As a legal recruiter lead generation and client conversions are essential for success. Like it or not, the Internet has forever reshaped the legal recruiting landscape. When your recruitment firm isn’t hitting its targets like the “other guys” down the street, it could be your digital marketing strategy – starting with your website.
On the other hand, if your team wants to improve its client conversion rates here are 10 common digital marketing mistakes you’ll need to avoid.
1. Not Knowing Who Your Target Audience Is
If your recruiting firm works mostly with clients and candidates within a given practice specialty, like personal injury law, your target audience should reflect that fact. Your target audience should be a select group of current and/or potential clients that you directly market to.
One of the biggest digital marketing mistakes recruiters make is not knowing who their target audience is. To narrow down your search study your current clients, analyze what successful recruiting firms are doing, and try to emulate their online branding message.
2. Not Optimizing Your Site for Mobile Devices
Poor website mobile optimization is another common problem for legal recruiters. Since over 52% of online traffic now comes from mobile devices, the content on your site needs to flow easily between desktop and mobile applications. If it doesn’t, you’re going to miss out on leads.
3. Not Building a Strong Social Media Presence
As a legal recruiter social media marketing is a vital component of an effective digital marketing strategy. According to a recent study, most legal professionals use social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to recruit and hire candidates, or to get hired.
Unfortunately, many recruiting firms don’t have a strong social media presence and their business suffers as a result. Don’t make the same mistake.
4. Not Considering UX/UI in Your Web Design
In the world of Web design “user interface” (UI) refers to every visual element, interaction or animation that’s designed specifically for your website. In layman’s terms UI is the graphical layout that includes any buttons, text, images and text entry fields that a user may encounter on your site.
UX is short for “user experience” and describes your site’s navigability, or rather how easy or difficult it is for a user to interact with the UI elements the Web designers have created. If your website is UX/UI deficient it will negatively impact your conversion rate optimization (CRO).
5. Not Presenting a Clear, Concise Message
If your website isn’t well-organized most visitors will leave (“bounce”) after only a few seconds. Start with a home page that clearly and concisely tells visitors a little bit about your business, including the recruitment services you offer. The list of services on your main page should also link to subpages that give more details about each service.
The goal is to engage visitors and then gently persuade them to take a desired action, like signing up for a newsletter or requesting more information about your firm. Another way to keep interested parties engaged and lower your “bounce rate” is by posting a short introduction video.
Your firm’s site should also contain links to its social media and email accounts, along with detailed contact information including your firm’s name, physical address and phone number (NAP). And finally, your website needs to be updated so that it won’t confuse potential clients.
6. Not Enough “Trust” Signals on Your Website
Unfortunately, many legal recruiters lack enough of these “trust” signals on their site:
- Case studies
- Client testimonials
- Names of law firms and companies they work with
- Industry awards and recognition
- Blog articles
- Press releases
- Links to online reviews
- Trust badges
Avoiding this common digital marketing faux pas is important for your firm’s success.
7. Not Taking Local SEO into Account
Since visitors will be finding your recruiting website by using search engines like Google, you must be certain that your site is search engine optimized. Search engine optimization (SEO) describes where your firm’s site ranks on the search results page based on service and region keywords – for example “legal recruiting firms in Boston”.
If your firm shows up at the bottom of the page, or not at all, your local SEO needs work. An effective SEO strategy starts with a list of keywords related to your firm, services and target market. Those keywords need to be combined into a list of key phrases that potential clients may be searching for online. Ignoring local SEO is a common mistake for many legal recruiters.
8. Not Using a Goal-Oriented Marketing Approach
Rather than utilizing all the digital marketing resources at their disposal many recruiting firms only use a few of them, oftentimes placing them at a competitive disadvantage. In general, a good goal-oriented digital marketing strategy should include:
- SEO
- Local marketing
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Responsive Web design
- Content marketing
- Remarketing
- Different client-acquisition channels
- And more
9. Not Using Remarketing/ Retargeting Tools
Not following up with website visitors who weren’t converted initially is another common and easily avoidable error that legal recruiters make. Retargeting, or remarketing, is essentially the practice of serving online ads based on prior engagement.
Retargeting uses website cookies and other tools to anonymously “follow” your target audience around the Web. If your firm isn’t remarketing its services to audience members, you’re missing out on a great opportunity.
10. Not Tracking and Monitoring Engagement and Goals
You won’t know if your digital marketing strategy is working if you don’t monitor results. But measuring success isn’t possible without first setting goals. Not tracking and monitoring engagement and goals is another common online branding mistake that legal recruiters make.
Whether it’s expanding your social media reach, documenting email click-through rates or tracking organic website traffic, using metrics and other forms of analytics effectively will ultimately help you generate more leads and client conversions.
Goal-Oriented Digital Marketing is Our Forte
Developing an effective, goal-oriented digital marketing strategy isn’t easy, but not doing so can affect your bottom line. At Deep Footprint, the agency behind the Legal Recruiter Directory, we specialize in results-driven digital marketing solutions for legal headhunters, law firms and legal placement firms.
Helping those we serve realize higher client engagement and conversion rates is something we excel at every day. The Legal Recruiter Directory also provides online support that helps legal recruiters place talented active or passive attorney candidates with prestigious law firms and corporations so that all parties win.
