Estate planning has the opposite problem from injury or criminal defense. Nobody needs a will by Friday. People know they should do it, put it off for years, and then act after a trigger: a diagnosis, a death in the family, a new grandchild, a house purchase. Marketing for estate planning is about being the firm they already trust when that moment comes, and that is mostly the work of our law firm SEO pillar: clear pages, a strong local profile and patient follow-up.
This guide covers who needs plans, seminars against search, flat-fee pages, a query and prompt map in English and Spanish, Local Services Ads, email and how to count what works.
Who needs a plan, and why they wait
The Caring.com 2025 study, run with YouGov across more than 2,500 US adults, found 24% have a will, down steadily from 33% in 2022. Among people without one, 43% say they “just haven’t gotten around to it”, the top reason since 2022, and 16% have started researching estate planning online (Caring.com). The same study found the 35 to 54 age group is the largest without estate documents.
Meanwhile the older population is growing quickly. The Census Bureau counted 64.6 million people aged 65 and older on July 1, 2025, up 16.2% since April 2020 (Census).
Two audiences follow from that, and they search differently:
- Planners, often 35 to 70, who search slowly (“living trust vs will”, “how much does a will cost”) and compare firms over weeks.
- Families in a hurry, often adult children after a death or a diagnosis, who search probate, trust administration and powers of attorney with real urgency.
A good estate planning site serves both, with separate pages and separate calls to action.
Seminars versus search
Seminars are the classic estate planning channel, and for firms whose clients are local retirees they still bring in signed plans. They also carry a reputation risk. In testimony to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, the FTC described living trust seminars and postcard invitations used to exaggerate the benefits of trusts, imply that local attorneys would prepare documents, and get access to people’s finances to sell annuities (FTC). A firm’s seminar has to look nothing like that.
What a seminar done honestly looks like:
- Education first. Wills, trusts, probate in your state, powers of attorney, what each costs at your firm. No pressure to sign on the day.
- No financial products. No annuity or insurance partner in the room.
- Follow-up the attendee asked for. ABA Model Rule 7.3 treats live person-to-person contact, such as unrequested phone calls to a specific person offering legal services, as solicitation, which the model rule limits (ABA; comment text as adopted in Colorado). A sign-up sheet that asks “would you like us to call you?” keeps follow-up on the right side of the rule. States vary; check yours.
- Tracked like any channel. Registrations, attendance, consults booked, signed plans, per seminar and per invitation source.
Search is the other half, and for most firms it’s the larger one. People research for weeks, so a firm with helpful pages, a strong Google Business Profile and good reviews is present at each visit. Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and says more reviews and positive ratings can help (Google).
Packages and flat-fee pages
People shopping for a will or a trust want to know the price before they call. Firms that publish flat-fee packages answer the question searchers are actually asking, and AI assistants can quote a clear price page directly.
A good package page has:
- What’s included: the documents by name (will, revocable trust, pour-over will, powers of attorney, health care directive), deed transfers and the signing meeting.
- What’s not included: funding the trust for out-of-state real estate, business succession, tax planning above a threshold, and later amendments.
- What changes the price: a blended family, a special needs beneficiary, property in other states.
- How payment works: when it’s due and what happens if the client stops partway through.
ABA Model Rule 1.5(b) asks that the scope of the representation and the basis of the fee be communicated, preferably in writing (ABA). A package page is a public version of that, and your engagement letter should match it exactly. Every price claim is also an advertisement under your state’s rules; see our lawyer advertising rules guide.
The query and prompt map
The map below shows the questions estate planning clients ask search engines and AI assistants, in English and Spanish, grouped by stage, with the page that should answer each. It’s a starting map, not a list of every keyword.
Probative's method, free to copy
The estate planning query and prompt map, English and Spanish
| Stage | English search | English AI prompt | Spanish search | Page that should answer it | Volume (pull for your market) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning | will vs living trust | “Do I need a living trust or is a will enough in [state]?” | testamento o fideicomiso en vida | Will vs trust explainer, state-specific | Bing: ___ / Google: ___ |
| Learning | what happens if you die without a will [state] | “What happens to my house if I die without a will in [state]?” | qué pasa si muero sin testamento | Dying without a will in [state] | ___ |
| Comparing | how much does a will cost | “How much does a lawyer charge for a will in [county]?” | cuánto cuesta un testamento | Flat-fee packages page | ___ |
| Comparing | estate planning attorney near me | “Recommend an estate planning lawyer near [city] who speaks Spanish” | abogado de testamentos cerca de mí | Business Profile, attorney bios | ___ |
| Urgent | probate lawyer [county] | “My mother died; how does probate work in [county]?” | abogado de sucesiones [condado] | Probate in [county], step by step | ___ |
| Urgent | power of attorney for elderly parent | “How do I get power of attorney for my dad with dementia?” | poder legal para mis padres | Powers of attorney and incapacity | ___ |
| Urgent | trust administration after death | “I’m the trustee of my father’s trust. What do I do first?” | qué hace un fideicomisario | Trustee first steps | ___ |
Three notes on using it:
- Fill the volume column from Bing too. Bing Webmaster Tools is free and reports estimated impressions for a query, with filters for country and language (Bing; filters described by Search Engine Watch). Then compare with your own Search Console and Bing reports, which show what your site already appears for.
