Law Firm Marketing BLOG

One of the many law firm marketing services that we provide to our clients is management of a pay-per-click (or sponsored ad) campaign.  Basically, if you go to Google (or any major search engine) and type in any term, you will see sponsored listings.  On Google, these are the peach-y boxes at the top and the boxes on the right hand side of the page.

While I could spend a lot of time giving away trade secrets on how to pick the “right” and “best” keywords, one thing that people who manage their own accounts often forget is the plurals.  If you use Google AdWords, you have to list every keyword you can think of and then go back and add all of the plurals.  This can be a very time consuming process.  For example, “product liability lawyer” also needs to be made into “product liability lawyers”, “products liability lawyer”, “products liability lawyers”, “product liabilities lawyer”, “product liabilities lawyers”, “products liabilities lawyer”, and “products liabilities lawyers”.  You can quickly see how you can get bogged down in this.  The reason that it is so important to have all of the variations is so that you can really track what people are typing in and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

Don’t just put in the most obvious keywords, put in some that the layperson may think to use (for example, most average people don’t throw around the term mass torts).  Then go ahead add spend the time to add a few plurals.  Once you get into your groove, you can add or take away more keywords.  But don’t let your law firm internet marketing campaign miss out on big opportunities by forgetting the plurals.

Shortly after our visit to the Arizona Bar Convention this summer we obtained a new Arizona Client – Clifford Levenson from the Law Office of Clifford Levenson. Cliff decided to go with our company because he wanted to get more exposure on the internet with a company that knows how to market attorneys – which is what Attorneys Online, Inc does best!

We set up a Verizon Super Pages Campaign for the Phoenix metro area as well as a Google and Yahoo SNAP campaigns to target the areas law he practices.

Just this past month, we launched his  SNAP law firm internet marketing campaign and we will be working with Cliff regularly to ensure that he gets the type of calls he is looking for!

Clifford Levenson strives to provide the Phoenix area general legal counsel for individuals and small businesses in the areas of criminal defense, family law, immigration, litigation and personal injury.

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.