Archive for July, 2009
Strategies in Action
Take a look at some law firms who are implementing some of the strategies you see on this blog.
Attorney Eric Shore practices social security disability law at the Law Offices of Eric A. Shore, P.C. with offices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Take a look at the Shore’s website, which utilizes a contact form, and contact that is keyword rich.
Pave & Boggards, San Francisco motorcycle accident lawyers, utilize the geographical location of their office in their domain name, which increases traffic.
Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Let’s discuss two types of search results: organic versus pay-per-click, or PPC. Organic search results rely on your website content and the code behind it, plus other techniques on the more technical-side, to get you to the top of search results. PPC, on the other hand, lets you pay to be featured on search engine result pages.
PPC has been reported to be more successful in attracting page viewers over the short term, although other processes have more longevity. Ideally, it’s best to have a solid page that is optimized for search engines, backed with a marketing effort that targets social media and other outlets, combined with PPC efforts to achieve maximum visibility for your law firm online.
It’s a multi-pronged attack, but once you learn the logic behind each process, it all makes sense.
How PPC Works
In order to use PPC, you must bid* on the keywords you want to target. For lawyers, it is good practice to bid on keywords that are geographical; for example, if you’re a lawyer based in Dallas, TX, it’s in your best interests to bid on keywords that include “Dallas.” It’s highly unlikely that a woman seeking a divorce lawyer who resides in New York is going to be interested in hiring a lawyer based in Texas; utilizing local keywords lets your most likely leads find you much more easily and weeds out clients that you won’t be able to help, thus saving you further time and money.
An experienced marketing organization is your best bet for this type of campaign. These professionals can monitor your results and will be able to choose the best keywords for your legal niche and target customer base to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.
Benefits of Pay-Per-Click
PPC provides you with nearly-instant results for your investment; your site will likely see a boost in visitors almost right away once you implement PPC. It’s a quick way to generate new leads and attract clients away from un-sponsored competitor links.
Your marketing manager will be able to see where visitors are coming from, what keywords get the most attention and provide the most cost-effective solution, and use that information to help you get the most possible leads.
*Some organizations don’t use a bidding process; they will establish a flat rate; however, the big operators who offer PPC all currently operate on a bid-based model.
Internet Marketing 101
Internet Marketing 101
Although there are numerous options available to marketers and firms who choose to take the internet-based route, the basic philosophy and techniques behind traditional marketing practices still apply and are very useful in the web-sphere; and you can continue to pursue your offline marketing efforts as well with success.
When your firm is targeting relevant keywords, you’re essentially targeting particular audiences and demographics, just via search engine results rather than print and other media methods. Some argue that these two practices are dissimilar, because SEO involves a very specific user (potential client) searching for a very specific type of content. While the SEO approach is much more targeted and gets more track-able results, you can still apply the basic ideas behind traditional strategies to your internet campaigns with a little tweaking.
Some hail internet marketing as the end of conventional marketing as we know it, but this is a bit of a sensationalist angle to take – all the groundwork is still there, there are just faster, more cost-effective, and more targeted ways of getting the results you’re looking for in your legal practice campaigns.
Your potential law clients are using a variety of ways to find you and your firm, from print advertisements to phone directories to the internet, so it’s really best practice for now and the foreseeable future to approach your marketing needs with both an online and offline focus – you can cover all of your bases and not miss out on potentially rewarding client relationships with people who maybe don’t own a computer or aren’t net savvy, but you can also provide solid resources and information to the intermediate and advanced internet-browsing crowd and take advantage of advanced lead-tracking tools.
The Basics of Marketing Still Apply
Know your audience, approach potential clients with relevant, timely, persuasive and useful information that is easy to understand and remember; keep an eye on your competitors; carve out a niche for yourself; be a resource; monitor response to your efforts – these are all marketing best practices that have been utilized for decades, and the fundamental approach is no different in social media and internet marketing.
The details of your strategies may take a different turn, but with a solid backbone based on the tenets of effective print and media marketing, you can go far on the web. Learning about how to effectively use search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, and social media (or hiring a marketing professional to do so) can help keep you in the game and greatly enhance your lead generation.
Email Marketing Benefits
Benefits of Email Marketing
There are so many benefits to email marketing, and it’s cost-effective, too. Marketers find the method particularly useful from an analytic standpoint, because newsletters can be structured to allow the marketer to identify which sections were most read, which links were most clicked, who actually received the message, who actually opened the message, and more.
Your newsletter subscription form on your website will allow you to collect much more detailed demographic information about truly-interested leads, to enable more targeted marketing in the future and better analysis of current leads. Contrast this to a log of website clicks that is only able to provide limited information about the people visiting your site.
Email marketing materials are also very easily forwarded along to other potential leads, making it a great way to pick up new clients to add to your existing database. If you provide truly useful information, advice, and other incentives in your newsletter, your clients will want to pass that on to their friends, family, and colleagues.
Better, Faster Communications
Newsletters and other email efforts can be produced faster than traditional printed materials that can often be quickly disregarded as junk mail. If a client is subscribed to your newsletter, for example, your firm’s address will likely be white listed by their email account – this means it will be allowed through a firewall or spam filter, ensuring they receive the message.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) is the best long-term solution for getting your law firm’s website or blog to the top of organic search results and keeping it there.
SEO and SEM involve many different approaches to web content and design, plus external methods, that all come together to ensure that you’re providing helpful information to the right people (your local clients) and generating as many promising, legitimate leads as possible.
Link-Based SEO
Providing links to your content and website from external sources such as other websites and blogs tells search engines that your site is popular and relevant. This helps you achieve higher rankings and visibility in organic results.
You can participate in link and article exchanges with colleagues or other relevant establishments, which also boosts your rank.
Keywords in Your Content
Keywords, keywords, keywords. They’re everywhere, and you can’t overlook them if you want to be successful in the online market and get the leads you want. You can try to compete with the millions of others who are going for a slice of the same keyword pie, or you can do a little research and find some niche keywords that apply more uniquely to your particular area of practice and geographic location.
A skilled marketing professional can work the right keywords into natural and useful copy to not only attract users, but deliver worthwhile information. Having good optimized content on your side is great for your online and offline reputation.
Optimize Your Social Media Content
If you actively share updates and law information on a micro-blogging site, consider utilizing (or having your marketer utilize) SEO for this type of communication, too. You can make these posts keyword-rich and encourage them to be picked up in search results.
Social media content, such as a regular full-length blog, needs to be optimized too. Clients can find you via your blog or website if you use keywords (especially geographical ones), exchange links, and emphasize words, among other methods. Attempting to gain attention on a social bookmarking website can have its advantages, but over the long-term, simply putting in the effort to optimize your social content as well as your website’s content will pay off and consume less time.
This blog covers but a few of the many possibilities that come along with SEO. There are quite a few solid approaches to the process that all work very well together and yield the desired results. Utilizing the knowledge you have about your client base, you can use the right keywords to attract the attention of the leads you want.