Category Archives: Marketing

30 Marketing Tips For Lawyers

Marketing your law firm can take up a lot of time and money, but it doesn’t have to. You don’t have to be a sales expert, naturally outgoing, or excessively charming either. Instead, growing your law firm starts with a strong marketing plan that uses successful strategies targeted at the right audience and performed consistently. While you may not see results overnight, given time, new clients will be calling up your office.

To help you develop the right marketing plan for your business, here’s a list of marketing tips and ideas specifically for you.

    1. Meet with referral contacts regularly. No matter how busy you are, take the time to meet or contact your referrals personally to remind them that your services are ready and available.
    2. Know your target market. Obviously, if you’re a divorce lawyer you won’t be searching for a client with workplace injuries. However, you’ll want to know everything possible about your target audience and tailor your marketing plan to them.
    3. Attend annual/monthly dinners with colleagues and law school classmates. Even as you pursue your career in law, it’s important to reach out to old classmates and build upon your referral network.
    4. Study more briefs and related cases. The more you know about the cases you intend to provide legal services for, the more knowledge and expertise you will have. This is critical for building trust with potential clients and answering questions backed by the research you performed.
    5. Put your law firm on social media. Social media is a smart way to reach out to communities and specific groups of people to inform them of your legal expertise.
    6. Get a website for your law firm. If you haven’t done so already, having an attorney website for your law firm can increase client intake by finding new clients searching for lawyers online.
    7. Make networking a priority. This should be a habit. Go out and meet people every day even when you don’t feel like it.
    8. Start a law blog. Writing articles and guest posts on other blogs is a great way to share your expertise in your area of law.
    9. Create a content marketing strategy. Once your blog is filled with quality content, you’ll need a smart marketing strategy to reach out to people interested in reading it.
    10. Offer free consultations. Everybody loves free stuff. If you can give a few free minutes of your time, you can use this as an introduction to yourself and a chance to sell your legal services.
    11. Have a unique and compelling CTA. Your call to action, either on your website or throughout social media, should be clear when telling readers what to do (i.e. call today for a free consultation about your personal injury).
    12. Attend public events with an attitude to give, instead of receiving. Often, the most successful lawyers are those with a giving mindset rather than taking from every opportunity they see.
    13. Know your USP. What is your Unique Selling Point? Remember, people are hiring lawyers to work for them, not the law firm itself. What makes you so special?
    14. Create a brand and spread it. Consider developing a stationary set with your business logo and some short descriptions that capture what you can do.
    15. Use Facebook Ads. You can set up cost-effective and highly targeted Facebook Ads to find new clients.
    16. Start a drip marketing campaign. When you start collecting contact information for potential clients, you can create a series of timely messages to nurture them into new clients.
    17. Give away free resources. While you may want to bill for every minute of your time, consider taking a moment to put together some free resources (i.e. pamphlet, ebook, etc.).
    18. Be helpful to those in your community. When you meet new people in your community, find a way to give a helping hand. Sometimes it pays to be helpful.
    19. Market your law firm if it feels right to you. Don’t think that you have to commit to every marketing method available. For example, if you don’t like social media, don’t use it.
    20. Make sure it’s easy to reach you. Similar to having a strong CTA, you should have a distinct and easy way for people to get in contact with you.
    21. Use accounting software programs for lawyers. There are a few accounting software programs that can automate your entire firm and all you more time to focus on finding more clients.
    22. Start a Google PPC campaign. There are a lot of competitive keywords that can be expensive. However, if you use the right words you can increase traffic to your website and leads for your legal services.
    23. Ensure that your content is shareable. If you do have a blog, be sure social media share buttons are visible and don’t be afraid to ask readers to share it when they reach the end.
    24. Understand the basics of SEO. Learn how to make the necessary changes to your website to increase your ranking in search engines.
    25. Focus on getting referrals. Getting referred clients makes the intake process so much easier. Plus, referred clients tend to be more loyal and more likely to provide you with referrals in the future.
    26. Send referrals to other lawyers. You can send referrals to others in your network (i.e. when your too busy with other cases or a prospective client asks for work in a different area of law). If karma exists, you can expect these favors to be returned to you.
    27. Don’t be shy, ask directly if your clients know anyone who needs you. Perhaps others people your client knows needs your services but they’ve been too focused on their case to see it.
    28. Release content on social media at specific days and times. Sometimes the mornings get more engagement than the evenings and vice versa.
    29. Volunteer at various legal groups and activities in your community. It doesn’t have to be specific to law, you can join an organization to give back to your community while getting your name and legal services out there.
    30. Go to bar association events. Whenever there are events from your local bar association go and network to again, build your referral network.
by Marketing, Ultimate Guides Leave a comment

Facebook Retargeting Ads For Lawyers

If there’s one way to win more clients its by reintroducing your ads after they leave your website. Taking this approach to your Facebook Ads can not only save your advertising budget but also allow you to focus your campaign on the people who are really interested in your legal services. You can also hire a facebook ads agency to manage all these campaigns for you.

Lawyers using Facebook Retargeting Ads can take advantage of an affordable and efficient advertising method.

Your Future Clients Are On Facebook

Facebook has more than 1.4 billion active users (avg. for December 2017) which is where many of your future clients can be found.

Facebook Users by Age in 2018

Source

The graph above reveals some really important data on how many people are using Facebook:

  • 3 million users aged 25 to 34
  • 4 million users aged 35 to 44
  • 4 million users aged 45 to 54

This will likely be the age bracket your law firm would be targeting your ads toward, however, some areas of law may focus on younger or older age ranges. The key focus is that somewhere in these numbers are a few new clients that require your firm.

What is a Facebook Retargeting Ad?

Have you ever been on Facebook then later went to another website only to see an advertisement for some CRM company appear at the top of the new website you’re browsing?

This is what is known as retargeting and it is an extremely effective way of bringing potential clients back to your website to contact your firm.

In the digital marketing world, Facebook’s retargeting ads tend to yield some of the highest returns from an advertisers ad budget. For your law firm, this provides you with an opportunity to maximize your budget by getting second, third, or more chances to convince someone that you are the lawyer for the job.

Facebook Retargeting On a Deeper Level

There are a few reasons why a retargeting campaign is very effective for advertising your law firm. An interpretation of Retargeting.com suggests that retargeting works because you can deliver ads again to your target clients which have already expressed interest in your law firm.

You’ll need an attorney website to get the most out of Facebook’s retargeting ads because a snippet of code must be placed on your website. This code places a cookie (a small tracker) onto any visitor’s computer which sends information back to Facebook about the pages they visited.

You would use Facebook’s custom audiences to retarget visitors to specific places on your website. For example, if a visitor went to your contact form, you can retarget them so they return and send you a message.

Another example could be a special offer for a free consultation for people considering divorce. This compelling offer is found on your homepage and in order for a visitor to receive this they must provide you with an email. Your initial Facebook campaign starts off by attracting Facebook users to your homepage. Some users stop by but you don’t receive as many emails as you like. With your retargeting ads, using an image that emphasizes that pain of divorce with more information about the benefits of hiring a divorce lawyer.

Retargeting is a cost-effective way to re-engage with your potential clients. It gives them a second opportunity to decide whether your law firm is the best choice available. Now, if you’re wondering how to set that up, you can learn how in the next section.

