Looking for a guide for how to do marketing for criminal defense? If you run a law firm, marketing may not be at the top of your to-do list. After all, you’re busy defending your clients and ensuring they get the best possible outcome. However, marketing is an important part of running a successful law firm.

It can help you attract new clients and grow your practice. Luckily for you, we’ve done all the research, here are some tips for putting together a marketing strategy for criminal defence lawyers. 

Define Your Target Market

The first step to marketing your criminal defence law firm is to define your target market. You can’t be all things to all people, so it’s important to focus on the type of clients you want to attract. Do you want to focus on high-profile cases? Or are you more community-based?

You may also want to think about developing a niche. Niche marketing can be very effective for criminal defence lawyers. For example, you could focus on DUI cases or cases involving domestic violence. This step is crucial as all your marketing efforts will revolve around your target market. 

Law firm marketing is tough, so don’t fail at the beginning by not doing market research. There are a lot of criminal defense lawyers out there, so you need to build a niche target market. Criminal law is too broad of a practice area. Maybe you want to focus on being known as a DUI attorney on military bases.

Create Your Brand Identity 

Once you’ve defined your target market, it’s time to create your brand identity. This includes everything from your law firm’s logo to the way you answer the phone. Your brand should reflect the type of clients you want to attract. When creating the visuals for your brand, think of placements. Are you going to be creating corporate uniforms for your team?

Does your logo need to be displayed on windows or billboards? When planning your logo and brand identity, you need to ensure it fits with all mediums. Your brand identity should also be carried through to your website and any digital marketing you do. Your potential clients should be able to tell, at a glance, what your law firm is all about. 

There are many criminal defence lawyers who have done a good job at building a brand. One of our favourites is a criminal defense attorney called Texas Law Hawk (Brian Wilson.) We just linked to one of his famous Youtube videos below. It’s absolutely insane, but it’s made him famous. Check it out!

For those looking to create a more high-quality and professional brand, you might want to look at CLR Bruce Rivers, you can see one of his videos here. A number of his videos have over one million views.

Make sure your brand identity is clear on your law firm website. This brand will provide the potential client will the first impression of your legal services.

Set a Budget 

Decide how much you are willing to spend on marketing each month or each year. You need to be realistic in order to make the most of your budget. Stick to your budget and don’t overspend. It can be easy over budgeting so make sure you do plenty of research surrounding your target market and the best channels to reach them.

For example,  if your target market is more likely to be reached through digital mediums such as Google AdWords or LinkedIn, then you would want to focus the majority of your budget on those channels. Also, consider any extra marketing costs you may be likely to incur. Examples include ongoing website management, hosting, and software fees.

Doing a PPC campaign will cost a lot of money if you want to generate a lot of leads.

Create Goals For Your Marketing Strategy 

Once your budget is set, you can start to create your marketing strategy. This will involve setting some goals and objectives for your marketing campaign. What do you hope to achieve? More leads? More clients? Increased brand awareness? Once you have set your goals, you can start to plan the tactics you will use to reach them. Your marketing strategy should also consider your target market. Who are they? What are their interests?  What type of content is the most likely to engage with?

Plan How You Will Reach Your Goals

Your marketing strategy will also need to take into account the different stages of the customer journey. For criminal defence lawyers, this might involve creating awareness among potential clients who have been arrested and are looking for representation, then nurturing those leads until they are ready to engage with a lawyer. Some examples of tactics include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO will help make sure your website appears as the top result when potential clients search for lawyers in your area.

Keep in mind that SEO costs a lot of money. Doing local SEO will make it easier for you to rank well and get on the first page of Google search. Trying to rank for the keyword “criminal lawyers” will be very hard. Trying to rank for “criminal lawyers in Calgary, Alberta” is much easier.

A big part of SEO is having an SEO strategy. This can be hard to do if you are not an expert. It might be worth retaining a marketing agency just to give you a plan, then you can write the blogs yourself.

Below are some important parts of SEO:

• Getting testimonials from past clients
• Your website design
• Get tons of backlinks from high-quality websites (link building)
• Putting out quality content for your target audience
• Getting Google Reviews and Clearway reviews
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
• Doing research on the search engine results page

Content Marketing for Marketing for Criminal Defense

Create blog posts, infographics, or other types of content that will be of interest to your target market.

Social Media Marketing 

Using social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook to reach potential clients and build relationships.

Business Networking

If you want to target commercial clients,  get involved with local business networking groups and events.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising 

PPC is a way of advertising on platforms like Google, where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This is a great cost-effective way to get your business off the ground.

Marketing for Criminal Defense Referrals 

Encourage existing clients to refer you to their family and friends who might need your services by offering referral incentives.

Signage

Make sure your firm’s name and logo are prominently displayed on your office building or storefront to improve visibility. 

Directory Listings Marketing for Criminal Defense

List your business in online directories like Google My Business and Yelp. This will make it easier for potential clients to find you when they’re doing a search online. Also, make sure you have your lawyer profile fully filled out on Clearway (this website.)

Marketing for Criminal Defense Brochures and Pamphlets

Another way to get your name out there is to create marketing materials like brochures and pamphlets that you can distribute in your community.

As you can see, there are a number of different marketing strategies that you can use to promote your criminal defence law firm. Pick the ones that are best suited to your goals.

Plan How You Will Measure Success

Finally, your marketing strategy should have metrics in place to measure success. What goals do you want to achieve? How will you know if you are meeting those goals? By setting measurable goals, you can track your progress and adjust your strategy as needed. Some examples of tracking your marketing efforts include :

• Number of new clients
• Client satisfaction rating
• Number of online reviews
• Website traffic
• Engagement on social media

Grow Your Criminal Defense Law Firm With These Marketing Tips

Marketing for criminal defence lawyers can be a challenge, but by following these tips, you can reach more potential clients and grow your criminal defence law business. Do you have any other tips for marketing for criminal defence lawyers? Share them in the comments below.

Online marketing doesn’t need to be impossible. Once you figure out a strategy for your online presence, you can start to get lots of quality leads. If you don’t have a marketing plan, you should hire a marketing agency right away. You can contact us and we can try and connect you with one that’s affordable. We know a bunch of good and bad ones.

Below are a few things a marketing agency might be able to do for you:

• Get high-quality leads by using organic search
• Put together a marketing plan
• Put the right headings on your blogs
• Create landing pages for your legal practice areas
• Help you with your conversion rates (turning consultations to retained clients)
• Make sure you have contact information and phone number in all the right places
• Claiming your profile on websites like Clearway and Avvo
• How to encourage word-of-mouth
• Setting up your Google Ads account