Employment Lawyer Marketing

A sustainable employment law practice needs clients—ones that have moved down a pipeline from a person with a need to a lead, and then to a satisfied beneficiary of your legal services. To accomplish this, you need a tactical, creative, and data-grounded digital marketing strategy.

Growing a business is a full-time undertaking. That’s why most law firms turn to outside professionals to better understand the market, maximize their ROI, and reach their business and reputation goals. This frees you to take on the role you perform best—employment lawyer.

It’s estimated that one-third of legal consumers begin their search for a lawyer online. This is probably a conservative estimate. More than ever, people and companies turn to Google as the first step in finding an employment attorney.

We’ve put together our employment lawyer marketing guide for law firms and solo attorneys who want to generate traffic, secure more leads, strengthen brand recognition, and turn leads into clients.

Defining Your Goals as an Employment Law Firm

Many law firms come to us at a time when they’re still not sure what their goals are. That’s okay—a question is always an opportunity. Discussing your goals is a productive conversation, one where you get to take a step back and fully evaluate where you are and where you want to be.

The great thing about online marketing is that a good campaign has the capability to change who you are as a law office in all the ways you want to improve. Maybe the goal for your employment law practice is to:

  • Build your law firm’s reputation
  • Generate brand awareness
  • Rank higher in Google search results
  • Demonstrate your expertise as an employment attorney
  • Attract prospective clients
  • Target the ideal type of prospective client
  • Turn leads into new clients
  • Get more business

Once we’ve worked together to define your goals, we’ll start employing essential marketing strategies like these to reach them:

  • SEO
  • Website Design
  • Legal Content Writing
  • Cinematic Video Production
  • Social Media Management

We’ll talk more about each of these employment lawyer marketing strategies below. First, you’ll need to know where your efforts should be directed.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

In employment law, more than any other type of legal practice, targeting the right potential employment law clients is vital. Unlike other types of law firms, employment lawyers tend to serve a client base that is strictly divided into two main camps—employers and employees.

Some employment law firms serve both client bases, and some serve one base exclusively (or predominantly).

Your skillset as an employment attorney needs to be aligned with the kind of clients you serve. Throwing out some generic advertising just doesn’t work in this field. Think about it. “We’re the right employment lawyers for you.” That’s a nice sentiment. But as a potential client, I have no idea who “you” is. A potential client needs to know that you know:

  • Who they are
  • What their needs are
  • How to meet those needs

Being specific in your language and topics is important. If your employment law firm serves both employers and employees, you need separate practice area pages to define the legal services you offer to each client base. Both sides should also know that your firm represents both sides—and this information should be delivered in a way that highlights the added edge it gives you in your legal representation.

There’s another reason why explicitly defining your audience is non-optional for employment attorneys.

Marketing efforts that aren’t focused on the right potential clients are a giant waste of money. Your marketing budget is a limited resource—you want every penny to be put to good use.

The first step in marketing for employment lawyers should identify the marketing strategy that matches your client base.

B2B Employment Law Marketing

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing aims to reach businesses (employers).

This type of marketing is often described as more “transactional” than other types. Efficiency, financial benefit, return on investment (ROI), logic, data, and end product are more important in B2B marketing, more so than emotional value or individual personalization.

The final decision to hire your law firm is a business transaction rather than a personal decision.

Good B2B employment lawyer marketing directly addresses questions related to issues such as:

  • Short-term concerns over a pending legal issue
  • Long-term solutions for planning, policy, growth, and future business objectives
  • Specific legal services, such as consultation or representation
  • Concerns or challenges related to hiring a lawyer
  • Company pain points
  • The financial benefit of working with an employment lawyer

B2C Employment Law Marketing

Business-to-customer (B2B) marketing aims to reach customers (employees).

Branding in B2C marketing is more customized to meet the needs of individuals. This goes beyond a simple explanation of your legal services in terms of financial benefit. B2C marketing develops a relationship based on trust and emotional benefit, showing the client that you have the solutions they lack.