Setting Up Facebook Retargeting Ads

Using Facebook retargeting ads provides your law firm with a competitive edge. There aren’t many other law firms doing this which makes this a smart move for your law firm’s market strategy.

Here’s a simple approach to setting up next law firm’s Facebook Ad campaign with retargeting at your law firm:

Install Facebook’s “Pixel”

The first thing you have to do is install Facebook’s tracking pixel on your website. This pixel is what is used to track visitors on your website and sets up the retargeting ad through Facebook’s ad network.

You shouldn’t require any help from a web developer for placing the tracking pixel on your website. There’s an easy to follow explanation on Facebook’s help forums.

Choose Your Audience

The next step is to log into your Facebook Ads account and go to “Audience.” Facebook offers powerful tools to select a specific group of people to target your ads. If you’re a local law firm, you can select which city you’re in, their marital status, employment, the approximate level of income, whether the visited your website, and all kinds of combinations.

If you don’t want to create a custom audience, you can upload your own list of contacts instead. Or, you can merge both your contacts with the audience you want to target.

Whichever you decide, your ads are almost ready to be displayed to your target audience whenever they browse Facebook, Instagram, and other websites throughout Facebook’s advertising network.

Grab Their Attention

Your retargeting efforts will only be effective if you have a compelling message (or image) that can recapture your audience’s attention.

Why should they return to your website? What do you want them to do? Do you want previous visitors to return to a contact form after visiting your page containing a special?

Before you start creating your Facebook ad, it’s important to have a plan. This will help you determine the direction and the design of the overall ad. You retargeting ad has to catch people’s eye and bring them back to your website. Take a look at the example below:

This is just one of many ways you can use Facebook ads to target your potential clients and increase intakes at your firm. However, be sure you don’t make these mistakes with your Facebook Ads.

by Marketing Leave a comment

PPC For Lawyers May Have Just Gotten A Whole Lot Tougher

The focus of a website is to receive the most clicks that provide a steady stream of traffic and leads to an increase in business and clients. The means that every business (and law firm) is fighting for the front page of Google.

Visitors arrive to your website in a variety of way. One way to receive free, organic traffic is by ranking high on search engines via keywords. The content you provide and the keywords included on your pages will be selected by search engines that best match the query.

An alternative to free, organic traffic is PPC (Pay Per Click).

PPC is a highly competitive advertising strategy that can place your website and business pages on the front of Google and other search engines. Due to the changing nature of the online world, PPC for lawyers is going to be much more difficult to come out on top.

What Is PPC?

Pay per click advertising is a method of attracting new clients to your law firm using specific and targeted keywords used by those seeking a lawyer.

Successful campaigns use a landing page that has a distinct message and a clear call-to-action. This means that whenever you advertisement is clicked, that person will be landing on a webpage describing a solution to their problem (i.e. call 123-456-7890 for a FREE CONSULTATION).

PPC campaigns can be set up in a variety of ways with specific ad groups targeting the following:

  • Bankruptcy Lawyer
  • Business Lawyer
  • Divorce Lawyer
  • Family Lawyer
  • Medical Malpractice Lawyer
  • Personal Injury Lawyer

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Yandex, and Bing allow you to design text based ads that will appear when those keywords are entered into the search bar. The concept behind PPC is that you will only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad leading to your website or landing page.

There is potential to create some successful advertisements that allow you to discover new clients, however many of these keywords above are highly sought after by other law firms. In addition, the nature of PPC and how advertising is permitted on these search engines are constantly changing.

The Changing Nature Of PPC

Back in February 2016, Google rolled out a few changes to their some changes to the way they show ads in the search queries. They removed the longer text ads that showed in the right sidebar. This is a complete overview of the changes Google made:

  • No more text ads in the right sidebar of search results on desktop
  • Up to 4 text ads will be shown above the organic listings for “highly commercial queries” (before, up to 3 were displayed)
  • Up to 3 text ads will show at the bottom of the search results.
  • The maximum number of ads to be displayed will be 7 (before, there were up to 11)

Google defines “highly commercial queries” as the keywords that are in high demand in certain industries.

What Does  This Mean for Lawyer’s PPC?

 When you are choosing the right keywords  to setup a PPC campaign, there may be a highly sought after keyword that drives up the prices. Let’s saw for example, “New York Lawyers” is a highly searched keyword. Due to popular demand, you can see yourself paying tens to hundreds of dollars per click.

Consider this. “Lawyer” and “Attorney” are the most expensive keywords used on Bing. They cost over $100 per click when used with search queries like these: “personal injury lawyer” or “accident attorney colorado.” Your monthly PPC campaigns could cost in the thousands with a return of investment being entirely uncertain. Bing is known to be the cheaper advertising platform and Google is likely to be much higher.

With the changes made by Google, this puts increasing competition on keywords but also to a top ranking position in the search queries. Where before prices may have varied from a dollar up, the supply and demand can push your PPC campaign budget beyond its limits.

The Downside Of PPC Campaigns For Lawyers

 PPC offers a paid alternative to getting your website noticed by potential clients. However, these campaigns are based entirely on bids and competition for keywords. If there are a lot of advertisers bidding on the same keyword, the price goes up.

Unfortunately, PPC advertising does not guarantee that every click will lead to your next client. In fact, you could be losing a significant amount of money at each click when no one is contacting you for your legal services.

This document from Google detailing factors that influence your PPC viewability, claims that 56.1% impressions are not actually seen. This implies a considerable amount of loss and uncertainty when relying on PPC to find new clients and grow your firm.

Now, here’s something that you have to be aware of. Since you are not the only one competing for “high commercial queries” there are occasions of click fraud.

Click fraud is an extremely shameful marketing practice where one of your competitors will continually click on your ads until your budget is depleted. While Google does provide protection from fruad, there are still ways to get around this.

What Can Lawyers Do?

Paying $100 per click may not be a viable solution for small law firms.

As an alternative to pay per click advertising, lawyers can start their own blog and generate organic traffic to their websites. Although this too requires a significant amount of keyword research, time writing articles, and consistency with posting, the investment are for those seeking long term returns.

Having a blog can bring a flow to steady clients without having to spend thousands on advertising. By utilizing your knowledge and expertise in your field, you can provide solutions clients are searching for and direct them to a direct method of getting in contact with your legal services.

When combined with social media and other marketing strategies, blogging can be a relief to highly competitive and sometimes fraudulent ways of PPC campaigns.

by Marketing Leave a comment

Picking The Best Domain Name For Your Law Practice

In order to run a successful law practice, you’re going to need a website. Your website is the place for potential clients to discover your legal services, get to know you, and  schedule a consultation.

However, before you or hired help creates your website, you’ll want to pick the best domain name for your law firm.

A website and a domain name are not the same, although they are closely connected. The website contains all your content, information, and images. Whereas the domain name is the address that people type in their browsers that bring them to your website.

There are many types of domain names available and there’s a few important guidelines to follow when choosing the best one for your law firm:

Top Level Domain for Lawyers

 Top Level Domains (TLDs) are the little part of the domain name found after the DOT. These include, .COM, .ORG, .NET, and .GOV. There is even a specially created TLD for lawyers called .LAW.

