Data Can Help Your Law Firm
Law firms are successful because of their clients. Gaining clients often depends on your website, particularly your landing pages, your law firm practice area pages, and your blog posts. However, in order to truly target the desired clients in your law firm’s location, you need to dig into specific types of demographic and socioeconomic data. I want to talk about how you can use Census data to really understand your prospective clients so you can take your practice area pages, blog posts, and your firm to a deeper level.
From education to law, data is crucial
For the most part, the law firms that I work with have regular, everyday people as their clients. That’s a good thing. The general public needs good attorneys. The vast majority of people in this country don’t have much legal expertise, which can hurt them when it comes to standing up to insurance carriers and other attorneys. Because your prospective clients are not other legal professionals, your webpage needs to reflect this reality. Yes, your page must look professional, but that does not mean it should be overwhelming, especially when it comes to your content.
I was a teacher in my previous life, and that taught me a valuable thing – that you have to be able to communicate your ideas to the desired audience. My audience, at the time, was a bunch of raging, spaced-out kids. Now my audience is you, attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants.
Your audience, however, is those who need your legal services.
Local data can enhance your law firm’s reach
One of the first things that I had to do when I was becoming a teacher was learn the specific demographic and socioeconomic data for our county, district, and school. Trust me when I say that demographics and socioeconomics play a huge role in how we educate students, and this data varies from school to school.
The same concept needs to be used for your law firm. For each area you are located in or want to target, you need to know certain data. For your target area, you should research and understand the population’s:
- Racial and ethnic makeup
- Mean and median income
- Employment status
- Types of occupations
- Poverty level
- Educational attainment
- Languages spoken at home
- Marital status
While all of this can seem daunting, this task is not going to be horribly difficult. That’s because the US Census Bureau gathers all of this data for you. The Census Bureau is a terrific, non-partisan gatherer of data for every region in the US. They break this data down nationally, by state, and at the local level. This is a tremendous tool for your firm that I don’t think enough lawyers take advantage of. Let’s face it – most of us live in a bubble of people similar to us. The same race, the same economic level, and the same educational level. This can be dangerous for any business, including law firms.
With this data, you can tailor your practice area pages and blog posts. Suppose you notice that in one area of your firm’s area that most of the population has high school diplomas or GEDs. Maybe this is an industrial, blue-collar area. For your target practice area pages and blogs for this region, you may want to stick with information related to why they need an attorney for their problem, the types of compensation they could receive (personal injury), the possible penalties of a crime (criminal defense), and how much an attorney will cost them.
However, maybe you notice that in one part of your firm’s coverage area that the population has a high percentage of higher educational attainment, perhaps close to a university. For that area, you may be able to target some blog posts and practice area pages or sub-pages that delve deeper into the laws and even theories behind some of the laws. Of course, they need to know the basic information as well, but you see what I’m saying here – know your audience and craft an appropriate strategy to target them.
Aside from marketing purposes, the demographic and socioeconomic data for your law firm’s area is important information for everyone in your firm to know. You want to be a part of the community, which means you need to KNOW the community.
We are willing to help you gather this data
You are attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants. I know that you can research data. I also know that you are busy. That is why Blue Seven Content is willing to help. All of our writers are also researchers. We have diverse backgrounds in various fields, and we can help you gather this data for your law firm’s location. If you want us to, we can gather and provide the types of data we mentioned above. We will also provide our analysis about how you may be able to use this data to reach your desired client.
The data that we gather for your law firm can be used to alter your current practice area pages and blogs as well as your future law firm content. This includes your:
All we need to know from you is what areas you want us to target. You may only operate in one area, but we know that many law firms cover multiple geographic areas that all differ significantly. Each location report that we compose costs $400 (discounted rates for areas in the same general geographic region). Please reach out to us for a free consultation by clicking here or calling us at 843-580-3158.
Written by Allen Watson – CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Seven Content