Lawyers face exactly the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they need to market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with exactly the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - just how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers need to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little or no results for the total amount of time and money they spend -- regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.
Before 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 stand out if you have 20 other lawyers doing the exact 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 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 usage of print yellow pages generally speaking, has gone just how of the dinosaur at a really accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for most decades, but the populace 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 may well get calls, but they'll most be from vendors utilising the yellow pages as an inexpensive 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 just like the way the yellow pages do making use of their print directories. "Bigger is always better," so rather than 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 choose as much top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high because they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at the very least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter pay per click as an instant way to obtain leads but quickly exit monthly later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce just 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 normally an exceptionally expensive proposition for what they get. Just how much a lawyer is willing to "buy a lead" takes on a complete new meaning with pay per click. The price 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 depending on the market, and when the typical lawyer's conversion rate (the number of clicks it requires to generate a lead) of someone to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can end up paying up to $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not just a client.
Area of the problem lawyers face if they work with 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 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 complete what the lawyer requires, that is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals offer the 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 in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon this 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 in them make more sense being an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that provide listings for free. The lawyer must be particularly careful, however, if they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they offer a lot -- and a cost to go with it -- but also for whatever reasons simply do not 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 sure they are 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're searching for legal services. People have paid 1000s of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals which have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. A really 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 complete? 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 often 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 concentrate 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 could check out legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don't find what they want they may turn to cover per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users work with pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are seeking websites that offer them with the answers they seek.
If your lawyer is searching 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 phone call programs. Pay per phone call is much like pay per click, nevertheless the lawyer does not buy a call unless they receive one. And the expenses for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will probably pay for a press in many cases. A smart lawyer could even wish to consider getting associated with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with one of these programs worth it.
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