The kind of TLD you decide will play a role in your ability to being found online. The universal TLDs are those listed above. There are also country specific TLDs such as .CA (Canada), .CN (China), .EU (European Union). Using these domains are restricted to those residing in that country and may not have as large a global reach as a .COM.

Most domains can be registered by anyone, however, the .LAW specific TLD requires proof of license before it can be issued.

Is a .LAW the best domain for you?

What Are Lawyer Keywords?

 Consider your domain name as a very important keyword that aides in your website getting found. People looking for a lawyer may search the following in Google: Florida Divorce Lawyers.

 Those words, are considered keywords and they play an important part in how your website is found online.

One thing to keep in mind is that keyword stuffing your domain name could lead to penalties by search engines and prevent your site from ever being noticed.

For example,

“childcustodydivorcelawyers.com”

While a name like this appears to be congruent with your services, there are a variety of reasons to not use this kind of name.

Best Domain Names For Lawyers

 Creating a domain name that is memorable and brandable is the best approach to take. This is important. Your domain name will serve as a banner that not only catches people’s attention but prepares people for what they’ll find on your website.

So, consider the following: what is the overall message you’re trying to say? Can people remember it easily? Can they type it into their browser without difficulty? Are there other websites with domain names similar to yours?

In addition, here are a few points to help you pick the best domain:

  1. Keep it short and simple (KISS). Shorter names are easier to remember and simpler to type into the browser. Just imagine, if your name was Bernie, you could have this: bernietheattorney.com!
  2. Be consistent. Your domain name should be a reflection of the services being offered and/or the location you provide them. Having a name like nyccourtconsultations.com (implying that you offer court consultations in NYC) would be more powerful than worldoflaw.com (potentially implying this site is about a world of flaws?).
  3. Don’t use unpopular TLDs. There are many different domain names available that may seem ideal for branding purposes but have less effect as a common TLD like .COM. Many people are familiar with .COM as a domain name.
  4. Avoid using hyphens. Search engines sometimes consider websites using hyphens as spammy and trying to stuff too many keywords. For example, best-lawyers-in-san-francisco.com may signal to search engines that this website is spam. While hyphens can be used without receiving penalties.

Lawyers Starting A Blog

 Having a website allows your to showcase your practice, services, past clients, and contact information to the entire world. As well, another useful thing to do on your website is starting a blog.

As mentioned before, keywords play an important part in getting your site noticed online. While the domain name plays a significant roles in directing people to the website, the content is the most valuable.

The best way to make your website stand out online is by providing expert advice and quality content. Blogs allow you to build your reputation online as well as discover new, potential clients.

Domain Name Overview:

Do Don’t
 

●        Do use your personal or business name(s). Remember to keep it short and simple. Use a domain name like, smithlawassociates.com, instead of smithandtullylawassociates.com
●        Do use your area of practice. If you’re a divorce lawyer, legal advisor, or criminal lawyer, feature that (i.e. smithdivorcelawyers.com)
●        Do use something memorable. Especially for blogs, having a domain like, fortheloveoflaw.com or leagueoflawyers.com could serve as a great platform to express your legal work as well as for branding purposes.
●        Do use a common TLD (such as .COM or even .LAW).
●        Do consider the ethical code. Making claims that cannot be proven, or misleading (i.e. always-win-lawyers.com) may be a violation of your local jurisdiction’s ethical rules.

  

●        Don’t use names that may change in the future (i.e. if an associate leaves your law firm)
●        Don’t use abbreviations of your legal service that could create a negative reputation (i.e. Austin, Stevens, and Smith Lawyers Group: asslawyers.com)
●        Don’t use spammy words like, best, top, greatest, etc. While you may feel that your law firm is #1 in your area, the search engines may flag your site as spam.
●        Don’t make it too personal. Whatever you are interested in and passionate about should not be used for your domain name, unless, it is relevant to your area of law.
●        Don’t use hard to remember or difficult to spell words.
●        Don’t copy another domain name. If serveandprotect.com is taken, avoid taking serveandprotect.net (or any other TLD). This can confuse your potential clients.

Choosing the best domain name for your law practice is not going to be easy. Remember that search engines like Google do provide benefits when a keyword is matched in your domain name. However, try to avoid coming off as spammy and use a name that is broad but to the point. For branding purposes, short and catchy would be the better approach.

by Business, Marketing, Ultimate Guides Leave a comment

Facebook Ads For Lawyers

Facebook has considerable potential for marketing and finding client referrals. With Facebook, you can build strong relationships between users and your legal services.

For your law firm, Facebook Ads allows you to put your law firm in front of people who may be in need of legal aid.

This article will take you through the steps of starting your first Facebook Ad campaign as well as a few strategies you can try.

Facebook Pages for Lawyers

If you haven’t done so already, you may want to consider creating a Facebook page for your law firm.

This is not a requirement to use Facebook Ads, however your Facebook Page can be used strategically to market your law firm.

Facebook pages allow you to create a community surrounding your legal services. Here you can showcase your latest law related blog posts and other promotional information to everyone who likes your page.

As well, you can use Facebook Ads to drive traffic and engagement to your page to boost your online presence and, reputation.

When you’re just getting started with Facebook pages, the best thing to do is grow your page organically to increase credibility and engagement before using Facebook Ads to achieve your goals.

For the remainder of this article, let’s focus on creating a Facebook Ad and how you can use it effectively for your law firm.

What Can Lawyers Do With Facebook Ads?

 Facebook Ads is divided into 3 objectives:

  1. Awareness. Use this objective to create interest in your law firm (i.e. online branding).
  2. Consideration. Use this objective to get people thinking about your law firm and gain access to more information (i.e. articles, contact info, etc.).
  3. Conversion. Use this objective to encourage people to contact your law firm to arrange a consultation or use your legal services.

The goal of your advertising campaign will be different depending on what you are trying to achieve.

If you’re looking to grow your online presence, creating awareness and consideration ads will be your best choices.

If you’re looking to get people to call your office and set up a consultation, creating conversion ads will help you achieve that.

Once you have determined the goal of your advertisement, it’s time to create your first Facebook ad. 

Setting Up A  Facebook Ad

To use Facebook Ads, you’ll need a Facebook Business Account.

Once you have set up your account, you’ll have access to the Ads Manager Dashboard. Here you can use Facebook’s Guided Creation to create your ad.

In this example, let’s look at how to set up a Facebook Ad to drive more traffic to your law firm’s website.

After selecting Traffic under the CONVERSION objective, scroll down to continue. You’ll notice an option to create a Split Test.

If you’re unfamiliar, a split test allows you to create two ads and test them to see which ad performs better.

With Split Testing, you can create different ads that target the same people, use the same ad to target different people, or experiment with different ad delivery methods.

Facebook provides all the analytic tools to measure the results. Depending on how you setup your budget, you can choose to split your budget to run both ads equally or let Facebook decide which is the better ad and use more of your budget.

WHERE TO SEND TRAFFIC

You’re in complete control of your Facebook Ads. When you’re setting up your ad, you can choose to send people who click on your ad to your website, a Facebook Page, or even Facebook Messenger to start a conversation right away.

Not sure where to send people who click on your Facebook Ad?

