Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order 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 exactly to beat the competition. Plus lawyers need to believe that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may produce little if any results for the quantity of time and money they spend -- whatever some other marketing or advertising advisor may tell the contrary.
Ahead of the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising selection for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow pages. Even today the print yellow pages contain lots 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 your colored, one page display ad to stand out when you yourself have 20 other lawyers doing the same thing attorney! 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 often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This distinct thinking, alongside the use of print yellow pages generally, moved the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages on the net form had their heyday for most decades, but the people now visits the Internet for the information 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 source of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to provide lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner 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 that produces 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 while they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at the very least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter into pay per click as a fast way to obtain leads but quickly exit a month later after spending a lot of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce nothing but 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 generally an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. Just how much a lawyer is ready to "pay for a lead" assumes a whole new meaning with pay per click. The fee per click for most lawyer related keywords, e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can vary from $5.00 to $70.00 per click with respect to the market, and when the typical lawyer's conversion rate (the quantity of clicks it will take to generate a lead) of someone to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying up to $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not just a client.
The main problem lawyers face once they assist 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 will be normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals provide lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal could be for a lawyer with regards to marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the particular attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. Things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed inside them make more sense being an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that provide listings for free. The lawyer must be particularly careful, however, once they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they offer a lot -- and a price to go with it -- but also for whatever reasons simply don't produce enough leads for the quantity of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend.
Many legal Internet directories and portals exist which have a very good Internet presence, and they're excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this doesn't automatically make sure they are good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it's not exactly how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many individuals the Internet legal portal attracts who are searching for legal services. Folks have paid a large number of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals which have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. An extremely wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to obtain some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is obviously attracting.
What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, whether the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer will get good, solid results for the quantity of money they spend is usually hard to achieve.
Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising - the way which will ultimately get them the best long term results for the money they spend -- is to concentrate on getting their website to rank saturated in organic search results. When things are believed, people on the Internet who seek out goods and services mainly seek out websites to find their answers. They may turn to legal Internet directories and portals, and should they don't find what they want they might turn to pay for per click listings as a final resort (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately individuals who search the Internet are looking for 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 the main pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call programs. Pay per phone call is similar to pay per click, nevertheless the lawyer doesn't pay for a phone unless they receive one. And the expenses for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will probably pay for a click in lots of cases. A smart lawyer can even want to consider getting associated with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to create involvement with your programs worth it.
