How Long To Wait Before Digital Marketing Efforts Show Results For Your Law Firm?

Wondering how long to wait before digital marketing efforts show results for your law firm?

You are working on your law firm’s digital marketing for a few months now and have yet to see any meaningful results and wonder if that’s normal?

Perhaps you are looking to educate yourself on digital marketing and better understand how quickly you can expect to see results.

We have great news!

We’ve got some answers for you.

In this article, we will look at different digital marketing strategies and see how long it may take for you to see results. We will first look at the factors affecting your digital marketing timeline, then we’ll focus on how long it may take to see results from SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, CRO and inbound marketing efforts.

This article is divided as follows:

• Factors Affecting How Long It May Take Digital Marketing To Show Results
  • Factor 1: Your Starting Point
  • Factor 2: Your Industry
  • Factor 3: Your Competitors
  • Factor 4: Your Budget
  • Factor 5: Your Digital Marketing Focus Area
• How Long To Wait Before SEO Shows Results?
• How Long To Wait Before Content Marketing Shows Results?
• How Long To Wait Before Social Media Shows Results?
• How Long To Wait Before Paid Search Shows Results?
• How Long To Wait Before CRO Shows Results?
• How Long To Wait Before Inbound Marketing Shows Results?
• Takeaways

Let’s dive right in.

Factors Affecting How Long It May Take Digital Marketing To Show Results

Digital marketing efforts will take time before you can see meaningful results.

If you think you can work really hard on building a few great web pages, content and design, publishing them and waiting for people to run visiting your website, you are way off.

We are exaggerating here but you get the point. 

Digital marketing takes time to plan, to execute, to monitor and to adapt. 

It’s an ongoing cycle. 

you must keep at.

In the beginning, you can employ all the best digital marketing efforts and not see results for months at a time.

That’s totally normal.

Although we will look at how long different types of digital marketing efforts may take to show results, we must ask one question before.

What are the factors that will affect the amount of time it may take for digital marketing to work for your law firm?

The speed at which you can see results will depend on where you are starting your digital marketing journey, your industry, your competitors, how much you have in the budget allocated for digital marketing and what type of digital marketing focus you’ll have. 

Factor 1: Your Starting Point

If you already have a website with years of history and good content, you may see results much faster than a law firm starting a brand new website.

If you have a good reputation with Google, you will be in a much better starting position than if Google had blocked you or has reasons to doubt your online digital marketing practices.

Your starting point will have a direct impact on how long you’ll need to work at your digital marketing efforts. 

Factor 2: Your Industry

Your industry will have an important impact on how long it may take you to see results with your digital marketing efforts.

For you lawyers out there, the legal industry is one of the most competitive industries out there.

So let’s just say this…

You will need to work really hard to get some results.

This sucks but it’s a fact.

The legal industry is oversaturated and all lawyers and law firms are online.

You also have pressure from legal tech businesses and startups penetrating the legal industry.

They are deploying amazing digital marketing techniques to target the lawyers’ clients and chipping away at your business.

Law firms will need to be strategic and have a constant digital marketing effort to see results but also to avoid losing market share.

Factor 3: Your Competitors

If you are in a highly competitive industry where your competitors are masters of digital marketing, then you’ll need to roll up your sleeves, work hard, very hard, and for a long time to see results.

If you are a law firm offering business law and technology law legal services in Silicon Valley, you better be ready because you may be in the competitive epicenter of the world in your area of practice.

If you are a law firm targeting a local clientele through local SEO somewhere in the off skirts of a smaller city, you may have a much greater chance of beating the competition through digital marketing efforts.

At the end of the day, depending on your targeted legal segment, the type of clients you are after and where you are targeting your clients online, you may see varying levels of competition.

The higher the competitive landscape, the harder you will need to work and the longer you will need to wait before you see results.

Factor 4: Your Budget

My friends, if you want digital marketing to work, you’ll need to put some money into it.

This may sound like a contradiction to some of you.

You’ve heard that digital marketing is going to cost you less to convert customers than traditional marketing.

Although your client acquisition cost may be lower online, you will always need to stay on top of digital marketing to remain competitive. 

