Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they must 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 certainly to think that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may produce little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend -- whatever an outside marketing or advertising advisor may tell the contrary.
Ahead of the Internet the key non-Internet marketing option or advertising selection for any lawyer was to promote in the yellow pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty 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 your colored, one page display ad to be noticeable when you yourself have 20 other lawyers doing exactly the same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to advertise their marketing and advertising philosophy that "bigger is obviously better" and "everything we sell is the opportunity," so they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This line of thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for several decades, but the populace now goes 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 get calls, but they'll most be from vendors using the yellow pages as a low priced supply of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a way like the way the yellow pages do using their print directories. "Bigger is obviously better," so as opposed to realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign which makes financial sense and produces a significant ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to choose as numerous top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high while they can. The lawyer may go broke in the act, but at least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter pay per click as an instant way to get leads but quickly exit monthly later after spending lots 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 ready to "purchase a lead" assumes a complete new meaning with pay per click. The price per click for several lawyer related keywords, e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click with respect to the market, and when the conventional lawyer's conversion rate (the quantity of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of someone 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 once they assist pay per click (and this translates 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 you never 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 complete what the lawyer requires, that is normally to make contact with the lawyer via e-mail or by phone. Rechtsanwalt Wels
Legal Internet directories and portals provide lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option for their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal may be for a lawyer with regards to marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon this attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed inside them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites offering listings for free. The lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, once they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they provide a lot -- and a cost to opt for it -- however for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount 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 cause them to become good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it's not exactly how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many individuals the Internet legal portal attracts that are searching for 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 any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what type of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is really attracting.
What is a lawyer supposed to complete? 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 can get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is usually hard to achieve.
Ultimately the easiest way for a lawyer to opt for Internet marketing and advertising - the way that'll ultimately have them the very best longterm results for the cash they spend -- is to target on getting their website to rank full of organic search results. When everything are believed, people on the Internet who look for goods and services mainly look for websites to get their answers. They might look to legal Internet directories and portals, and should they don't find what they need they might turn to pay per click listings as a last resource (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately individuals who search the Internet are looking for websites that offer them with the answers they seek.
If your lawyer is trying to find an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn't require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may choose to consider pay per telephone call programs. Pay per telephone call is much like pay per click, however the lawyer doesn't purchase a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per telephone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will probably pay for a click in several cases. A good lawyer could even wish to consider getting associated with several pay per telephone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with these programs worth it.
Most of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions a lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case basis. Practically nothing may be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works very well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.
One last thing a lawyer should be aware of as it pertains to the Internet and an internet site presence is that appearances do count. Lots of people have now been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer's website must be too.
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