Internet Marketing for Lawyers - Advice That Counts
Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order to
get new business they must market their services, i.e.,
advertise. And lawyers deal with the same marketing and
advertising challenge every business does - how to beat the
competition. Plus lawyers have to assume that any Internet or
non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce
little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend
-- regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising
advisor may say to the contrary.
Prior to the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or
advertising choice for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow
pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty of
colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering
their services, and lawyers pay a lot for these ads. How
effective these ads are is anyone's guess -- it's hard for your
colored, one page display ad to stand out when you have 20 other
lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies,
however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising
philosophy that "bigger is always better" and "everything we
sell is an opportunity," so they often present a lawyer with a
non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs
plenty but often produces little. This line of thinking, along
with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way
of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in
print form had their heyday for many decades, but the population
now goes to the Internet for the information they seek, so most
print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises
in the print yellow pages may well get calls, but they'll most
likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as a cheap source
of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines)
tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising
solutions in a manner similar to the way the yellow pages do
with their print directories. "Bigger is always better," so
rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click
Internet marketing and advertising campaign that makes financial
sense and produces a decent ROI, the pay per click providers
will tell the lawyer to go for as many top listing keywords (the
most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as
they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at least
they'll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a
quick way to get leads but quickly exit a month later after
spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising
results that produce nothing but expense. While pay per click
Internet marketing and advertising is the running favorite of
Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click
advertising for a lawyer is usually an extremely expensive
proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to
"pay for a lead" takes on a whole new meaning with pay per
click. The cost per click for many lawyer related keywords,
e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can
range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market,
and when the typical lawyer's conversion rate (the number of
clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is
factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of
$500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.
Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per
click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates)
is that (1) they spend little time creating their pay per click
ads and (2) the ads direct traffic to the lawyer's website. Any
Internet marketing professional who knows something about pay
per click knows you never send pay per click traffic to a
website. Instead you create special pages, i.e., "landing pages"
for pay per click traffic to be directed to. The landing pages
perform the job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer
requires, which is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or
by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a
potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of
their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective
a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a
lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure
will depend upon the particular attributes of the legal Internet
directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal
Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed
in them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising
choice than similar sites that offer listings for free. The
lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, when they
consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals
that "look" like they offer a lot -- and a price to go with it
-- but for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads
for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the
lawyer must spend. Many legal Internet directories and portals
exist that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are
excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not
automatically make them good places to advertise. With Internet
legal portals especially it's not how many lawyers the portal
attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts
who are searching for legal services. People have paid thousands
of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have
produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and
advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who
considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some
very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic
the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.
What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks,
whether the marketing and advertising media is Internet or
non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a
guarantee that the lawyer will get good, solid results for the
amount of money they spend is often hard to achieve.
Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet
marketing and advertising - the way that will ultimately get
them the best long term results for the money they spend -- is
to focus on getting their website to rank high in organic search
results. When all things are considered, people on the Internet
who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to
find their answers. They may look to legal Internet directories
and portals, and if they don't find what they want they may turn
to pay per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to
40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately people
who search the Internet are looking for websites that provide
them with the answers they seek.
If a lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising
solution that doesn't require being part of the pay per click
crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call
programs. Pay per phone call is like pay per click, but the
lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the
costs for pay per phone call are normally substantially less
that what the lawyer will pay for a click in many cases. A smart
lawyer may even want to consider getting involved with several
pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the
providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate
to make involvement with these programs worth it.
Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a
lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case
basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click
advertising campaign that works extremely well for the lawyer
with one search provider might fail miserably with another.
One last thing that a lawyer should be aware of when it comes to
the Internet and a website presence is that appearances really
do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and
have correspondingly seen websites of all types and styles.
People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The
lawyer's website should be too.
About the author:
Michael Merten is an Internet marketing professional who
consults with lawyers and legal finance companies. He
specializes in getting legal websites to appear in first page
search results on major search engines in record time. Mr.
Merten can be reached at michael@minn
esotainternetmarketing.com.
Written By: Michael Merten