Law Firm Marketing

A great new legal wiki site (thats short for encyclopedia) has just been launched with the opportunity for its users to create their own information and legal definitions. Not only can you list your law firms website and information about the firm, you can also help the community by leaving your imput about legal definitions and resources for the consumer who will come across the legal wiki.

This is a great way to promote your law firm website, but at the same time connect with your prospective clients with legal information.

Lawfo Legal Wiki promotes interaction between lawyer and consumer. Taken directly from the same idea of Wikipedia, it offers a easy user interface that everyone can use and understand.

Take a look! I think lawyers and attorneys have the chance to explain what some legal terms means in their eyes. Click the link to the right of this post! >>

Easy Legal Marketing shows lawyers and attorneys how easy it is to navigate the marketing world of the web with its helpful articles and interaction with its subscribers. Sign up today to take a big step in the right direction for your law firm marketing.

When is the last time you were driving down the road and came across a law firm advertising on a billboard? Yes, I think your pondering the same answer that I am. I see them ALL THE TIME! To this degree, when do these lawyer billboard advertisements become less effective? Everyday!

This post is to inform you of the change in lawyer marketing and advertising. If you think your law firm can get away with some billboard advertising and some signs across town, you might be looking for new customers a lot in the next year or two. Yes, granted this works in some circumstances (if you live in a small town or area or you dominate the area already-by which you wouldn’t be on this site looking for information) but sooner or later, everyone will be able to have a billboard just as nice as yours. So you ask, what should I do then?

The answer to the above question is very simple, use the internet to have a client generator so you can spend your money elsewhere, and have a steady flow of incoming traffic to your website. This website is to help you do so with online marketing and also with low cost direct marketing ideas to help really stimulate your target clients. Most lawyers today that rely on these advertisements will be behind the times when it comes time to make the transition to online marketing, so do yourself a favor and look to this site for help with online marketing for your law firm.

The best profit and ROI dollar to dollar is in search engine marketing, not only because with some guidence you can be doing it for FREE (minus your professional time) and little by little it will help you in years to come.

Rules to live by for Lawyer Online Marketing:

1. Start Small – don’t try to do everything at once! You will become frustrated and overworked and you will want to give up.

2. Map a Plan- draft a plan of action to help go with your marketing, this not only structures things, but makes it easier for you to schedule in your day.

3. Research and Use Sites Like This to Help- yes of course you could hire someone to help, but without an understanding of what to look for in a SEO or marketing assistant, you will take whatever they say and be ok with it.

Take those three above starters to help formulate a plan and then implement it. If you choose not to follow those 3 suggestions above, come back and read them again in 3 months when you decide to really get serious about things and take it step by step! Good luck and Contact me if you have any questions or need some legal marketing help.

- In this great article by Tara Lieser, she explains why Law Firm Websites Need video. The website field for lawyers is becoming one of the most competitive markets on the internet. Read this article for a great explanation on to why you should be using video on your website.

Many lawyers today market themselves by having a website. With more and more websites being created each year, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to stand out in the crowd. So what’s the best way to get a leg up on the competition? Video.

Having a customized video on your website provides a variety of benefits.  Although photos and text are a good way to pique interest, a video establishes a personal connection with the viewer. If they feel as if they’ve already met you, they are more likely to call you over a firm that does not have video.

You can utilize video to discuss your background, experience, passion for representing clients, etc. If boasting on your achievements seems a little intimidating, many lawyers create videos to educate the viewers. You can give an overview on how a case like theirs works, why it’s important to hire an attorney with experience, or even the benefits of a particular topic such as Bankruptcy or Mediation.

Creating video testimonials of previous clients is a great way to establish credibility. It’s one thing to mention what past clients have said about you, but how compelling is it to have an actual client sing your praises! They can talk about their experience working with you, what a magnificent job you did for them, and how you helped change their life.

Video is an extremely popular medium on the internet right now. Recent studies have shown that around 80-90% of web users watch some form of video online during the average week.  Video marketing is becoming a necessity for any serious marketing plan. Not only does it open the door for new business, but it keeps you one step ahead of your competition!
 

