How Does Targeted Advertising Work for Law Firms?

Targeted advertising is one of many tools an attorney or law firm can utilize to focus their marketing efforts on people who are more likely to become clients. For those who are not terribly familiar with the term, targeted advertising is basically what it sounds like; targeting marketing efforts on specific groups of people who are more likely to be interested in a product or service being offered than a random collection of people off the street. Depending on a person’s online activity, they may fall into one or more target groups for different types of advertising, products, and services.

Targeted advertising has become increasingly achievable with the rise of technology, saving attorneys and law firms time and money in collecting the necessary data to determine their target market. Rather than manually attempting to figure out which people should be included in the target audience, demographic and behavioral data can be used to direct potential clients in need of legal help directly to an attorney or law firm. Social media and search engine advertising both offer advertisement options which use demographic information such as location, age, etc. and past search engine queries to suss out who the target market for an attorney’s services should be.

Social media platforms may offer advertising services focused on certain demographics of their users.

While not all demographic information is relevant to whether or not a person should be included in the target market, other information including age range and geographic location might be useful. For example, an un-targeted advertisement on Facebook may reach an unfiltered audience across multiple states; while this might be perfectly acceptable for an online retail business, the law differs from state to state, so it’s better to focus on a target audience in the same geographic area as your practice. Similarly, while a fashion or makeup company is likely to market to a younger demographic, people seeking legal aid are generally older.

To get a better idea of the basic demographic information of your clients, consider going to your email list and breaking apart the clients there into sections based on age, geography, gender, etc. If there is an overwhelming majority of a certain age, location, or gender amongst your clients, this is the demographic you know to target with social media and other advertising efforts.

Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo target users for certain advertisements based on past searches.

Search engines provide an effective means of targeted advertising by matching keywords in advertisements with keywords found in users’ past searches. For example, if a Google user has recently submitted search queries like “what to do after a car accident” or “do I need a lawyer”, depending on the keywords associated with your advertisement, it may be possible to target your efforts toward those particular users. This is where some keyword advertising can come in handy for any law firm or attorney before purchasing an ad on any search engine or website.

Some advertising services such as GoogleAds offer tools to help locate the best keywords to optimize your ad’s focus and reach for a target audience, but it isn’t too difficult to identify certain keywords on your own. For example, a quick search for personal injury law firm keywords include “accident attorney”, “car accident attorneys”, and “injury lawyer” among others. However, these terms are highly competitive among injury firms, so you may need to take a more nuanced approach to keyword targeting. If your firm has experience handling specific or niche types of cases, this provides an additional opportunity for even more targeted advertising efforts.

To learn more about targeted advertising for attorneys and law firms, reach out to a legal marketing expert.