Try a landing page. Landing pages are single pages online that can be designed like your Facebook Ad with more details about your law firm, how to get in touch, or other information you want to provide.

DO YOU HAVE AN OFFER?

Sometimes, it can be an effective strategy to provide an special offer in your Facebook Ads.

This can be a free 30 minute consultation, reduced rates for a specific legal service, or something else related to your law firm.

Offers can be limited in time (i.e. offer ends November 15th) or amount (i.e. available only to the first 15 people).

The benefit of setting up a Facebook Ad with an offer is that people who see this ad can save it and receive notifications about it.

VARIABLES FOR YOUR FACEBOOK AD SPLIT TESTING

As mentioned before, split testing lets you control different variables relating to how your Facebook Ads will be viewed online.

There are 4 options:

  1. Creative. Allows you to use all variables, 2 to 4.
  2. Delivery Optimization. Allows you to choose how your ads are delivered. You can focus on getting Link Clicks, Landing Page Views, Impressions, or Daily Unique Reach.
  3. Audience. Allows you to define two set of audiences to serve your ads to. You can choose Location, Age, Gender, Languages. As well, you can select some detailed targeting depending on people’s demographics, interests, or behaviors. As an example, divorce lawyers may want to target people between 25 to 35 as this is a common age when couples experience divorce.
  4. Placement. Allows you to choose where your Facebook ads will be placed. Facebook has a range of advertising access. You can feature your ads on Facebook, Instagram, and their partner network. As well, you can choose to have your ads featured in people’s newsfeeds, side column and more.

Consider placing an eye catching ad in a new feed to drive traffic to your legal services.

 Notice: Most Facebook Ads are charged based on Impression. This means, each time Facebook serves your ad, you’ll be charged. If you’re looking for a different advertising method, try Google Adwords for Lawyers. With Google, you can set up a pay-per-click ad campaign.

BUDGET & SCHEDULE

Once you have determined how your ads will be delivered, who your target audience will be, and where your ads will show up, you can set your budget.

With split testing, you can start with an even split then select to end the test early if one of your ads performs better than the other. This way, you can gain the most results from your Facebook Ad.

DESIGNING YOUR LAWYER AD

It’s time to design the ad for your legal services.

Start by naming your ad. Then, decide whether you will be connecting your Facebook Page to the ad or not. If you don’t have a Facebook page, be sure to click “Don’t Connect a Facebook Page.”

Next, choose the ad format you want to use.

The next step allows you to add photos to your ad. Facebook offers some Free Stock Images or you can upload your own.

Design Smart Lawyer Ads

Figuring out Facebook Ads can itself be difficult. However, creating an effective ad can be equally challenging.

There is no one design that will send people to their phones and to contact your law firm. This is where Facebook’s split testing allows you to create variations in your ad designs to see what works, and what doesn’t.

Here’s some sample ads to give you ideas for creating your own Facebook Ads:

See more Lawyer Ads on Adspresso

When you’re satisfied with your ad design and have set up a billing account, you can create your ad and test the results.

Should You Use Facebook Ads?

Marketing your law firm using Facebook Ads provides you an opportunity to find client referrals and expand your legal services.

Although Facebook is used predominantly for entertainment and staying connected with friends and family, it can be used to reach new people, build your online presence, and give access to legal services.

Facebook ads are just one way of marketing your law firm. You may also want to give Google Adwords a try.

by Branding, Business, Marketing, Social Media Leave a comment

Google Ads For Lawyers

Google Adwords is an effective way to turn online web browsers into prospective clients for your law firm.

Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system uses keyword phrases and displays your ads to those searching for your legal services.

Something to keep in mind, it takes time and money to see a measurable ROI with Google Adwords. You’ll see that considerable planning and research is involved.

As an alternative, Google also offers Adwords Express which a simple solution to setting up advertisements without any worries.

With this article, you’ll learn how to get started on Google Adwords and launch your first lawyer PPC campaign. Once you get the hang of it, you can grow your law firm and provide your services precisely to those who need it.

Understanding Google’s Ad Types

Google Adwords has 4 kinds of ads  you can use to attract clients to your law firm. Those are: Display Ads; Video Ads; Search Ads; and, App Ads.

  1. Display Ads. Google has a network of websites where your ad will be featured. These are the banner ads you see at the top and side of websites.
  2. Video Ads. If you’ve made a promotional video for your law firm, you can use video ads which can attract new clients from YouTube.
  3. Search Ads. These are the ads found at the top and bottom of every Google search.
  4. App Ads. You probably won’t use App Ads since they are focused on promoting an App.

Getting Started on Google Adwords 

If you’re completely new to Google Adwords, you can contact one of Google’s support team and they’ll walk you through the set up, free. Or, you can continue reading this article to see a step-by-step tutorial to getting started and running your first PPC campaign.

After clicking START NOW you’ll be taken to a signup page. Enter your email address and lawyer website then click next.

If you don’t have a website for your law firm and want one, go here for more information.

After you have signed in to your new Google Adwords account, you’ll be taken to a dashboard displaying an overview of your account.

To set up your first PPC campaign, click on Campaigns then the “+” or “+ NEW CAMPAIGN.”

Once you have selected NEW CAMPAIGN, you will be taken to a page to choose the type of ads you want to display.

You’ll notice an additional ad choice for shipping products, this will be irrelevant to you.

For the sake of this tutorial, display ads will be selected.

There are 3 choices of Display Ads: Sales, Leads, Website Traffic.

Depending on the purpose of your campaign, you may want to choose Sales / Leads and create a goal like “Get Phone Calls.”

After you click CONTINUE, there are 3 steps to complete before your PPC campaign goes live.

SELECT CAMPAIGN SETTINGS

Step 1 takes you through the campaign settings such as Campaign Name, Networks, Locations, Languages, Bidding, Budget, Start and End Dates, and Ad Schedule.

Two important sections are the location and bidding.

Setting the location will determine who narrow or wide you want your ads to reach.

As well, bidding determines how much of your budget will be used toward keywords being searched. More information on bidding is provided later in this article.

Bidding for Lawyers

There are different bidding strategies to consider when it comes to targeting prospective clients using Adwords.

Google provides a comprehensive chart detailing all the different bidding strategies here.

If you’re looking to get the most phone calls to your law firm, choose Maximize Conversions (be sure to set the goal on the previous page to “Get Phone Calls”

You should use the Enhanced CPC if you want Google to automatically increase your bidding when it will improve conversions or decrease your bids if it is less likely to convert.

NOTICE: The search terms Lawyer and Attorney are the most expensive search words for Lawyers. Bids can range up to $100 for a single click.

As you gain more experience with Google Adwords, you can experiment with the different options to see which settings give you the best ROI.

When you are finished selecting your campaign, click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

SET UP AD GROUPS

When you are setting up an Ad Group, focus on one purpose. In this example, we choose NYC Lawyer as the Ad Group with a range or related keywords:

If you put keywords without “ ” (i.e. NYC Lawyer) your ads will be displayed to less specific searches (e.g. Is Bernie Sanders a NYC Lawyer?).

If you put “ “ around a keyword (i.e. “NYC Lawyer”) your ads will be featured to those using that keyword in their search (e.g. Most affordable NYC Lawyer).