Tara Lieser

Video Field Producer

Yes, you must tell what a robot should do when coming to your site, and your whole website will be hacked by robots that want information from you. Then the frantically store it on all their servers and must index it for everyone to see! Haha. Don’t be intemidated by all of that talk, but this in reality is what a search engine robot does with your blog. It stores data from your posts ( or if you don’t edit your robots.txt file everything!). Here is a quality and easy way to edit your robots.txt file for your blog. If your not familiar with editing files for SEO, use this plugin by Yoast.

Disable author and date-based archives.

Have fun and if you need more indepth editing of your law firms blog, contact me so I can create you a custom robots.txt file or help you make one.

Competition is fierce online, and the top places on the search result pages are the most hunted for; therefore, any law firmwho tries to get clients on the Internet needs to use a whole strategy to attract the best visitors and the highest traffic. The working principle for the blog optimization for search engines is  the keyword. When you start the race for SEO (search engine optimization), you already have an advantage: blogs are usually the ones to receive more traffic then other complex sites due to their highly informational content. By keywords we mean those sentences or structures that a user types in the search box of an engine.

Blogs mainly rely on articles that are regularly updated and re-freshened, so that they have something new to offer all the time. Before you write the blog content, you’ll need to make a list with all the keywords related to your domain and which are most likely to be typed in the search box by Internet users. A brain-storming session is ideal to find the best structures you need to include in the articles; keep in mind that there are some rules you may have to follow here as well.

For instance, choosing some very general keywords is not the best way to promote a law firm via a blog given the fact that though you may receive a high traffic, the conversion could remain modest. The explanation is very simple here: too broad terms attract all sorts of users, even those that are not interested your law services. SEO experts use all sorts of parameters to check the profitability of a blog, and one of them deals precisely with the number of relevant users the web-page gets.

Once you manage to get the most high-in-demand keywords, you’ll still have to do a lot of work in order to keep the blog position high in traffic. The status of keywords may change from one day to the other, given the intense competition that characterizes the Internet in general; consequently, every time you update or change the site content, you need to perform a keyword analysis beforehand and see where they stand in rankings. Last but not least, there is one thing that remains the golden rule of search engine optimization: quality informational content, that should be the essence of any successful blog! Do this in your law firm blog and you will be ahead of those just starting out with no law firm seo experience!

Great article by Amy Campbell

The importance of your firm’s web site in your sales process should not be underestimated, even in a relationship business like legal services. Let’s face it, what’s the first thing people do once they get a specific attorney referral? They “Google” the attorney, read the bio and peruse the firm’s web site. For large and small law firms alike, your web site plays a key role in the discovery process and sets the tone for how a potential client evaluates your firm. Remember that perception is reality. And first impressions count.

Once you’ve met all the basic marketing prerequisites — a nice looking site that defines and positions your firm in the marketplace, with lean practice area descriptions, bios with flattering photos of your attorneys and easy-to-find contact information — it’s time to move beyond the descriptive “electronic brochure” stage and begin transforming your web site into a real sales tool.

At last summer’s LSSO Raindance conference, Chris Turk of HubbardOne cited two revealing statistics:

• • 74% of large law firms gained clients whose first awareness of firm was through web
  (Touchpoint Metrics study of 12-month period).
• • 64% of general counsel use the web sites of firms they hire (Internet Marketing Attorney)

According to Turk, clients are demanding value outside of the billable hour and as they shop around, they want firms to “demonstrate specific, recent, relevant experience.” It was so simple, and so spot on, I wrote it down and later printed up cards with the phrase.

Law firms can spend megabucks on branding and differentiation with limited success, because, as much as we hate to admit it, most firms and attorneys are pretty much the same. As Bruce Marcus writes in a recent issue of RainToday.com, “If differentiation is impossible to truly accomplish, or to specifically define, there are still many ways to project your firm’s distinctive qualities.” One of those ways, according to Marcus, is “to demonstrate — demonstrate, not tell — that you can be more useful to the client, particularly in the practice areas in which you specialize.” If that’s done well, says Marcus, then differentiation takes care of itself.

So take a look at your web site from a prospective client’s viewpoint, and ask yourself, does our web site tell them what they need to know? In addition to clear descriptions of your services, show your special expertise and industry knowledge by providing useful and relevant “information of value.”

Here a few items to get you started on your web site’s sales tune-up.