If your competitors are active online, publishing great content, working on SEO, doing all the right digital marketing techniques while you are not, you will lose ground.

Digital marketing can be a great tool for you to compete with major law firms.

It levels the playing field to a certain extent.

On the flip side, you need to constantly keep at it and invest in digital marketing.

You’ll need to set a good budget to ensure your overall digital marketing effort is successful.

The more budget you put towards digital marketing, the faster you can expect to see results.

Factor 5: Your Digital Marketing Focus Area

Depending on your digital marketing focus area, you may see varying timelines to see results.

If you are only focusing on content marketing, you may have to wait longer than if you do content marketing, promote it through social media, work on creating high-quality and authoritative backlinks all at the same time.

Your digital marketing focus area will most definitely have an impact on how long it may take you to see results.

How Long To Wait Before SEO Shows Results?

Search engine optimization or SEO is a great way for you to get traffic to your website.

By employing SEO as a digital marketing technique, you are essentially working your way to hit the first page of search engine results.

With this technique, you’ll have search engines drive a ton of traffic and potential leads to your law firm.

How long will it take for you to see results from your SEO efforts?

There is good news and bad news!

Let’s do the bad news first.

The bad news is that SEO takes a long time for you to see results.

Consider SEO as a marathon.

To see ok results, it could take as long as 6 to 9 months!

The good news is…

Once you start seeing results, you’ll end up getting tons of traffic and leads.

The constant effort will ultimately pay off!

According to a 2014 study by Search Engine Journal, it may take approximately 4 to 6 months to see 100 or more organic search results per day.

And that’s only the beginning.

In the legal industry, to be competitive, you’ll need to rank for many more organic keywords per day. 

Consider ranking for 1,000 or more as an initial target.

The effort to rank for 1,000 organic keywords or more per day can take you over a year to accomplish.

How Long To Wait Before Content Marketing Shows Results?

Content marketing is one fantastic digital marketing approach your law firm can take to solidify your online presence. 

The reason why content marketing works really well for law firms is that you can write useful content about your areas of expertise.

Through content marketing, you can demonstrate to your users that you are knowledgeable, you are competent and you have the right expertise to handle their case.

Content marketing can take time, just like any other digital marketing strategy.

How long?

Well, it depends on how many great posts you publish per month.

Studies show that if you are producing great content and blog 20 times a month or more, you will potentially get up to 5 times more traffic to your website than other law firms producing less than 20 pieces of content.

Based on research done by Niel Patel, posting regularly 12 quality posts per month can help you start generating content marketing results within 6 to 9 months.

He says that you’ll need to have at least 400 posts so you can sustain a sufficient amount of traffic.

The success and speed at which your content marketing will show you results are linked to your SEO techniques as well.

With the right SEO, great content and great content promotion, you’ll be able to accelerate the speed at which your content marketing drives traffic to your law firm’s website.

If you are handling your content marketing well and publishing great content regularly, you can see results in 6 to 9 months.

A good practice is to evaluate your content marketing result after a year of effort to see if you are on the right track.

How Long To Wait Before Social Media Shows Results?

Getting followings and a large fan base is enticing on social media.

There is little doubt that law firms can engage with potential clients and prospects through their social media platforms.

What type of results are you looking for when you implement digital marketing efforts targeting social media platforms?

Based on a study, 69% of respondents indicated that they use social media platforms to raise awareness.

For law firms, this is great.

Your law firm should employ social media digital marketing to raise its awareness.

You want to get your brand name out there.

You want people to see you, to engage with you, to know you exist.

The more people you can reach, the more successful you can be online.

So how long will it take to see results from social media digital marketing strategies?

It depends.

According to HubSpot, it’s difficult to measure the timeline for social media results.

It will depend on what you consider to be a good result.

If you want to have 50,000 fans and followers, finding them genuinely will be a much longer and more difficult process than buying 50,000 fans.

The real value in social media is to have real fans who really want to follow you and engage with your law firm.

This way, when you share content with them or engage with them, they already trust you enough to do business with you.

If you buy your fanbase, the material and content you will share with them will lead to little or no results as they may not be interested in your firm in the first place.

