foundational relationships with others.

Furthermore, after having an agency audit your company they will provide you with better SEO options to optimize your site to its fullest potential from content, link building, web design, and more.

Having SEO will help your law firm stand out against your competitors. For the most part, law firms do not have a marketing agency or a strong marketing team with experience in SEO, so if you want to stand out among your competitors you should budget SEO in your finances.

This can help keep you on top of Google’s rankings from local to non-local searches.

It can be hard to get more divorce clients, but SEO can help.

Try Nontraditional Marketing

Budgeting for marketing may not be at the top of the list for every law firm, but there are some great cost-effective ways to implement nontraditional marketing into your business growth. To start, you can do some trial-and-error testing with organic marketing. You can begin with social media marketing, youtube, or podcasts.

Although these may seem uncommon or unconventional for lawyers and law firms, these can lead to great results because not every firm is implementing these techniques.

With social media marketing, you can pick your highest rating platform and post more stories.

With the increase in video watching on platforms, this would be most ideal. These videos can consist of a day in the life of a lawyer, introducing each lawyer, telling stories about how the firm was created, and if plausible, sharing some of your favourite cases.

By creating these videos you are building trust with your audience and letting them see a different side of you. In addition, you can even do a Q&A with your audience so they can learn more about you.

With the help of social media, you can also implement youtube videos. Now, these will look different for a law firm than most businesses but it is still a great way to reach your audience. On youtube, you can also recreate a day in the life video, but you can also make educational videos as well.

Get More Divorce Clients

Let’s say your firm has a branch in financial and banking law, for a youtube video you can create a twist on it and talk about proper ways to invest and bank.

If you are a divorce lawyer, you can discuss your point of view on ‘marriage secrets’, prenups, statistics, and more.

Podcasts are one of the best ways to get the word out about your firm. This may seem like the most unconventional marketing technique but it works. If you are able to find podcasts to be a guest on you get to reach the untapped potential within your target market.

By going on podcasts you can discuss cases you have helped on, seen, and what you have learned from them.

Helpful tools and tips

You can also give out tips and advice on how to find a lawyer, what to look for, and questions to ask while they are getting a quote. Not only that, but this is an opportunity for you to build rapport with your firm and to represent them in a good light.

I hope you enjoyed this article on legal marketing and were able to learn more about some traditional and nontraditional marketing that can help your firm.

With all the helpful tools and tips out there don’t be afraid to try something new, as it can be the leading factor in gaining more clients.

Good luck in trying to get more divorce clients. I hope you enjoyed some of the family law memes in this article!

Find a Local Lawyer

Contact us

Marketing Tips to Get More Divorce Clients