If you use [ ] around a keyword (i.e. [Affordable NYC Lawyer]) your ads will be displayed only to those who search the exact same keyword, (i.e. Affordable NYC lawyers).

CREATE ADS

If you’re unsure which keywords to use, try Google’s Keyword Planner.

Once you have chosen all the right keywords related to your law firm or goal, you can start creating ads.

Here you can test a range of different copy. If you clicked the “Enhanced CPC” Google will soon use the ad getting the most clicks and conversions.

When you’re satisfied with your ads, click SAVE & CONTINUE to review everything.

Landing Pages for Your Google Adwords

The “Verification URL” is used to send people who click your ad to a contact page or location on your website with your phone number and any additional contact information.

If you don’t have the ability or budget to change your website to send traffic onto a specific webpage, you don’t have to.

There are landing page softwares provided by companies like LeadsPages and ClickFunnels which allow you to easily design a place for visitors to go after clicking your ads.

Getting started with Google Adwords can be a little overwhelming. If you keep reading, you can learn about Google Adwords Express which makes the setting up advertisements easy and worry free.

Google Adwords Express

Google Adwords Express (AWE) is a simplified version of Google Adwords that automatically manages your online ads. All you have to is set up a campaign and your ads will be featured for a month.

Before you can use, you must first register your law firm on Google My Business Listing (GMB).

With GMB, you can create a free marketable tool for your law firm. Start by submitting your law firm’s location and other business information. Once your account if verified (you’ll receive a verification code in the mail) you can help potential clients find your business and learn more about your services.

Now that you have a GMB listing, you can create a new AWE campaign.

After selecting your GMB listing, there are 3 easy steps to get your ads up and running:

Start by picking a goal.

  1. Do you want prospective customers to call your law firm?
  2. Visit your law firm?
  3. Take a specific action on your website?

After choosing one, you’ll be requested to “Pick Goal”

The next step allows you to choose your location and the range around it to target your ads. If you’re law firm operates in various locations, you can select “In specific cities, states or countries.”

After you have chosen your location and range, you can define your service using keywords prospective clients may be searching for.

Example. Law firm, Defense lawyer; etc.

The next step requires you to write the ad.

Once you have crafted your ad, you’ll have to confirm your phone number:

The last step requires you to determine your budget. You determine your daily budget which will be calculated into a per month maximum.

You will only pay when your ad has been clicked on and when your budget is spent your ads won’t display until the next day.

You can set up a budget as low as $1.64 USD per day up to $76.32 USD per day.

Clicking next will take you to a review page where you can check the detail of your ad before it goes live.

If you haven’t set up a payment method, you’ll have to submit your credit card information to finalize your ad.

GOOGLE ADWORDS VS. GOOGLE ADWORDS EXPRESS

If you’re unsure about the differences between Google Adwords and Google Adwords Express, here’s side-by-side comparison:

Google Adwords Google Adwords Express
BENEFITS Pay only when your ads are clicked Pay only when your ads are clicked
SETUP Advanced features requiring: keyword selection, bid pricing, and account structuring Minimal management: simply setup your ads and let them run
EASE-OF-USE Can be difficult for new users Easy to use
REQUIREMENTS Adwords account + Credit card Adwords express account + Google My Listing + Credit card
KEYWORDS You choose all your keywords + phrases You choose some of your keywords + phrases; Google will come up with more related to your ad
AD FORMATS Search Network, Display Network, Shopping Ads, Video Ads, Universal App Ads Search Network on via Google, Google Maps, & Partner Sites
REACH Reach potential clients in any geographic location Reach potential clients in any geographic location
MIN. BUDGET $0.01 per Day $1.63 USD per Day
MAX BUDGET N/A $76.32 USD per Day

SUMMER OF GOOGLE ADS

Google Ads has incredible potential to drive prospective clients to your law firm’s website. If you’re looking for something quick and simple to gets ads running online, try Google Ads Express.

Whether your goal is to drive readership to your blog, a following to your social accounts, or phone calls to your office Google Ads is a budget friendly solution for your business.

As an alternative, Facebook Ads allows you to tap into social media to drive more referrals and clients to your law firm. Read Facebook Ads for Lawyers.

In this eBook is packed you get sample ads, advertising resources, and other marketing strategies you can use to boost your law firm.

by Branding, Business, Marketing, Social Media Leave a comment

Best Mobile Advertising Agencies

Mobile advertising refers to any advertising that appears on mobile devices: smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and other mobile devices with wireless connections. Mobile advertising is a type of mobile marketing and includes text (SMS) ads, mobile browser web banner ads, and banners and videos in games and downloaded apps.

Mobile devices have smaller screens than laptops, desktop computers, and televisions. Mobile advertisements are generally compact and concise to match the specs of mobile devices. Companies like Google and Facebook tailor mobile ads to the user based on browsing history, shopping habits, geolocation, demographics, and interests.

Mobile advertising gives advertisers the highest chances of being seen by their target audience compared to TV or even traditional digital advertising such as Facebook ads. Mobile devices outnumber television sets three-to-one.

According to Ad Age, in 2017 online ad revenue totaled $88 billion. This figure represents a 21% increase from 2016. Mobile ad revenue grew by a whopping 66%, over ten times more than traditional desktop computer advertising, during the same time.

In March of 2018, Google officially rolled out mobile first indexing, meaning that they now “use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for.”

Does this mean that all Google SEO is now mobile SEO? No, but here’s what it does mean:

Mobile-indexing is rolling out on a broad basis.

  • Having mobile-friendly content is helpful to perform better in mobile search results
  • Having fast-loading content is beneficial to perform better for mobile and desktop users

Unless current trends reverse, mobile will continue to grow faster than every other form of advertising, and delegating your mobile advertising needs to a professional agency is the best way to ensure your mobile advertising campaign succeeds.

Mobile advertising offers up-and-coming brands a new foothold into the fastest-growing customer pool right now. Established businesses must consider how to keep up with changing trends. In both cases, unless you’re already a skilled professional experienced in working on mobile advertising campaigns, hiring a mobile advertising agency makes sense.

I’ve written this guide to tell you exactly what you need to know about mobile advertising. Once you have a grasp of how mobile ads work and what agencies do, you will know what to look for in an agency. The agencies listed at the end are the best of the best, selected from among hundreds of top agencies.

What You Need to Know About Mobile Advertising

Because mobile advertising includes all ads explicitly served to mobile users, it is a broad category. The purpose of this section is to help you understand what mobile advertising can do for your company. Once you know the benefits of mobile ads and what goes into a mobile ad campaign, you’ll be equipped to choose an appropriate agency to conduct your next mobile campaign.

Best Practices

Not surprisingly, mobile best practices are different in crucial ways from traditional advertising best practices, and also differ from other digital advertising. Here are the most critical areas to focus on for successful mobile advertising:

Be Clear and Concise

Mobile devices have relatively small screens, and users can quickly get saturated with information. They will scroll past overly cluttered ads. Keep things simple.

Optimize Locally

About 30% of mobile searches are for location-specific queries. Users are often looking for coffee shops, gas stations, or other immediate local needs. Consider how your campaign can take advantage of these queries.

Consider Demographics

While demographics are a fundamental of all advertising, the demographic breakdown on mobile is anything but traditional. In addition to age, gender, location, and household income, you also need to consider whether your audience is gamers, news junkies, online shoppers, or another type of user.