1. Keep it current.
If your two biggest, most recent deals aren’t on your web site, then they aren’t helping to demonstrate how you can help a similar client who is perusing your site. Does each practice area description have recent examples of work? Are attorney bios up to date and do they feature their most important recent work? Are their most recent articles and speeches easy to access from their bio? Remember, potential clients and referral sources (as well as search engine spiders) come to your web site looking for specific information to support the belief that you might be the right fit for them — don’t send them away empty handed.

2. Showcase expertise.
Address client concerns head on by publishing regular articles, updates, and news on current and relevant topics. Publicize attorney accolades, speaking and seminar activities and share presentation materials when appropriate. The idea is to promote your firm’s attorneys as subject area experts through publishing and speaking activities and documenting it all on the web site in an organized and systematic way. This requires time, effort and the skills of an experienced managing editor.

3. Make it easy.
Your web site is the public face of your firm. A visitor’s experience with your web site is his experience with your firm. Is your site easy to navigate, well organized and logical? Does it have a useful search function? If not, a visitor may not find what she is looking for, become frustrated and leave. A web site that doesn’t perform as expected can leave the impression that the firm is poorly managed, does not value customer service, or has poor attention to detail. In today’s sales and service environment, a good web experience can impress, a poor one can be a red flag. And remember, fancy and expensive is not always better than simple and direct.

4. Edit copy to be client focused, not firm focused.
Web messaging should address your clients’ needs and concerns, not the firm’s oldest partner. When writing or editing for the web, repeat this mantra: It’s about them, it’s not about us. Law firm “About Us” pages are famous for long-winded histories that start off with phrases such as, “We were founded in 1939 by Joshua R. Smith and Samuel M. Smith,” or “We are organized into three divisions.” While there may be a place on the web site to communicate your firm’s rich history, it ranks low on the relevancy scale. What visitors really want to know is how you can help them. The quicker you begin to demonstrate that, the closer you will be to the sale.

5. Ask for the business.
In conjunction with demonstrating your relevancy and providing all this information of value, don’t forget to build in calls to action. Encourage the reader to take the next step (whatever that may be), and make it easy for the reader to act.

6. Drink the Kool-Aid.
Your marketing materials may talk the talk, but does your firm walk the walk? A disconnect between the culture promised in your marketing and branding and the one experienced by your clients/prospects when they interact with your attorneys and staff, can cause a credibility problem. Close integration of marketing, sales and customer service is required to help make sure everyone is on the same page and the same team.

These are just some of the ways to increase the effectiveness of your law firm web site. For more information or to inquire about a web site audit, please contact Amy Campbell.

In the recent trend of the internet and web 2.0, most people are now focused to reading what other people have to say, what other businesses post, and what other services are being offered by real people. I know your thinking, “How are they telling people this information?” Well, the answer is simple, A BLOG!!.

Year by year, day by day, more people are becoming interested in reading what other “actual” people have to say, depending on the topic. People search for answers, information, and products all the time, whether you know it or not. Do you do the same? I think your answer is probably yes of course.

So what does this all mean in terms of LAW FIRM? Well, the answer is is answered by a question. What information or product or service can you give someone? What does your business have to offer to someone? I know I know, you can go on and on about the answers to the above questions right? Well why not convey that message into something that you can tell a prospect or someone looking for your product or service?

The easiest way to do this is with a blog. I say this because it is so easy for anyone to setup a blog, simply write information, and post it. With the creation of done for you applications in which you can just simply buy a domain and install a blogging software or content management system onto it, you have no excuse to sit there any longer.

Now to simply tell you that just posting information in a blog CMS like WordPress will get you high results is not accurate. Learning about how to effectively use your blog to draw clients and website traffic is a great learning curve that everyone wants to know.

What if I could tell you how to do that? Would that make sense to you? Also what if I could help you set your blog up to find the first page of Google with every post you make about the information you could talk days and days on? Of course it would!

With this information, I will ALSO let you in on my top plug-in secrets to success for blogging with WordPress. Sounds like a sweet deal right? Yeah I know!

See to me, this information should be beneficial to all who want to spread information on the web, because we all can benefit from the information or service/product you provide. To me, that would be the best thing that would come out of this whole process.

Stop wasting time trying to get a web master setup your website for you, changing your design, and trying to edit HTML code, when you can simply edit the website YOURSELF!

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