Optimize Your Online Marketing Spend with Offline Biz Dev

I overheard a phone conversation with an attorney who's taken a good approach to purchasing a large number of leads, even though many were not the type of case he prefers.
Often times, the complaint many lawyers will have with the results of their online marketing spend is they receive a large number of consumer inquiries regarding cases that they are not interested in pursuing.
One remedy is to focus your spend in such a way that you're only purchasing the types of leads you want. The problem is, when it comes to marketing anything online, the more constraints you put on your traffic, the more expensive it will be per lead.
Back to the phone call. This attorney was purchasing a large quantity of leads, even though many of the calls an online inquiries he was receiving were of little interest to him. But what he found, was that they were of interest to many of his colleagues.

Online Marketing Meets Old Fashioned Business Development

Every lawyer knows that a big part of an attorneys job, whether a solo practice or (even especially) at a large firm is business development. It's one of the things that's probably not taught in law school, but should be part of the curriculum.
In order to stay in business, a firm has to generate new clients. One of the ways attorneys or law firms do this is biz dev with other firms. Developing relationships with other practices, and throwing business both ways is a great way to maintain a steady flow of business.
If you're purchasing media online and developing business, why not refer those cases you don't want to another firm that does? Keeping up a varied circle of attorney "acquaintances", and sending business their way once in a while, is a sure fire way to convert unwanted leads into new business later down the road.
Don't forget to ask for referrals in return. Just a simple question, "if you ever get a case "x", thats my specialty", after referring some business to an attorney is all it takes. Keep tabs on the fruit of your relationships. If you find that some attorneys take your business and never return the favor, keep track of that and adjust accordingly.
By actively working offline and online to generate new business, you can maximize your ROI with very little time spent marketing yourself.

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Treat Internet Traffic Like Foot Traffic

If I were to walk into your office and say, "I think I have a medical malpractice case", what would you do? Ok, you'd call animal control (or pass out because you think a dog is talking to you). But if it were a real live person, surely you would take the time to ask the right questions and explain how your firm could provide the services they would need to get compensated, yes?

Internet Traffic is no Different

It seems as though some lawyers still haven't come to the realization that the inquiries they receieve from interent traffic are actual people with actual questions or problems. I say this because after talking to a few of them, they seem to think that traffic coming from their website, or blog, or other online marketing efforts is all worthless.

Because of this mentality, these attorneys fail to act accordingly to close business. Perhaps because the medium of communication is new and different, there is not the same connection that's made when a potential client walks into their office.

In order to make your online marketing spend work for you, you have to service every lead. Read this post on converting leads now for an excellent breakdown of how to maximize the business you get from internet traffic.

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Do Free Advice Sites Generate Business?

There are a few sites out there that allow consumers to post questions to be answered by lawyers. Avvo.com and FreeAdvice.com are the two biggest. From a lawyers business development standpoint, do these products provide any value?

Highly Scalable Traffic Generation

Both of these sites get quite a bit of traffic, and continue to grow at a rapid pace. The main driver of this traffic is a highly scalable content generation plan. Giving any visitor the ability to generate content (ask and answer questions) is a great way to grow traffic quickly. Community generated content sites like these, social media sites, forums, etc scale content almost exponentially, which drives an incredible amount of long tail organic search traffic. Not to mention, once visitors become involved in the community, they return, bringing the daily amount of traffic even higher. This is contrast to static sites such as lawyers websites, or profiles that tend to bring primarily new visitors.

How Valuable is this Traffic?

Considering the nature of the traffic, is answering questions on these sites, and building up a rapport with the community worth a lawyers time? Obviously, I don't have access to detailed traffic analysis of either site, but using some SEO tools available online, most of the highest traffic generating keywords are variations of "free legal advice". That can't translate very well into legitimate business for a law firm.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Avvo and FreeAdvice aren't good places to market yourself, by all means take advantage of these free services. I'm just wondering if a lawyers time wouldn't be better spent generating content that is timeless, helpful and will continue to provide value (for both consumers and the attorney) in the long-term. The kind of content that continues to function as a resource for anyone looking for legal information (not advice) online, such as an authoritative article, how-to, blog, etc.

Q/A type content certainly scales, and builds a lot of traffic, but is it valuable? It seems to me, a helpful, authoritative article like this one, while it requires more effort to generate, will continue to provide value in the long-term and establish to visitors that the author is an Alpha Lawyer.

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Marketing your Law Firm in a Weak Economy

Money is getting tighter, and your retainers may be getting smaller, but that doesn't mean that lawyers should ease up on their online marketing efforts. If anything, now is the time to increase your exposure online.

Adapting your Online Content for the Economy

Normally, you would focus the content on your website or profile around the types of cases that you focus on. Nowadays though, it may be worthwhile to modify your approach a bit. One of the core shifts is to start publishing useful, informative content that actually allows potential clients to solve their situatiuation without hiring an attorney...

Why would a lawyer want to waste time publishing free advice?

The bottom line is, if someone can't afford to hire you right now, they're not going to. What they are going to do is spend some time researching online to find out what they need to do to solve their problem on their own. Whether it's immigration applications, bankruptcy forms, employment filings, etc, they're going to find out how to do it themselves. So why not help them by making some common problems easier for them to handle on their own?
Now I'm not talking about going on Q/A forums and posting answers to legal questions. I'm talking about publishing helpful, comprehensive how-to's, forms, process overviews, etc for searchers to find on your site, blog or profile page(s).

The Benefit for You: Branding

The economy will come back, and so will your retainer fees. If you've built up some trust/authority/likeability with consumers during the down economy, you will be rewarded when dispoable incomes return.
Whether they like it or not, branding works, and people want to work with a lawyer they like. If they've stumbled accross your site before, and stuck around long enough to research, your name will register. They may have even bookmarked the content they found so they don't lose it.
Sooner or later some of these visitors are going to have another legal problem, or a friend will. Since you've made that impression however many months ago, you'll have a leg up on everyone else.
Finding and choosing a lawyer is not easy, and if someone's already made a positive connection with your firm, it makes it much easier for them to choose yours over all the other available practices.

Just a little free advice, in case you ever have some extra income lying around for legal marketing services.

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