Split test and Experiment

Mobile is a great place to experiment and compare the outcomes of two or more different tactics. An excellent mobile ad agency will know what variables to tweak and test to give you the best return on investment.

Monitor Key Metrics

Because mobile users check their phones throughout the day, mobile devices can provide advertisers with more consistent performance data than any other platform. You will need to gauge important metrics like impressions, click-throughs, shares, actions taken, and which users respond best and during what days and times.

Define Your Campaign Objectives and Metrics

Before you choose an agency or undertake any ad campaign, you need to set objectives – goals – and metrics, or ways of measuring your progress towards those goals. Here are some common goals of mobile advertising campaigns:

  • Establish a brand
  • Raise brand awareness
  • Increase sales or revenue
  • Increase web traffic to a website or a landing page
  • Increase in-store visits
  • Promote a coupon or other deal

Your objectives determine what metrics you will use, as well as what actions you take during the campaign. Mobile advertising offers many different metrics, so if you aren’t mobile ad savvy, this is another area where you’ll benefit from consulting an agency.

Get clear on your objectives first; then you can discuss them with prospective ad agencies, and narrow down ad agencies based on their specific area of expertise.

Define Your Target Audience

The second step as you plan your ad campaign is to define who your ads will target. You may already know your target audience, or a good mobile ad agency can help you do market research using test ads and surveys. Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Manager, and Twitter Audience Insights are also great places to do research.

Along with defining your target audience, you also want to understand their context. For example, most people in surveys say they prefer geolocation-specific search ads. Do you know how to target your ads to a specific zip code or geographical area for better conversion?

Context includes where your users are throughout the day, and which location is best to serve your ad: what percentage access their mobile device at home, in public, while traveling, and at work? These details will take your mobile campaign to the next level.

Once you know exactly who your audience is, what they like, what they need, how they think, and how to reach them through advertising, you’re almost ready to start designing the advertisement itself.

Types of Mobile Ads by Platform

Some mobile ad agencies specialize in one or two platforms, and others work with most mobile ad platforms. Do you want your ad to run on a single platform or multiple platforms?

If you are a smaller business owner, you can get great results on a smaller budget by doing your homework and picking the right platform. Bigger businesses should consider the advantages of appearing on multiple platforms.

These are the most important platforms to consider for your ad campaign:

  • App store promotion
  • Affiliate and ad serving programs
  • In-game mobile marketing
  • QR codes
  • Mobile search ads
  • Mobile social ads
  • Native ads
  • SMS

App store promotion works great for app install campaigns if your business is an app or has an app associated with it. Affiliate and ad serving programs take the guesswork out of targeting demographics and provide a lot of built-in metrics. In-game mobile marketing targets a large and dedicated user base of mobile gamers.

QR codes are codes displayed on ad space that users scan with their devices, which then take users to a specific webpage or app. QR codes work well with gamification or other fun campaign ideas to spread awareness.

Mobile search ads are any ad that appears during mobile search. As I mentioned earlier, Google now indexes mobile-first in anticipation that the trend of mobile-first users will continue growing. Mobile social ads are ads served to social media users on mobile devices.

A native ad is an ad appearing in an app or website that’s in the same format as the content the user is viewing. Examples include sponsored articles, sponsored posts, and sponsored videos.

SMS or text advertising is one of the oldest forms of mobile marketing. SMS advertising entails sending users texts or having them text a number, to receive offers or other promotional incentives. Some users still respond well to SMS ad campaigns, so don’t overlook the possibility of engaging customers through SMS.

Top FIVE Mobile Advertising Agencies

Here are the top five mobile advertising agencies, hand-picked from hundreds of different agencies around the world.

#1 Moburst

Moburst is a global, full service, a mobile marketing agency that focuses entirely on mobile growth for businesses. They have offices in New York, San Francisco, and Tel Aviv. Moburst has successfully redefined hundreds of apps, engaged in extensive A/B testing, and conducted tons of research into user preferences.

The global growth director of a large transportation company hired Moburst for app store optimization. Moburst provided keyword optimization support for Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store on an international scale. The global growth director appreciated their detailed monthly reports, which also included translations. He says their app store optimization is the best in the industry.

Moburst can help your business with any mobile advertising challenge with their creative thinking, data-driven analytics, and ability to convert targeted audiences into loyal users or customers.

#2 PreApps

PreApps is a mobile advertising agency based in Boston, Massachusetts. Their specialty is growing apps from zero to millions of downloads and sales. They have collectively helped apps reach 550 million downloads over six years.

The owner of a mobile dating app hired PreApps to handle production of advertisements for the dating app. The owner gives PreApps high marks for responding to her needs, working independently, and producing high-quality work. The company developed three short video commercials of various lengths, which exceeded the expectations of the dating app owner regarding their quality.

PreApps helps with launch, promotion, recognition in different markets, viral videos, app store optimization, influencer marketing, and scaling. If you need help advertising your app, PreApps is the best specialty firm for your needs. They offer a complimentary growth and strategic plan along with their initial consultation.

#3 Udonis, Inc

Udonis is a Newark, Delaware mobile ad agency that specializes in scaling games and apps from zero to 10 million users. They have had over ten apps featured on Apple Store’s top charts in 2018, deliver millions of app downloads each month, and are a Google and Facebook certified Partner Agency.

The founder of the Travel Nurse Association hired Udonis for lead generation and social media management. She says since she began the partnership, her cost per lead has dropped, and her percentage of high-quality leads has increased. They run every stage of her campaigns, from strategy to content to analysis, with swift turnaround time.

Udonis is excellent at what they do, which is why they won the Clutch. Co leading digital marketing agency award in Philadelphia, PA for 2018, as well as the leading digital marketing agency awards for Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD in 2017.

If you’re ready to scale your user acquisition for a game or mobile app, they promise to get back to you within 24 hours after you reach out.

#4 Zorka.Mobi

Zorka.Mobi is Belarusian a creative and mobile performance agency. Their full range of mobile marketing services includes from strategy development, execution, Influencer Marketing, cost per install (CPI) or cost per action (CPA) media buying, app store optimization, Apple Search Ads, and remarketing campaigns.

Vadim P., the owner of a mobile dev company, hired Zorka.Mobi for a six-figure app marketing campaign. Now his app has a larger user base and higher quality traffic. He says the agency hit all key targets, including fraud protection. He appreciates their skilled work and excellent communication.

Zorka.Mobi coordinates with developers and agencies that have global reach. If you are looking for a reasonably priced international creative firm grounded in analytics and experience, you’ll be well-served by Zorka.Mobi.

#5 Yodel Mobile

London-based Yodel Mobile is 100% focused on mobile marketing. Their global full-service mobile and app marketing consultancy has won multiple awards since they opened shop in 2007. They have worked with startups as well as the following international brands: NBC Universal, Fujifilm, and The Economist Group.

The director of marketing for an established women’s health app hired Yodel, and she says their enthusiasm shines through in the campaign results. Their efforts are translating into long-term benefits regarding the app’s reach.

Consider retaining Yodel Mobile if you are interested in their ongoing app business support, growth optimization, user retention, mobile strategy, and mobile acquisition services.