In the end, it’s the individual’s decision to hire you as their employment lawyer.

To effectively reach these individuals, you need an understanding of their demographic data, like: [graphic?]

  • Gender and general age range
  • Type of employment, including industry and job title
  • Size of the company of employment
  • Earning level
  • Geographic location
  • Online behavior
  • Use of social media
  • Whether they’re using a desktop or mobile device
  • Needs, questions, and expectations

To effectively conduct B2C efforts as an employment law practice, you need to be able to address concerns related to:

  • The type of issue the individual is facing (such as wrongful termination, workplace discrimination, unpaid wages, or another employment law violation)
  • The stage of their legal journey
  • Whether they are currently working for the same company
  • The type of guidance, advice, and representation they need
  • Confusion and misunderstandings they have about employment law
  • Their concerns about hiring a lawyer (such as retaliation, affordability, or another concern)
  • The outcome they hope to achieve by hiring you

Having a good understanding of all of these concepts is a necessary place to start. But there’s more to good online marketing than just defining an audience and differentiating messaging for employees and employers.

Let’s look more at how employment law firms can develop their websites to achieve business goals.

Developing a Website That Serves Your Law Firm’s Needs

When a potential client has a problem, they need a place to go for answers. That place should be your firm’s website.

As an employment law firm, you need a website that can…

Showcase Your Practice Areas

Your website should house web pages for all the practice areas your firm is equipped to handle. When searching for employment attorneys, individuals and companies tend to be specific about the services they are looking for.

For example, prospective clients are more likely to search for something like “non-compete agreements for independent contractors” or “wrongful termination lawyer” than “employment lawyers” if they are looking for that particular type of legal guidance. If your firm handles these types of cases, you want your web page to appear in the search results.

These are just a few examples of the types of practice area pages that can be built to attract potential clients.

Practice Areas for Law Firms That Represent Employees

  • Wrongful termination
  • Sexual harassment
  • Employer retaliation
  • Security and data breach
  • Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
  • Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
  • Breach of contract
  • Non-compete agreements
  • Wage disputes
  • Severance agreements
  • Whistleblower claims
  • Overtime abuse
  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) noncompliance
  • Hostile work environment
  • LGBTQ+ discrimination
  • Age, gender, racial, or religious discrimination
  • Pregnancy discrimination

Practice Areas for Law Firms That Represent Employers

  • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints
  • Employment contracts
  • Independent contractor disputes
  • Breach of a non-compete or non-disclosure agreement
  • Employee classification
  • Destruction or theft of company property
  • Personnel policies and handbooks
  • Employee termination
  • Discrimination complaints
  • Family and medical leave
  • COVID-19 paid sick leave laws

Spotlight the Services Offered by Your Employment Law Practice

Once you’ve built up a solid offering of practice areas, you can go into more detail about the services your firm is prepared to offer.

Perhaps your firm’s employment attorneys have particular skills and knowledge in oil and gas industry workplace safety claims, Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act claims, Fair Credit Reporting Act claims, or employment disputes related to salary misclassification.

If you have offices in multiple locations, your website can also serve as a hub of local information for the communities you serve. Local service pages specify the practice areas you can accommodate in each of the geographical territories you cover. Local service pages are particularly important for multi-location law firms hoping to establish a high ranking and brand recognition in more than one city.

Finally, does your law firm take cases on a contingency fee basis? Do you offer a free consultation to new clients? Can you accommodate clients and families with disabilities? Is your office staff multilingual?

These details are important to those searching for a legal representative. You do potential clients a disservice by not having this information readily available online.

Prove Your Authority and Expertise in Employment Law Topics

Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines define the quality of a website through, among other metrics, a measurement known as E-E-A-T.