Since social media marketing for law firms may be really valuable for raising awareness and reach, your results will be based on how people engage with your law firm, share your content and speak about you.

Each law firm can define its own measure of success on social media platforms.

How Long To Wait Before Paid Search Shows Results?

With paid search advertising, you can see nearly immediate results if you are doing it the right way of course.

Pay-Per-Click is one form of paid search advertising that is quite popular.

If you choose the right keywords to bid on, you can expect to see your site traffic go up proportionally to the amount of money you will put in paid search advertising.

You’ll need to stay on top of your PPC campaigns.

Having real-time data and analytics about the performance of your campaigns, you can quickly see if your strategy is driving quality leads to your website or not.

If you have a good return on your investment, you can continue.

If not, you should tweak things around so you don’t blow your budget without any results.

The paid search result can show you immediate results if you are doing the right thing. 

The goal with paid search advertising is not just to increase your website traffic but to attract quality leads and convert them to paying customers.

Without a good return on your investment, paid search advertising will not only show you little results but will cost you good money as well!

You’ll need to complement your paid search advertising with proper SEO and other digital marketing strategies to maximize the value of the dollars you spend.

If done correctly, you can see good short-term results.

How Long To Wait Before CRO Shows Results?

What is CRO?

It’s conversion rate optimization.

Why is this important?

Because you want to eventually convert your customers to paying customers.

Your digital marketing efforts need to work in such a way as to bring traffic to your site, qualify your leads, have them flow through your marketing funnel and ultimately convert them to paying clients.

How long will this take?

Conversion rate optimization is all about testing your website, your design, funnel to produce results.

If you are properly analyzing your website data and traffic navigation, you can achieve a faster result than if you are winging it.

Your CRO effort may take you between 8 to 12 months to produce good results.

The first step is to analyze your website analytics.

Once you’ve analyzed your site visitor’s behavior, you can try different page layouts, do some A/B testing, some split testing, changing your marketing funnel and so on to see the impact on your CRO results.

Implementing CRO strategies based on real data and analytics can produce good results but will take time.

Once you identified a specific CRO strategy that works well for your law firm, you will then need to continue building on your digital marketing techniques to solidify and bolster your conversions.

So be ready to work on your CRO for a while to see results.

How Long To Wait Before Inbound Marketing Shows Results?

If your question is how long it may take you to see results from inbound marketing, then you may be disappointed.

The better question is…

What inbound strategy do I want to adopt for my law firm and am I implementing all the best practices? 

Once you do that, then you need to work and it continually. 

Let’s face it.

When we don’t see results for a long time, it’s discouraging.

We may also think that we are on the wrong track.

To get the fastest result, in the most relative sense of the word, you’ll be better off in scheduling daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly objectives for your inbound marketing efforts.

This way, you’ll have specific milestones and objectives to work towards.

These objectives may not necessarily be high conversion rates in the beginning as that will take time.

Perhaps, you can set objectives for the number of subscribers you can attract, how many useful blog posts you created aligned with your inbound marketing strategy and so on.

Inbound marketing can take 9 to 12 months for you to see results. 

In some cases, even longer. 

Remember, inbound marketing is about having an entire strategy where you are using different digital marketing strategies in conjunction with one another to produce an intended result.

You’ll need to put in motion many digital marketing efforts to achieve your overall goal of high conversion rates.

You’ll need to be ready to go the long-haul.

Be patient and your inbound marketing strategies will start showing you good results.

Takeaways

In this article, we looked at how long you must wait before you see results from your digital marketing efforts for your law firm.

Here is a quick overview of what we found:

1. SEO: 6 to 9 months
2. Content Marketing: 6 to 9 months
3. Social Media Marketing: It depends on your objectives
4. Paid Search: Immediate if you are doing it right
5. CRO: 9 to 12 months
6. Inbound Marketing: 9 to 12 months

Generally speaking, you will need to put a substantial amount of effort in getting results with your digital marketing strategies.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint!

We hope you enjoyed this article. 

Have you experienced other timelines with your digital marketing efforts? We would love to hear from you. Drop us a comment!