Wrapping Up

Whether you are a startup business or involved with a large established company, it’s time to get current and prioritize advertising to mobile users.

As you make the shift to a mobile-first world, be sure to keep mobile best practices in mind, define your objectives and key metrics, define your target audience and their context, and review the pros and cons of different advertising platforms.

Moburst is our number one overall pick for the best mobile advertising agency. As a premier global firm, they have the best full-service approach to mobile growth for companies looking to capture the global mobile market share. If you demand excellent results but are working with a smaller budget, Zorka.Mobi may be the perfect international global mobile ad agency for your needs.

Advertising Guides

Best Facebook Advertising Agencies
Best Instagram Advertising Agencies
Best Twitter Advertising Agencies
Best Snapchat Advertising Agencies
Best Google Ads Advertising Agencies
Best YouTube Advertising Agencies
Best Amazon Marketing Agencies
Best Mobile Advertising Agencies

by Marketing Leave a comment

How To Get Clients As An Attorney

If you’re fresh out of law school, you might consider starting your own law firm. In order to succeed, having the ability to find new clients will become the foundation of your success.

One of the first things you can do to spread the word of your career is by simply talking about it. Whenever you meet new people, let them know you’re a lawyer.

What you shouldn’t be doing is giving away free advice but instead discuss what it is your law firm can do and how they can get in touch with you.

If you want a few more ideas on how an attorney can get clients, here’s a list of ideas to help you grow your firm.

Friends and Family

Your friends and family will be one of the best referrals to help you find new clients as an attorney.

Since they know you best, you’ll become the first person they’ll mention if one of their friends or someone they know needs a lawyer.

If you’re opening a new firm, be sure to send an announcement via letter or e-mail to let everyone know.

Join the Bar Association in Your Community

If you have absolutely no connections, the first thing you should do is join any bar associations of committees in your community. Making connections and building relationships with other attorneys will give others a chance to get to know you and what you do.

Eventually, this can lead to mutual exchanges of clients back and forth. If one of your new connections has a client they can’t help (i.e. your connection is a divorce lawyer looking for legal advice for a car accident) they may refer that client to you.

In exchange, when you get clients at your law firm seeking services you don’t provide, you can refer them to someone in your list of connections.

Develop Your Online Presence

Social media and online browsers are great places to start finding clients as an attorney.

Get started with a website. Having a website allows you to showcase your previous cases, give information about your law firm, and most importantly, let’s visitors know how you can help.

Once thing to consider when setting up a website to find new clients is your domain name. The domain name you choose for your law firm’s online identity should stand out and briefly highlight your area of expertise. Make sure you choose the right domain name for your law firm before going live.

With your newly made law firm website, you can begin to share your knowledge on a blog. Blogging allows you to share content about your law firm in a way that connects with prospective clients dealing with legal problems.

Articles like, “What to do if you want a divorce” or “Steps to take after a car accident” provide information people may be searching. Of course, within articles like those will include “contact a lawyer to start a consultation.” If you’re content marketing is done well, you can use blogs to attract visitors to your website, get them to contact your firm, and potentially increase the number of clients you get.

Social Media

With a blog for your law firm’s website you can begin sharing content on places like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Sharing on these platforms allow you to make direct connections with those who may need your legal services.

As your social media channels grow in size, you can occasionally share promotional posts such as “Get a free consultation” or “You pay if we win!”

Posting frequently on social media is how you’ll stand out online. While this may seem like an added amount of work, your posts have the ability to get new clients organically. An alternative to this would be advertising.

Advertising

Two methods of online advertising for lawyers is by hiring a Google Adwords agency or a Facebook Ads agency / Instagram Marketing Agency.

Creating a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign with Google will put your law firm’s website at the top of the search engines. Instead of worrying whether your website is ranking high in the search engines organically, you can use a PPC campaign to put you at the top.

Google AdWords uses keywords to match your ads with someone searching for it. For example, if someone was searching for, “attorneys in New York,” having an ad using that phrase will increase the likelihood of it being clicked. However, depending on where you live and what area of practice you are in, Google AdWords can be very expensive.

Facebook Ads is another way for an attorney to get new clients. You can modify your ads to target specific groups of people and create a distinct purpose. Facebook ads can be used to grow your social media page or directed toward a contact page or get in touch with your firm.

You can also create ads for LinkedIn and Instagram depending on your practice and how detailed you know your prospective client types.

When using online advertising to push clients to your website, be sure to send traffic to pages that convert. You could end up paying a lot of money if you’re web pages are not created to turn a curious visitor into your next client.

Attorney Lead Generation Services

If you’re not good with technology, social media, or websites, you can use an attorney lead generation service to find new clients.

Total Attorneys and AttorneyBoost are services which allows you access to a pool of people looking for a lawyer. Total Attorney handles your marketing and sends traffic to your website.

Online attorney solutions vary in quality of clients and conversions on your website. Use these with caution.

As an attorney, getting clients is the key to a successful legal practice. How you find clients will require a combination of the above ideas in addition to the methods you discover and learn.

by Branding, Business, Marketing, Social Media, Ultimate Guides, Websites Leave a comment

The Biggest Mistakes Lawyers Make With Advertisements

Lawyers depend on advertisements to build an awareness of their legal services and attract new clients to their firm. While traditional methods are still in use, online marketing (via hiring the best Facebook Ads agency and the best Google Adwords marketing agency) are becoming the common trend for advertising.

If you’re considering to use advertisements for your law firm, here are some of the biggest mistakes lawyers make and what you can do to avoid them.

Unfocused Marketing Campaigns

You may have a large budget to spend on marketing your law firm, but if you don’t have a focal point you’ll be spending your money on nothing. You can create a generic “contact for a free consultation” marketing message and take anything that comes in the door.

Or, you can segment your marketing message and target the specific legal services you offer. Invest your time and money creating marketing messages related to the specific cases your law firm handles.

Once you concentrate your marketing efforts you can find the right prospects for your firm.

Poorly Written Content

The content you publish on your website is a representation of you and your law firm. The internet is filled with spammy websites and people know when they’re being sold to.

Your content should be informative, error-free, and relatable to the people you think will read it.

Also, to improve the effectiveness of your content, add logical and emotional reasons to hire you. People are searching for someone who can truly help them with their problems.

Use your content to tell people you understand what they are dealing with and that your legal services are here to help.

Asking For Too Much

Your advertising efforts may be effective and delivering high traffic to your website. However, you may find that no one is contacting you for more information or to start a consultation.

If you’re asking prospective clients too much information in your contact boxes, many prospects are likely to turn away. People are constantly concerned about their privacy and with the rise of identity theft, there is a hesitancy to sharing personal information online.

Nonetheless, lawyers require some information to begin evaluating their case and being able to respond to it. Only ask for as much as you need and after receiving their contact information you can begin to ask the questions needed to get their case started.

Complex Web Design

There’s nothing more frustrating for a visitor to a website than a complex and confusing web design. This is known as your bounce rate, which is the number of visitors that come to your website then leave right away.

When you’re putting your legal services online, consider your visitors. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What is the most useful information my visitors need?
  • Does my law firm web design have a clear call to action (i.e. call for a free consultation)?
  • Is my contact information easy to access or will a visitor have difficulty finding it?
  • Does my website invite visitors to join my social?
  • Would adding a pop-up lead capture improve my conversions from visitors to clients?