For employment lawyers, the E-E-A-T of your website can be measured by:

  • Experience that is clear through your handling of past cases,
  • Expertise shown through credentials and content created with subject matter expertise,
  • Authoritativeness that proves a favorable reputation among other industry experts, and
  • Trustworthiness based on the transparency and accuracy of the website.

Demonstrating E-E-A-T on your firm’s website is about more than just search engine optimization (a topic we’ll discuss further below). While Google and other search engines will look favorably on a site with strong E-E-A-T, it’s the human readers who really matter.

Your law firm’s website is a platform from which to tell potential clients, peers in your field, and other human readers who you are as an employment lawyer through:

  • Content on practice area pages
  • Legal blogs
  • Resource pages
  • Case studies
  • Comprehensive guides to legal topics
  • FAQ pages
  • E-books
  • White papers
  • Links to published articles on third-party websites
  • Links to social media
  • Podcasts
  • Attorney bios
  • Testimonials and client reviews
  • Community involvement
  • Victories and case results
  • Media appearances
  • Videos

Tell Your Story Through the Medium of Video

More and more, this last bullet point—videos—is becoming an indispensable part of employment law firm marketing.

Even back in the early days of the current video marketing trend, GAVL was perfecting the art of high-quality cinematic video production specifically for law firms. Take a look at some examples from our video portfolio to see the kind of impact a well-crafted video can make on a website.

The right video can:

  • Connect personally with your target audience
  • Make potential clients more comfortable reaching out to your law firm
  • Generate trust and credibility
  • Demonstrate subject matter expertise
  • Provide easy-to-digest information that helps your clients solve problems
  • Strengthen your brand persona
  • Give a face and a voice to your client reviews

In 2020, digital video viewership reached 244.4 million, far surpassing analysts’ predictions. And the numbers have only continued to skyrocket in the years since.

Although many people associate video viewership with Millennials and Gen Z watching TikTok and Instagram Reels, that’s only a fraction of the story. The 55-and-older demographic has been the fastest-growing cohort in terms of video viewership in recent years.

Individuals of all age groups, geo locations, income levels, and abilities have progressively turned to video content for learning, teaching, and engagement purposes. If your legal marketing agency doesn’t have the in-house capacity to produce exceptional video content that resonates with viewers, you’re excluding a large percentage of your target demographic.

According to the 2020 Tech Report published by the American Bar Association (ABA), over 70% of small law firms and 90% of solo attorneys still lack video content on their websites, even though video is fast becoming the medium of choice for gaining information online.

Continually Produce Top-Quality Legal Content

Legal content marketing is crafting informative, readable material to satisfy both SEO standards and the needs of human readers.

This may mean publishing relevant content in the form of a blog post once or twice a month, updating web pages to reflect market and law firm changes, writing articles for publication in legal magazines and directories, or issuing press releases to announce firm news and high-profile case victories.

There are a lot of factors that go into good law firm content writing. GAVL’s content writing team fortifies your website with writing that:

  • Answers the questions your audience is asking
  • Speaks the language of your audience
  • Avoids complicated legal jargon and dense, wordy text
  • Considers the reader’s background and education
  • Uses keyword research, mapping, and other techniques recognized by search engines
  • Is informative and accurate
  • Is interesting and unique
  • Elicits engagement
  • Gives a clear call to action
  • Is up-to-date and continually delivering fresh information
  • Is customized to the needs and goals of your law firm

Give Your Past Clients a Voice

As employment attorneys, you know how essential good word-of-mouth is in the legal industry. But trying to run a business strictly on person-to-person word-of-mouth is a futile venture.

When done right, your website gives your clients a bigger stage on which to tell their stories. Whether through video or the written word, the people and companies you’ve helped can speak about their experience and share the value they’ve derived from putting trust in you.

This gives your brand social proof—evidence that real people have gotten real benefits by partnering with your law firm.

Here’s a client testimonial video we’ve produced for a client. You can easily see how much more meaningful it is to hear the client’s story in their own words.

