Lawyers face the exact same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they have to market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with the exact same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - just how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to think that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may produce minimum results for the quantity of time and money they spend -- whatever an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.
Prior to 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 plenty of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a great deal 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 when you have 20 other lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising philosophy that "bigger is always better" and "everything we sell is the opportunity," so that they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This distinct thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages generally, went the way in which of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages on the net form had their heyday for a lot of decades, but the population now visits the Internet for the data 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 be from vendors using the yellow pages as a low priced supply of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a fashion similar to the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. "Bigger is always better," so rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that makes financial sense and produces a good ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as numerous top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke in the act, but at the very least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter into pay per click as an instant 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 generally an incredibly expensive proposition for what they get attorneys. Simply how much a lawyer is ready to "pay for a lead" takes on a complete new meaning with pay per click. The price per click for a lot of lawyer related keywords, e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can range between $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market, and when the conventional lawyer's conversion rate (the amount of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of anyone 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 really a client.
Area of the problem lawyers face when they use pay per click (and this translates straight into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend short amount of 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 do what the lawyer requires, which will be normally to make contact with the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals provide the lawyer a possible Internet marketing and advertising option for their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal may be for a lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the specific 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 offer listings for free. The lawyer needs to be particularly careful, however, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they give you a lot -- and an amount to go with it -- but also for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the quantity of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend.
Many legal Internet directories and portals exist that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not automatically cause them to become good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it's not exactly how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts who are looking for legal services. Individuals have paid a large number 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 just about 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 is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, if the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer are certain to get good, solid results for the quantity of money they spend is often hard to achieve.
Ultimately the simplest way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising - the way in which that will ultimately buy them the best long haul results for the money they spend -- is to concentrate on getting their website to rank saturated in organic search results. When everything are believed, people on the Internet who seek out goods and services mainly seek out websites to find their answers. They could turn to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don't find what they need they could turn to cover per click listings as a final resort (only about 30% to 40% of users make use of pay per click) but ultimately those 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 area of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to explore pay per telephone call programs. Pay per telephone call is like pay per click, nevertheless the lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the expenses for pay per telephone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will probably pay for a press in many cases. An intelligent lawyer can even want to consider getting a part of several pay per telephone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with your programs worth it.