If you’re struggling to come up with an effective web design for your law firm, consider these best law firm websites from 2017.

Also, if you have analytics set up on your website (i.e. to monitor where visitors are coming from and where they are frequently visiting) find your best content and feature them in the sidebar of your content pages.

Spending Your Entire Marketing Budget

Whether you’re using Facebook Ads, Google Adwords or and Instagram advertising agency, you have complete control over the duration and style of your marketing campaign. If you spend your entire budget without testing different ideas, you may end up with a lower return than you hoped for.

Start by setting your budget low and creating a series of tests to see which messages make the most impact on your target audience. The analytics offered in Facebook Ads and your Google account can help you determine which campaign is effective and could use more of your marketing budget.

Incongruent Landing Pages

In the world of advertising, having a congruent message is crucial. You’re marketing message and your landing pages should live up to the promise you’re making.

Advertising something like, “Steps to take after getting in a car accident,” then sending them to a landing page with a promotion to your service may not deliver the best results.

The purpose of proving valuable content online is to establish yourself as an authority in law as well as trustworthy.

Use your landing pages to capture leads in exchange for content that people are looking for.

Not Focused On Converting Visitors

You can spend thousands of dollars on advertising to get traffic to your website. However, if your website is not developed to turn those visitors into clients, you’ll be wasting your marketing budget.

The purpose of any website, especially a lawyer’s website, is to convert visitors into clients. There are many ways to do this. You can send visitors clicking on your Facebook Ads to a landing page requesting their email in exchange for valuable content.

Or, perhaps the most effective method of converting traffic, is by adding live chat to your website. Having the ability to communicate with visitors while they are live on your site allows you to address any questions they may have and arrange a consultation immediately.

The alternative would be to hope they find your contact page and send you an inquiry.

Not Having A Unique Selling Point

Having a distinct call to action is an important feature for any lawyer’s website. In addition to that, your website should have a unique selling point which differentiates your legal services from others online.

What makes you different from other law firms? How can you help more than other law firms with the same legal services?

Having case studies and client referrals on your homepage are one way of showcasing your legal abilities to prospective clients. However, you should take a moment and ask yourself what can you offer that differentiates you from your competitors.

Now that you know some of the mistakes lawyers are making with their advertisements, you may want to review advertising regulations from the State Bar.

by Branding, Business, Email Marketing, Local Search, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Ultimate Guides Leave a comment

Best Live Chat For Lawyer Websites

Choosing the best live chat for your law firm’s website may come down to pricing, support, and functionality. Before reviewing a few live chats you can use for your website, let’s look at a few key features to help in your decision making.

The first thing to understand is what you can do with live:

  • Pre-chat Message: provide a pop-up to a visitor to prompt them toward clicking the button and starting the live chat session.
  • Pre-chat script: provide a series of questions the visitor must answer before the live chat session begins.
  • Proactive Live Chat: offering a live chat session to a visitor upon arrival.
  • Reactive Chat: waiting for a visitor to initiate the live chat button.
  • Unavailable Chat: when live agents are not available, an optional form is sent to the visitor to provide their email.

Next, in the marketing world, turning a website visitor into a paying customer (or client) is known as a conversion. Live chats are a great tool to increase conversions if you know how to use them.

Quick Tips for Live Chat

Take into consideration the following when choosing and setting up a live chat solution on your law firmès website:

  1. Who Will Be Responding to Chat Requests? Will you be handling the chat notifications or an assistant? There is also the option of hiring a virtual receptionist and outsourcing. Are you aware of the ethical implications to answer legal related questions?
  2. How Are Chats Being Answered? If you understand the ABA’s ethics rules for lawyers, you’ll know what kind of information you can or cannot collect during a live chat. If you have chosen a live chat with outsourced assistance, will they be given a script? Are they proficient in English? How should they handle sensitive information?
  3. What Are Your Costs? There are many live chat solutions available and prices range from completely free to high hourly rates for active chat agents. You may also find the option to pay per lead or to pay per chat.

Now that you have an idea what to look for in a live chat software for your website, let’s look at a few options.

Live Chat for Lawyer Websites

Client Chat Live

Overview: Client Chat Live offers live chat solutions for small business, medical practices, and legal practices.

Installation: Their installation team provides you with the HTML to include on your website and simple steps to get started.

Features:

  • Proactive Pop-ups: invites visitors to start using the chat messenger
  • Branded chat boxes
  • Monthly chat reports (include all chats, summary of visitor details, and analytics)
  • Custom scripts for their operators
  • Live phone transfer
  • CRM Integration
  • 24/7 operator availability

Languages: Available in English and Spanish  

Pricing: Contact the company for a free quote. 

Legal Chat 24/7

Overview: Legal 24/7 is a live chat provider dedicated exclusively to lawyers. They offer a team of trained operators capable of using legal language. They can also assist in designing custom chat scripts that suit your law firm’s style.

Installation:  N/A

Features:

  • Legal training operators with focus on conversion
  • Live phone call transfer
  • Live chat 24/7/365
  • Branded chat boxes
  • Analytics
  • CRM integration
  • Lead notification (email, phone call, etc.)

Languages: Available in English and Spanish

Pricing: Pay per lead. Contact the company for more details.

Apex Chat

Overview: Apex Chat offers both live chat software and professional agents 24/7/365. They have agents specialized in personal injury, criminal defense, bankruptcy, family law, immigration, estate planning, and other legal areas. Apex Chat is a leading provider of live chat solutions for lawyers.

Installation: N/A

Features:

  • Multiple chat agents available 24/7
  • Live phone call transfer
  • Practice area trained operators
  • Pre-defined scripts
  • Customizable messenger (for branding)
  • CRM Integration
  • Geo-mapping and routing
  • Detailed reporting

Language: Available in English and Spanish

Pricing: Pay per lead, with the ability to cap billing. For more information, contact their sales team.

The following live chat providers are not specific for legal services.

Chat.io

Overview: Chat.io offers a highly functional live chat messenger for your website. You’ll see a simple chat messenger in the bottom right corner of your website with the option to add the chat agent’s image and personalized message. They also offer 14-day free trial.

Installation: After you sign up for your account, you’ll receive an HTML code to place on your attorney website. They offer easy-to-understand instructions for this task.

Features:

  • Create canned messages
  • Check chat status
  • Share files
  • Create smart or manual chat (for offline)
  • Use on multiple websites and integrate into Facebook
  • Receive chat ratings
  • Access to agent profiles and transparency
  • Only $10 per teammate/month

Please note, this chat service only offers access to their live chat software. If you need agents, you may have to outsource.

Other live chat software similar to Chat.io include:

These live chat services offer manual live chat solutions. If you don’t have the staff to manage your live chats, you can outsource and provide scripts or set up an autoresponder requesting contact information.

Overall, the benefits of using non-legal focused live chats would be their affordability. However, the inability to hire staff available 24/7 can lead to missed leads and prospective clients.

In contrast, the live chat services devoted to the legal industry include operators who can speak both Spanish and English. In addition, with pricing being pay-per-lead from talented operators focused on conversions, you’ll get exactly what you pay for.

by Business, Marketing Leave a comment