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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