Top the Search Rankings

Finally, your website needs to show up in search results. If search engines can’t find your website, you’re invisible to your potential clients.

When someone looking for your services types “employment lawyers near me” into the Google search bar, your website should show up near the top of the search engine results pages—not buried behind dozens of your competitors.

This brings us to the next step you need to know to run a solid marketing campaign: search engine optimization.

The Real Truth About SEO for Employment Lawyers

The truth is, a stellar website is only half the battle. If no one can find your website, all your efforts are in vain.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of tactics to increase your “findability” online. It’s a way of making Google, Bing, and other search engines recognize your website’s legitimacy and rank it high on the search engine results page (SERP).

So when someone searches for an employment lawyer, they’ll see your name at the top of their screen.

Convincing a search engine to put your page at the top of the search results typically involves a combination of on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and local SEO efforts.

We offer a more comprehensive overview to SEO for legal marketing here, but we’ll cover the basics of what you need to know about SEO for employment law marketing below.

What Is On-Page SEO?

On-page (or on-site) SEO is optimizing the web page itself, including content, title tags, internal links, image alt text, and URLs. On-page SEO encompasses…

Keyword Research

Keyword research identifies the words and phrases your target audience is using to search for law firms. It means pinpointing relevant keywords, eliminating negative keywords, and strategically using keywords at the ideal density and in the right places in your text, page headers, meta description, and more.

Careful research should be applied to everything from a practice area page to a blog post you want to use to generate traffic to your firm’s site.

There are a lot of moving parts in keyword strategy. Knowing that people looking for employment lawyers in Atlanta will probably type “Atlanta employment lawyers” into a search engine is just the tip of the iceberg. You also need to analyze:

  • Searcher intent
  • Different phrasing used on mobile devices (talk-to-text functions) and desktop
  • How competitive a keyword is in the market
  • Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm that focuses on context
  • How to build content naturally around keywords
  • Using keywords in page headers and sub-headers
  • And more

Website Architecture

Website architecture refers to the overall structure of your website. It organizes and prioritizes information so that users know what information is important, how to find their way around the website, and where to click to get to the places they want to go.

A good, clear layout like this keeps users on a site longer.

User Experience (UX)

User experience (UX) efforts aim to give users a positive experience on your website. Elements such as these often make for good UX:

  • Simplicity
  • Comfortable fonts and color contrast
  • Fast loading
  • Mobile-friendly and desktop-friendly
  • Ease of use
  • Visually pleasing
  • Usefulness

Website Accessibility

Employment lawyers, more than most other groups of people, know how important it is to make business services accessible to individuals of all abilities. But you would be surprised how many employment law firms don’t have websites that demonstrate their commitment to meeting and exceeding Americans with Disabilities (ADA) standards.

ADA compliance isn’t just important to your SEO strategy. Yes, accessibility often allows search engines like Bing and Google to find and understand your website more easily. But more importantly, employment law firms like yours have an obligation to make sure no group of people is excluded from benefitting from your legal services.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

In contrast to on-page SEO, off-page SEO elevates your site’s credibility through outside sources. Link-building is the most common technique used in off-page marketing campaigns.

Building Backlinks

Backlinks are links going to your webpage from another third-party page. Link-building is a strategy to secure high-authority links pointing to your webpage. The more legitimate links that point to your page, the more Google will see it as a trustworthy source of information.

However, quality over quantity is the golden rule of backlink building.

If you have thousands of backlinks from websites with low E-E-A-T and little relevance to your profession, it can actually lower your credibility. On the other hand, having a smaller number of strong links from relevant, high E-E-A-T sites like legal directories, bar associations, reputable news sources, law schools, and charity organizations will be rewarded by Google.

All of this ties back to strong content. The strongest, most unique, most relevant, and most well-written content is in the best position to receive high-quality backlinks from outside sources.

What Is Local SEO?

If you’re a business with a brick-and-mortar presence (as most employment law firms are), your SEO plan is incomplete without a focus on local SEO.