- Write one page per real question, reviewed by an attorney, with your state’s law. Don’t spin up a page per town with the same text; Google calls that scaled content abuse (Google).
- Have Spanish written by a native writer, then checked by a second native reader and approved by the attorney. About 13.9% of US residents aged 5 and older speak Spanish at home (Census), and Google now serves Search ads by matching the language of the ad (Google). Be careful with any Spanish word close to “notario”; our immigration guide explains why.
The prompts in the middle column are the ones to run monthly in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity to see which firms get named and which pages get cited. Our AI search guide covers how to run a fair prompt panel.
Local Services Ads and search ads
“Estate lawyer services” is one of Google’s US legal categories for Local Services Ads (Google). Local Services leads are often probate and urgent family situations, so answer fast and route them to someone who can book a consult the same day. Our Local Services Ads guide covers billing, disputes and ranking.
For search ads, split planning and probate into separate campaigns with separate budgets and separate landing pages. Planning and probate searches usually differ in urgency, cost per click and case value, and one shared budget hides which is which. Send signed engagements back to Google as offline conversions with a value band, Standard upload level, as set out in our Google Ads guide. We never build Customer Match or lookalike audiences from client lists, and remarketing runs only where the platform’s policy allows.
Referrals from advisors, accountants and other lawyers
Many estate planning clients arrive through a financial advisor, an accountant or another lawyer. Those relationships are marketing too, and the bar rules set limits on them. ABA Model Rule 7.2(b)(4) allows a lawyer to agree to refer clients to another lawyer or a nonlawyer professional in return for referrals only if the agreement isn’t exclusive and the client is told it exists and what it is (ABA; state text as adopted in Minnesota). Paying an advisor for referrals, or splitting fees with one, is a different matter, and Model Rule 5.4 bars sharing legal fees with nonlawyers (ABA).
Three practical habits:
- Track referral sources as a channel in the CRM, with the same signed-engagement count as ads and search.
- Write down any reciprocal arrangement, keep it non-exclusive, review it each year, and tell clients about it.
- Keep financial products out of the engagement. If an advisor refers a client, the plan is still the client’s, and the advice is still yours.
Email follow-up for a long decision
Because planners decide slowly, email to people who asked for it does more for estate planning than for most practices: a seminar recap, a short checklist of documents to gather, a reminder at year end. Keep it short and useful.
Commercial email follows the federal CAN-SPAM Act: accurate sender details, honest subject lines, a clear statement that it’s an ad, a valid postal address, an easy opt-out honored within 10 business days (FTC). Many state bars also treat marketing email as an advertisement with its own labels; check yours.
How to measure it
Estate planning has a long lag, so measurement needs patience and a fixed rule:
- Count signed engagements, from your case-management system. A couple signing one plan counts once.
- Credit by first contact and by the month it happened. A client who first visited in March and signed in July belongs to March’s source.
- Report planning, probate and trust administration separately. They have different values and different lags.
- Judge a channel over two quarters at least. A seminar series or a new set of pages needs time before its signed plans show up.
Our cost per signed case guide has the tracker, and The Probative Standard’s definition of a signed case applies here as a signed engagement.
What this means for your firm
- Publish a clear packages page with scope, exclusions and what changes the price, matched to your engagement letter.
- Answer the questions on the map, one page at a time, attorney-reviewed, in English and, if your market needs it, in natively written Spanish.
- Run seminars as education, with no financial products and follow-up only where attendees ask for it.
- Split planning and probate in ads, pages and reporting.
- Measure signed engagements by month of first contact, over quarters.
Probative is AI-first SEO and ads for law firms. See our estate planning approach, with estate planning SEO and estate planning ads, and the pricing page for our flat fees.
Marketing information, not legal advice. Advertising, solicitation and email rules vary by state; check with your bar and your own counsel.