Lawyers face exactly the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they should market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers handle exactly the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers need to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce minimum results for the total amount 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. 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 whole lot for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone's guess -- it's hard for your colored, one page display ad to stick out when you yourself have 20 other lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to advertise 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 line of thinking, along with the utilization of print yellow pages generally, went the way in which of the dinosaur at an extremely accelerated pace. The yellow pages in publications form had their heyday for all decades, but the people now would go to the Internet for the data 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 be from vendors utilising the yellow pages as an inexpensive source of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to supply lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner just like the way the yellow pages do making use of 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 makes financial sense and produces a significant ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to select as many top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high while they can. The lawyer may go broke along the way, but at the very least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a quick way to get leads but quickly exit per month later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce only 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 exceptionally expensive proposition for what they get. Simply how much a lawyer is ready to "buy a lead" assumes a complete new meaning with pay per click attorney. The price per click for all lawyer related keywords, e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can vary from $5.00 to $70.00 per click with respect to the market, and when the normal lawyer's conversion rate (the amount of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not just a client.
Area of the problem lawyers face once they use pay per click (and this translates 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 job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer requires, that will be normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals offer the 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 inside them make more sense being an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites offering listings for free. The lawyer needs to be particularly careful, however, once they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they give you a lot -- and a price to go with it -- but also 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 that have a quite strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not 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 looking for legal services. Folks have paid tens and thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. An extremely wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising within an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is really attracting.
What's 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 will 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 - the way in which that will ultimately get them the very best long haul results for the money they spend -- is to focus on getting their website to rank saturated in organic search results. When all things are thought, people on the Internet who look for goods and services mainly look for websites to get their answers. They could look to legal Internet directories and portals, and when they don't find what they want they could turn to pay for per click listings as a final resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately those who search the Internet are searching for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.
If your lawyer is searching for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn't require being the main pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to consider pay per telephone call programs. Pay per telephone call is similar to pay per click, however the lawyer does not buy a call unless they receive one. And the expense for pay per telephone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer can pay for a press in several cases. An intelligent lawyer might even wish to consider getting a part of several pay per telephone call providers with the idea that involving the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with these programs worth it.