When someone makes a local search, such as “hostile work environment lawyers in Tampa,” Google will only bring up matches it thinks are in Tampa. So how does Google know if a law firm is in Tampa? Local SEO.

Understanding Your Local Target Audience and Competing Firms

To rank high in local searches, you need to do more than just shove the name of your city as many times as you can into your text. Search algorithms are smart enough to know that this kind of keyword stuffing is usually done by people who have never been to that city at all.

Good local search optimization is much more nuanced. On-page indicators like topic discussions and mentions of landmarks, street names, businesses, images with descriptive alt text, local traditions, and regional vernacular can tie a site to a geographic territory.

Two other essential elements of localized marketing are a strong Google Business Profile and a network of local backlinks.

Optimizing Your Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the box you see in the upper righthand corner of the SERP when you Google a local business. If you look at the image on the right-hand side of this page, you’ll see what it looks like.

This free tool is often overlooked by law firms crafting a marketing plan. But an optimized Profile makes a big difference. Your GBP tells internet users:

  • How to contact you
  • Where you’re located
  • Your law firm’s hours
  • Your average client review score out of five stars
  • Comments from former clients
  • Service options (online or in-person appointments, etc.)
  • How to schedule an appointment
  • Your website address
  • Where to find your social media accounts
  • Questions and answers
  • What has recently been posted on your website

Not having a GBP (or having one with outdated or missing information) makes a bad first impression on new clients. To be seen as a reputable local business, an organized, accurate Google Business Profile is a must.

Generating Organic Local Backlinks

A network of backlinks from other local businesses and organizations in your city knits your law firm to the fabric of the community.

Because reliable, organic, locally-based links to your web page can only be earned through hard work and targeted efforts, they are extremely valuable in local search engine optimization.

These may come from:

  • Local business directories
  • Regional business awards
  • Sponsorships of local events
  • News and media outlets
  • Guest-writing for a newspaper, magazine, or other publication
  • Appearance on a local TV or radio program
  • Collaborations with other local businesses or organizations
  • Published guides to events or attractions in a city
  • Safety guides specific to a geographical audience
  • Charity and volunteer efforts

These are just a few of the initiatives our clients have used to earn strong local backlinks.

Does My Employment Law Firm Really Need SEO?

If you aren’t convinced yet that great SEO is fundamental to law firm growth, consider these facts and statistics.

  • There are over 3.5 billion Google searches made every day.
  • One in three law firm clients begins their search for a lawyer online.
  • 83% of consumers search online before visiting a business in person.
  • Over half (65%) of law firms spend most of their marketing budget online, and nearly one-third (27%) of law firms that hire a marketing consultant do so to boost SEO, according to ABA-published statistics.

Make the Most of Social Media Channels

So you have a great website that Google loves. Your work is done, right? Not quite.

In 2020, the ABA reported that 81% of law firms maintained a social media presence for marketing purposes. The percentage is even higher today.

Why is the strategic use of social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram a key part of employment law firm marketing? Here are just a few reasons.

  • Your potential clients spend hours a day scrolling through social media.
  • Most consumers hold the expectation that all reputable brands should have a strong social media presence.
  • Many people are more comfortable contacting a company through social media rather than traditional means like email or phone.
  • Social media is one of the best places to establish your law firm’s personality, build a brand persona, and share insightful information with future employment law clients.

Build the Reputation of Your Brand Online

Through all the channels we’ve discussed, you—intentionally or unintentionally—shape your online reputation.

Compare these two types of employment law firms.

  • Law firm A has a website with broken links and outdated statistics, a Google Business Profile without a working phone number, a LinkedIn page last updated in 2018, and no other social media accounts.
  • Law firm B has a website updated with fresh informational content every other week, a LinkedIn newsletter covering trending topics, a high-quality video accompanying each practice area page, and a Twitter account that frequently shares news about the firm’s latest cases and community involvement.

