Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they should market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to think that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce minimum results for the amount of time and money they spend -- whatever some other marketing or advertising advisor may tell the contrary.
Prior to the Internet the key non-Internet marketing option or advertising choice for any lawyer was to promote in the yellow pages. Even today 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 the colored, one page display ad to stick out if you have 20 other lawyers doing the same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to market 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, alongside the usage of print yellow pages generally, moved just how of the dinosaur at a really accelerated pace. The yellow pages in publications form had their heyday for all decades, but the population now goes 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 likely 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 fashion like the way the yellow pages do with 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 good 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 because they can. The lawyer may go broke in the act, but at least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter pay per click as a fast way to have leads but quickly exit a month later after spending plenty of cash for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce just expense.
While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising may be 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 willing to "purchase a lead" assumes on an entire new meaning with pay per click. 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 regards to the market, and when the typical lawyer's conversion rate (the number 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 a client.
Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend 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 complete what the lawyer requires, that will be normally to get hold of the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals provide the lawyer a potential 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 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 in them make more sense being an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites offering listings for free. The lawyer must 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 opt for it -- but for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend law.
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 make them 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 are searching for legal services. People have paid thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the manner of Internet marketing and advertising results. A really wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising within an Internet legal portal is to have some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is really attracting.
What's 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 are certain to get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is usually hard to achieve.
Ultimately the simplest way for a lawyer to opt for Internet marketing and advertising - just how that will ultimately buy them the very best long term results for the cash they spend -- is to concentrate on getting their website to rank high in organic search results. When everything are considered, people on the Internet who seek out goods and services mainly seek out websites to find their answers. They might look to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don't find what they need they could turn to pay for per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that offer them with the answers they seek.
If a 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 call programs. Pay per call is like pay per click, however the lawyer doesn't purchase a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer can pay for a click in many cases. An intelligent lawyer might even wish to consider getting associated with several pay per call providers with the proven fact that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with your programs worth it.
