Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they need to 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 minimum results for the total amount of time and money they spend -- regardless of what some other marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.
Before the Internet the key 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 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 exactly the same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising philosophy that "bigger is obviously better" and "everything we sell is an opportunity," so they really often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This distinct thinking, along side the use of print yellow pages generally, moved just how of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages on the net form had their heyday for a lot of 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 get calls, but they'll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as an inexpensive supply of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to supply lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a fashion like the way the yellow pages do using their print directories. "Bigger is obviously better," so rather than 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 choose as much top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high because they can legal. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at the 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 a lot 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 normally an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is prepared to "pay for a lead" assumes a whole new meaning with pay per click. The price per click for a lot of lawyer related keywords, e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can vary from $5.00 to $70.00 per click with regards to the market, and when the conventional lawyer's conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying well over $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not just a client.
Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with 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 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 do what the lawyer requires, which is normally to make contact with the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a possible Internet marketing and advertising option due to their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a lawyer when it comes to 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 in 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, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they give you a lot -- and a price to choose it -- but 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 which have a quite strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not 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 people the Internet legal portal attracts who're searching for legal services. Folks have paid tens and thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals which have produced nothing in how of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising within an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what sort of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.
What is 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 can get good, solid results for the total amount of money they spend is frequently hard to achieve.
Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to choose Internet marketing and advertising - just how which will ultimately buy them the best longterm results for the amount of money they spend -- is to target on getting their website to rank saturated in organic search results. When all things are thought, people on the Internet who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to find their answers. They may check out legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don't find what they need they may turn to cover per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately individuals who search the Internet are seeking websites that provide them with the answers they seek.
If a lawyer is searching for 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 like pay per click, however the lawyer does not pay for 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 many cases. A smart lawyer could even desire to consider getting a part of several pay per telephone call providers with the indisputable fact that involving the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to make involvement with one of these programs worth it.