It’s not hard to guess which law firm will be more attractive to searchers. Online, your inactions speak as loudly as your actions.

Before we conclude our guide to marketing for employment lawyers, let’s discuss a few final recommendations for maintaining the reputation you want as a law office: manage reviews and stay consistent and relevant across channels.

Managing Client Reviews

Managing client reviews is a way to strengthen your brand. Good reviews go a long way toward establishing social proof and turning leads into customers. You know your merits as an employment lawyer, and your countless satisfied clients do too.

But there will always be one person out there with a chip on their shoulder and a lot to say. All it takes is one bad review to leave a nasty splotch on what you’ve worked hard to create.

Here are a few tips for client review management as a part of your digital marketing strategy:

  • Make it easy for clients to leave reviews
  • Give clients clear instructions on how to leave a review
  • Respond promptly with a reply when a review is posted online
  • Use the right tone when responding to reviews, don’t be argumentative or defensive
  • Never let a negative review sit on your profile without an appropriate response

Optimizing Your Content Across All Marketing Channels

Your various online platforms, from your website to your social media channels to your videos to your published articles, should all work together toward a common goal. You want to make it easy to find you—and rewarding for everyone who does.

Give users the best experience with your brand by taking steps like these:

  • Ensure your firm name is listed properly everywhere (even down to the “&” or “, LLC”)
  • Make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) is correct in every mention
  • Create ease of access between your online offerings (such as links between your website and your social media accounts and links on your social pages to your third-party publications)
  • Keep links up to date, and replace any broken or irrelevant links right away
  • Interact with users who engage with your posts or content
  • Encourage subscriptions to newsletters or email campaigns
  • Make people aware of changes or new developments through multiple channels (for example, if an employment attorney at your firm wins an award, don’t just add a blurb to their attorney profile—share through socials, newsletters, email updates, and other media outlets to direct readers back to your web page)

Measuring Success and Making Technology Work for You

All of the employment law marketing tactics we’ve talked about don’t mean much when you can’t measure their success. Data and projections are fundamental to any digital marketing campaign, from an initial marketing audit to formulating a plan of action to monthly (or more frequent) adjustments to continually align your efforts with the methods that get you the best results.

Ongoing data analysis can help you understand your local market, narrow your audience, eliminate any wasted ad spending, and focus on initiatives with the greatest ROI. We know that even minor adjustments can have big impacts on SEO. We keep an eye on the metrics to stay ahead of the changes and measure the effects, whether you just ran Google ads, posted a new blog, or rewrote your landing page’s meta description.

At GAVL, we use leading-edge technology in the field of digital marketing. But we also know that no one tool can take the place of human ingenuity.

Being adaptive, responsive, and innovative is the way to a successful performance on the digital legal landscape, not blind adherence to any pre-established formula.

By making use of our extensive knowledge of lawyer marketing, coupled with agile use of the newest tech tools like these, we help you deliver the highest quality products, crunch the data, and track your key performance indicators, ultimately leading you to your goals and beyond.

  • Semrush
  • Ahrefs
  • WP Engine
  • Yext
  • Wistia
  • CallRail
  • Screaming Frog
  • WordPress
  • Blackmagic Design
  • Adobe Creative Cloud

GAVL Is the Best Choice for Your Employment Lawyer Marketing Needs

We’ve discussed many ways to grow your law firm through targeted digital efforts. But these efforts take time and a lot of, well, effort. In reality, it’s unreasonable to expect you to run a digital marketing campaign while also handling complex employment law cases.

That’s why firms and solo lawyers are more and more looking for outside help to manage their practice’s marketing aspects. Hiring an experienced digital marketing agency for law firms puts a professional who fully understands the legal industry in your corner.

GAVL is a full-scale digital marketing, video production, content marketing, and SEO agency specializing in employment law marketing services. Learn more during a consultation with a legal marketing advisor.

Your competitors are hiring employment lawyer marketing agencies. What are you doing?