Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they have to market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers handle the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers need to think that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little if any results for the total amount of time and money they spend -- whatever an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.
Ahead of 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 lots of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a great deal for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone's guess -- it's hard for the colored, one page display ad to be noticeable if you have 20 other lawyers doing exactly the same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to market their marketing and advertising philosophy that "bigger is definitely better" and "everything we sell is the opportunity," so that they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This type of thinking, alongside the use of print yellow pages generally speaking, has gone just how of the dinosaur at an extremely accelerated pace. The yellow pages in publications form had their heyday for most decades, but the people now would go 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 utilizing 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 way just like the way the yellow pages do making use of their print directories. "Bigger is definitely 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 significant ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to choose 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 obtain leads but quickly exit per month later after spending plenty of cash 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 ready to "pay for a lead" takes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for most 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 normal lawyer's conversion rate (the amount of clicks it will take to generate a lead) of anyone to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can end up paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not just a client.
Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates straight into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend short amount of 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 there is a constant 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 can be normally to make contact with the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals provide lawyer a possible Internet marketing and advertising option for 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. Everything being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed included make more sense being an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites offering 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 give you a lot -- and a cost to go with it -- however for whatever reasons simply don't produce enough leads for the total amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend.
Many legal Internet directories and portals exist which 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 just how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many individuals the Internet legal portal attracts who are trying to find legal services. Folks have paid 1000s of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals which have produced nothing in the manner of Internet marketing and advertising results. An extremely wise idea for almost any lawyer who considers advertising in a Internet legal portal is to obtain some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is clearly attracting.
What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, if the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer are certain to get good, solid results for the total amount of money they spend is usually hard to achieve.
Ultimately the simplest way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising - just how that'll ultimately get them the very best long term results for the amount of money they spend -- is to focus on getting their website to rank full of organic search results. When things are considered, people on the Internet who look for goods and services mainly look for websites to find their answers. They could check out legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don't find what they want they could turn to pay per click listings as a final resort (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that offer them with the answers they seek. Rechtsanwalt Wels
If your lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn't require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer might want to look into pay per telephone call programs. Pay per telephone call is like pay per click, nevertheless the lawyer does not pay for a phone unless they receive one. And the expense for pay per telephone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer can pay for a click in several cases. A smart lawyer could even want to consider getting a part of several pay per telephone call providers with the proven fact that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with your programs worth it.
Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to appear into must be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.
One final 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 individuals have already been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of types and styles. People are accustomed to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer's website must certanly be too.
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