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.

Meow meow

Sniff Out Every Lead

When someone throws me a bone, I take it every time. If you're paying a lead generation company to deliver you prospective clients, you should do the same right? 

I overheard a conversation in the Experthub office today regarding a consumer email concerning our service. "Jon" had found a few lawyers near him and elected to contact both of them regarding an immigration problem.

Attorney 2 (I'm working backwards on purpose) sent "Jon" an email with a quick overview of his firm, as well as a brief, personalized paragraph responding to his inquiry. Nothing too time consuming, just a quick 20 second response.

Attorney 1 (The first attorney to contact the lead) elected to send a completely generic email with absolutely nothing about the original inquiry. This email included the phrase "Call Me Now!" at the bottom. When "Jon" called, he was greeted by a secretary who insisted he couldn't speak with the attorney unless "Jon" gave her his credit card number for the $25 phone consultation fee. 

Instead of giving up his credit card  number, he waited for a response from Attorney 2. He soon got it, called, and hired Attorney 2 to help with his Immigration problem.

Now, both of these immigration lawyers have similar subscriptions, and pay about the same amount. They're getting the same number of leads, roughly the same number of profile visits, etc. So essentially, they should be getting the same amount of new business from their marketing spend. Which do you think is spending their money more wisely?

Now, I could be getting ahead of myself; maybe there is good money in phone consultation fees, but somehow I doubt it. Or it could be he has so much business that he doesn't need/want anymore cases. Then why pay for marketing services?

In a business where one or two cases can be the difference between profitable marketing spend or money thrown away, why wouldn't you spend at least a few minutes to ensure that each lead is serviced? It seems a waste to spend the money to get through all the steps of online marketing (traffic generation, lawyer impression, profile click, inquiry, completed lead) just to fumble a good lead at the last moment when it's in your lap.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. This is somewhat out of my area of expertise. Any lawyers reading? Want to fill me in?

At least Jon got what he was looking for.

Ruf ruf

Take Advantage of Googles Local Results

In case you haven't noticed, Google has been displaying it's own local results for a far wider array of search terms recently. Even search terms with no regional keywords will bring up Google's "Ten Pack". How is this going to impact how people find lawyers online? I played around looking for various types of lawyers, "traffic ticket lawyers", "immigration lawyers", "criminal lawyers", "medical malpractice lawyers" and so on. Almost every time I saw the Google ten pack in the fourth spot, with map, phone numbers and websites.

Claim Your Local Spot

If you haven't done so already, claim your local spot on google maps. It's a straighforward online form, and all you have to do beyond that is let someone from Google call you or reply to a post card, both designed to confirm you're actually a local business.
It's a great way to get some traffic from local searchers, but make sure your website is up to date and at it's best. It will be posted along side all the other local attorneys' sites, so a good first impression will likely be the biggest differentiating factor for this type of marketing.
If you don't have a website, or if your site is a bit dated, use your lawfirms.com profile page instead. You can update it with video, all the lawyers in your firm get their own page, you can add various bit's to build your "resume", include recent case results, your contributed articles... the list goes on. It's a rich page that will establish your experience at first glance, and give the local searcher what they're looking for.

P.S. If you try to replicate my searches, check out some of Experthubs other legal web properties while you're at it. They'll be easy to find.

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PPC Rules, SEO Drools (New Contributor Intro)

Little Miss ExpertPup is on Vacation (actually, she's locked outside because she ate a sock, I'll never understand dogs), so I'm going to take this opportunity to shed a different perspective on this blog.
My name is Isabelle, and I'll be contributing to this blog here and there to add some variety and a different perspective to the topics published here. I'm an eight year old, three legged cat (long story, involves a car) and I've been transcribing all previous posts to this blog. Have you seen that dogs paws? The keyboard would have to be five feet wide.

Cats and Dogs

There are a lot of differences between cats and dogs. First and foremost, we're smarter. She ate a dirty sock fresh off the foot, 'nuff said.
Secondly, we're "energy efficient". Some people might use the term "lazy", but I prefer to think of myself as productively challenged. Anyway, enough about me, on to the point.

Generating Traffic for Lawyers: SEO vs. PPC

The one thing expertPUP and I agree on is that search traffic rules. This is espescially so for lawyers, or anyone providing services that are needed on an infrequent basis. You have to be available when a new client needs you (is looking for you).
However, going through all the effort required to generate traffic organically doesn't make much sense to me. You're going to have to pay someone to do it, so why not just buy it in the first place?
Buying search traffic gives you tremendous precision with regards to the people who visit your site. You specify exactly for which terms your ad is impressed, and exactly where the visitor will land. Not only that, but you can use dynamic landing pages that change depending on the keyword the visitor searched for. Try doing that via SEO.
If you don't have the time to manage keyword lists, you can use Google features such as Broad Match to let them do the work for you. Granted, you lose some of the precision control mentioned above, but you'll generate much more traffic.

Any Downside?

Not if you ask me, but there is the expense. Google's created one of the most valuable companies in the world by building a truly competitive marketplace. You'll be bidding against thousands of other lawyers and legal marketing professionals, but the effective cost per lead should be worth the expense right? Why else would they be doing it? That's how an efficient market works, it establishes the value of a good; In this case a lead. Plus, lawyers make a boatload of money anyways right?
PPC Rules.... SEO Drools, Literally

Meow meow

Establish Yourself as the Alpha Lawyer

Whenever two or more dogs meet, one of them immediately establishes him or herself as the "alpha". All the other dogs must submit to the alpha. The alpha eats first, then the others get whatever is left over. I eat first.

If your Law Firm has a web presence, you want to establish the same kind of authority online. You want visitors to your pages to immediately know that you are a highly experienced expert and you know how to help them with their legal problem.

Establishing "Alphaness" Online

Unlike a dog, you can't go around and physically submit other lawyers (though you may like to, I know I do). What you can do is develop a web property rich with your experience, knowledge and expertise.

You want visitors landing on your page to immediately get an impression of your authority. This is no time to be modest; Brag. Make sure visitors have quick access to information about you and your successes.

Recent Cases

This is a great way to show your experience. List out some recent successful cases and outcomes. Tell them what you've done for other clients that you could do for them.

Education

You spent a ridiculous amount of money for law school, throw it up there. If you graduated at the top of your class, put it up, if not, lie.

Affiliations

Let visitors know that you are active in the legal community, and acknowledged by your peers.

All of these things, in addition to a lot of helpful, authoritative content on the legal area in which you focus can help build the kind of web property that will show your visitors the value you can bring to their case.

If you've got a lawfirms.com profile, it's easy to build a rich, authoritative web property that exudes alpha.