When we ask family lawyers what are some of the hardest tasks they have to undertake as part of their law practice, several answers will relate to certain types of cases and preparing for cases to be heard in the Family Court, however, there is a common answer that has nothing to do with courts, judges, and legislation, and that is client acquisition.

Most people would not immediately associate selling as part of the work that a family lawyer does, but they often do, or at least, the law practice they own has to. The reason is that, unless a family law business has new clients, once all their current clients’ cases are completed the revenue generation that keeps that family law business viable starts to diminish, to the point that it all but dries up.

The question, therefore, is what can family lawyers do to attract and acquire the new clients that they patently need? Thankfully, there are several answers to that question, and to be the ever-helpful people that we are, we are going to outline four of these which have been proven to work and work repeatedly for family lawyers seeking new clients.

Reward Referrals

Most family lawyers will have read about and probably understand the importance of referrals, but few take any proactive action towards securing more referrals than they currently receive, and more importantly what their competitors can acquire.

A simple way to reverse that and see referrals levels rocket is to incentivise current clients to refer your family lawyers’ practice to their family and friends. You could offer a $100 voucher for Amazon or a local store, or simply subtract $100 from their legal fees as an incentive. Surely, $100 is a price worth you paying for a client whose fees might be thousands of dollars.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a way to drive traffic to websites that millions of businesses have used successfully, and that includes family law businesses. The key to success with PPC is two-fold, namely effective keyword research, and great ad copy that induces the person seeing the ad to click it.

Other benefits of PPC ads are that you set a daily budget so you never have to worry about overspending, and they can be continuously measured so that you can take action to optimise your ad for better results.

Local SEO

For those family lawyers who wish to see their website appear at the top of Google whenever a relevant search term is entered, it is local SEO that must be implemented. The crucial part of that term is the word “local” because many family lawyers try SEO but forget they should be optimising for local searches rather than generic ones.

For example, there is little point in ranking the term “family lawyers” and it appears for searches made by people in New York or London if you are based in Perth, WA. Rather, you should optimise for search teams such as “family lawyers Perth”, and the dozens of other local suburbs and towns where your clients live.

Video Marketing

Making videos might not be the first means of trying to acquire new clients that came to your mind, but it is a marketing channel that must be considered. With superfast broadband now the norm, online videos have never been more popular, and they are here to stay. That means any business, including your law practice, which does not utilise the advantages of video is missing out.

We are not talking about epic video productions or having to spend thousands on video equipment. Many successful video channels on YouTube are made with either a mobile phone camera or a webcam. You can make a series of 5 to 10-minute videos providing useful advice and information about family law, and this will generate trust and credibility in you and your family lawyers’ business, including from prospective clients.