Immigration laws have intricacies only known to lawyers, and it is also constantly evolving. Hence, if you are a foreigner who is staring at a legal tussle, it is best to hire a legal professional to represent you in court.
Immigration firms can help you in many ways. For instance, lawyers can provide much-needed advice on how to ace your application, helping you avoid minor mishaps that could dim your chances of getting approved. Immigration professionals can also help protect your rights, explain the rules about citizenship, types of visas, and may help prevent deportation.
These other legal activities may not be known to everybody. Hence, a good marketing strategy may be in order for immigration firms to build awareness and eventually get more clients.
8 Ways Immigrations Law Firms Can Acquire More Clients
1. Establish Your Online Presence
These days, individuals use their mobile phones, laptops, and computers to search for products and services. Therefore, building and strengthening your online presence is key to allow potential clients to find you.
You can do this in many ways. Having your immigration firm listed in the directory of local businesses may be the first and easiest step. State your business location, operating hours, and services being offered.
If you haven’t built your own website, do it as soon as possible. Your firm can hire a webmaster or a third-party company specializing in immigration lawyer marketing to help your firm out.
2. Practice Content Marketing To Widen Your Reach
Once you have got your website up and ready, it is time to up the ante by learning more about content marketing, especially search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Sound SEO practices allow your immigration firm to rank high on the search engine’s results page. You would want your firm to rank high because 75% of the users don’t scroll past the first page of these results, based on a research by HubSpot.
Search engines constantly update their ranking factors. However, the main factors include relevance, authoritativeness, and high-quality content. This means that content is able to answer the user search query.
Have your immigration lawyers brush up their skills on content marketing. To further attract potential clients, have them explain the basics of US Immigration law in a more understandable and interesting manner through a blog. Integrate videos and other forms of content to appeal to wider audiences.
3. Explore All Online Channels
Use all channels possible to reach out to your target clients. Apart from your firm’s website, create social media channels. In addition, upload all types of content–whether audio, such as podcasts, videos, infographics, or webinars.
Encourage your immigration attorneys to open accounts in professional sites for connections and potential referrals to specific immigration problems in need of advice and representation. Think of it as networking done digitally.
4. Understand Your Target Clients
Before starting your firm, you may already have a group of clients in mind. Revisit whether you need to change your target group.
Once your firm is sure about its preferred ‘markets,’ understand more things about them. Online, you can ask your webmaster to conduct surveys to know the main issues that migrants face. Your firm can also check web analytics to know what your target audience loves to know about, at which time your site gets the most visits, the pages that the majority of your visitors read, and so on.
If your firm is just starting out, consider accepting pro bono cases to establish your reputation. Inversely, capitalize on your lawyers’ specializations. Do both if your legal firm thinks it is better that way.
5. Don’t Rule Out Traditional Marketing Strategies
While everything seems to focus on digital marketing these days, conventional marketing shouldn’t be forgotten as a potential strategy for expanding your client list. It doesn’t hurt to print out some brochures and flyers, and then place them on places where immigrants and other prospects are likely to converge.
Pay for advertisements on television, radio, billboards, or newspapers. Or, propose a radio and TV guesting to increase awareness about your firm and its services. Consider sponsoring an event related to immigrants to get additional leads, too.
6. Expand Your Network
Attend every networking opportunity to meet fresh prospects. Despite the stress on digital marketing, having personal interactions and discussions is extremely important in this type of industry.
Before attending a networking activity, ask the organizers for the list of participants, if it is allowed. Check the list and see if there are interesting prospects.
Outside of professional affiliations, immigration lawyers can explore getting club memberships. With the labor market experiencing globalization these days, entrepreneurs and co-members may have hired migrant workers in their companies. That is why businesses need immigration services now more than ever.
7. Boost Your Legal Firm’s Authority
Search engines look at relevance and authority as one of the major ranking factors. When building your authority, your content can rely on other authority sites first as you build your own.
Later, as your sites continue to improve their rankings, it may be used by other sites as a reference.
Outside of the digital world, immigration lawyers from your firm should hone their craft and attend legal seminars and conferences. Send your most stellar lawyers with your junior partners. If given the opportunity to speak or present before their colleagues, your legal staff should be able to leave a lasting positive impression.
If your firm is quite new to the industry, consider striking a partnership with more trusted legal professionals. Ask them to write a blog post or have them appear in one of our podcast episodes. Having links with more reputable organizations will help the public recognize your firm as a respectable legal office.
8. Engage Your Clients In Boosting Your Reputation
When users are looking for products and services, they research the company and customer testimonials. While the general rule of thumb is to take immigration law firm customer reviews with a grain of salt, a survey has revealed that 90% of product buying decisions are influenced by positive online reviews. This makes online reviews a formidable marketing strategy for legal service providers.
• Online Client Reviews - Immigration lawyers can ask their clients to leave honest and unbiased reviews on their website and third-party review sites.
• Word-Of-Mouth Advertising - Like online reviews, potential buyers and service seekers rely on family or friend recommendations. You can offer perks and other discounts to clients who refer customers to you.
The Bottom Line
Legal firms are often accused of being impersonal. But, to be effective in getting new clients, your firm must appeal to the emotions of potential customers. Thus, apart from being really good at solving your clients’ immigration problems, it pays to have the public perceive your law firm as having great compassion for helping migrants in need.
