Lawyers face exactly the same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they have to market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with exactly the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers need certainly to think that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do might produce little if any results for the quantity of time and money they spend -- regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may tell the contrary.
Ahead of the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising selection for any lawyer was to promote in the yellow pages. Even today the print yellow pages contain a lot 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 the colored, one page display ad to stick out when you yourself 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 always better" and "everything we sell is an opportunity," so that they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This distinct thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages generally, has gone just how of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages on the net form had their heyday for most decades, but the population now goes to the Internet for the info they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages might get calls, but they'll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as an inexpensive source of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to provide lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a way just like the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. "Bigger is always better," so as opposed to realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that produces financial sense and produces a good ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as numerous top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke along the way, but at least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter into pay per click as a fast way to obtain leads but quickly exit monthly later after spending a lot of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce only expense.
While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising could be the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is normally an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. Just how much a lawyer is willing to "pay for a lead" assumes 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 between $5.00 to $70.00 per click with respect to the market, and when the normal lawyer's conversion rate (the quantity 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 really a client.
Area of the problem lawyers face once they assist pay per click (and this translates straight into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend very 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 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 work of convincing traffic to accomplish what the lawyer requires, that will be normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone. Rechtsanwalt Wels
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 specific attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. Things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed included make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites offering listings for free. The lawyer must be particularly careful, however, once they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they offer a lot -- and an amount to go with it -- but also for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the quantity 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 doesn't automatically make sure they are 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 that are trying to find legal services. Folks have paid tens of thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the manner of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for just about any lawyer who considers advertising in a Internet legal portal is to obtain some very accurate user demographics on what type of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is obviously attracting.
What is a lawyer supposed to accomplish? Everywhere the lawyer looks, perhaps 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 quantity of money they spend is often hard to achieve.
Ultimately the easiest way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising - just how that will ultimately have them the best long term results for the money they spend -- is to target on getting their website to rank full of organic search results. When things are thought, people on the Internet who seek out goods and services mainly seek out websites to get their answers. They may check out legal Internet directories and portals, and when they don't find what they want they may turn to pay for per click listings as a final resort (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately individuals who search the Internet are seeking websites offering them with the answers they seek.
In case a lawyer is searching for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn't require being the main pay per click crowd, the lawyer might want to consider pay per call programs. Pay per call is like pay per click, nevertheless the lawyer doesn't pay for a phone unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will probably pay for a press in lots of cases. A smart lawyer might even want to consider getting involved with several pay per call providers with the proven fact that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to create involvement with one of these programs worth it.
Most of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions a lawyer chooses to appear into must certanly be tried on a case by case basis. Practically nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works quite well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.
One very last thing a lawyer should know about in regards to the Internet and a website presence is that appearances do count. Many people have already been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of most types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer's website ought to be too.
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