How do you know your attorney marketing strategies are working unless you ask?
We offer many services to our clients. This includes everything from attorney website designs to pay-per-click campaigns to search engine optimization to vanity numbers to media buys. Some of our law firm marketing strategies are aimed at creating community goodwill, some are aimed at getting the word out that there is a new firm in town, and some are aimed strictly at getting more clients. However, as good as we are, we don’t know how successful that the campaign is for an individual attorney unless he/she tells us.
Here are a few short steps to determining the triumphs of your attorney marketing strategy:
- When you receive a phone call inquiry, email, or someone stops in your office, ask that person how he/she found you. Ask the person to be as specific as possible; for example, “I saw an ad” isn’t going to help much.
- Determine the likelihood of this person turning into a client and how much the case may be worth. Is this another looky-lou searching for free advice? Or someone that wants to hire you?
- If this person doesn’t hire you, ask yourself why. Was it just that the person could not afford your fees? If that is the case, than it was not your ideal client anyway.
- Look for common themes for inquiries and those that turn into clients. For example, do you get a lot of inquiries for divorce but never get a case? And then you get a few inquiries for adoption, but they always hire you? If adoption is where you want to focus, you’re doing great. If it was divorce that you wanted to focus on, you need to adjust your campaigns.
- And, ABOVE ALL, If you have hired a law firm marketing company to handle your marketing needs, give them feedback. I can send my clients reports until I am blue in the face about what someone typed in to find them, how many people clicked on ads, what their hosting stats say etc. However, I need to know the quality and quantity of the calls you are getting. Is it the right type of inquiry? The ideal client that can afford your services? The right type of case that you want? Are you getting 5 calls a day and taking 2 cases a week? Do we need to shift our focus? If you give me feedback, I can adjust. Don’t wait until you are up for renewal or are too angry to speak to give us feedback.
Just remember that lawyer marketing is flexible; you just have to know where to tweak.
Do you speak English? Parle vous francais? Se habla espanol? Your attorney website design should say so!
If you, or someone in your office, speaks a foreign language, make sure to mention it prominently on your site (somewhere near the phone number on all pages) and on your contact page. It can only help your attorney marketing strategies. Someone may have searched for you in English, but if their native language is Russian, they may feel better about speaking to a Russian speaker. When you put up this notice, make sure to say “We speak Spanish” (or I speak) in the native language to encourage a phone call.
The high school Spanish classes may starting coming back to you!
If you want fast law firm internet marketing results, don’t wait for optimization
We get a lot of inquiries about our lawyer marketing services; one of the most common hesitations that clients have is cost. Our attorneys realize that you have to spend some money to make some money; however, they don’t have a lot to put out at the onset. If you’re looking for the most cost-effective, fastest results, pay-per-click listings still rule.
We recently had an attorney contact us in regards to how our services compare to a major competitor of ours. After finding out what law firm marketing strategies he had implemented in the past and what his current strategy was, we were able to put a proposal together for him. The attorney was interested in getting a return on his investment before expanding to a full-blown marketing program.
We suggested that he should create an effective law firm website design; due to cost, our Gallery Websites would probably be the best option. Then, to get the fastest and most cost-effective return, a pay-per-click SNAP campaign would work best; this way, their ads would be up and running the same day that the website launched and we could easily control placement and cost. Once the attorney saw a return, he could expand to optimization, newsletters, BLOGs, and more.
Unfortunately, our competitor felt differently. This competitor told the client that he needed a website (which we agreed with) and that he needed an eNewsletter and that’s it.
We told the client that the purpose of an eNewsletter is three fold. First, it provides fresh content to the site regularly, which helps in optimization. Second, if you feature the articles on the homepage, it gives readers a reason to drill down further into your site. Third, a reader could bookmark the page and come back later for more information.
However, what the competitor failed to tell the client was that optimization works well over time and there are no guarantees. It could take 6 months to a year to be effective and, then, there is no guarantee that you will show up well. The pay-per-click listing guarantees first page results in the same day. While you may not get a huge volume of cases, they tend to be more qualified, so you are more likely to take on enough cases to pay for your expenditure and then some. Once you have received a return, it makes sense to expand to eNewsletters and optimization, but until then, you will just be waiting for 6 months for a phone call. That doesn’t seem cost effective or fast.
The one thing that we remind our clients is that we won’t suggest a service if you don’t need it. For a firm just starting to make a presence, a newsletter is not going to give you a return and you don’t have the time to wait.
Don’t take the word of one law firm marketing company – ask around. You will become educated and know what to ask other companies. This way you can really compare them without just looking at dollar signs.
