Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they must 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 have to think that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do might produce minimum results for the amount of time and money they spend -- whatever an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.
Before the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising choice for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a lot for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone's guess -- it's hard for the colored, one page display ad to be noticeable when you yourself have 20 other lawyers doing the same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to market their marketing and advertising philosophy that "bigger is always better" and "everything we sell is the opportunity," so they really often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This distinct thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way in which of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages on the net form had their heyday for several decades, but the populace now goes to the Internet for the info they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages might get calls, but they'll most 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 way like the way the yellow pages do making use of their print directories. "Bigger is always 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 select as much top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke along the way, but at the very least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter into pay per click as a quick way to obtain leads but quickly exit per 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 could be the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an exceptionally expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to "pay for a lead" assumes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for several 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 takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying well over $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not just a client.
The main problem lawyers face if they use pay per click (and this translates 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 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 accomplish what the lawyer requires, that is 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 due to their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the specific attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed included 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, if they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that "look" like they give you a lot -- and an amount to opt for it -- however for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend.
Many legal Internet directories and portals exist which have a quite strong Internet presence, and they're excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this doesn't automatically cause them to become good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it's not how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts who are searching for legal services. People have paid a large number of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals which have produced nothing in the manner of Internet marketing and advertising results. A really 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 really attracting.
What is a lawyer supposed to accomplish? 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 can get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is usually hard to achieve.
Ultimately the easiest way for a lawyer to opt for Internet marketing and advertising - the way in which that will ultimately have them the most effective long haul results for the amount of money they spend -- is to target on getting their website to rank high in organic search results. When all things are considered, people on the Internet who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to get their answers. They could look to legal Internet directories and portals, and when they don't find what they need they might turn to pay for per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately individuals who search the Internet are looking for websites that offer them with the answers they seek. Rechtsanwalt Wels
If your lawyer is searching for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn't require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may choose to explore pay per call programs. Pay per call is like pay per click, but the lawyer doesn't pay for a phone unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer can pay for a click in lots of cases. A smart lawyer could even wish to consider getting a part of several pay per call providers with the proven fact that involving the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to create involvement with one of these programs worth it.
Most of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to check into must certanly be tried on an incident by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works very well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.
One very last thing that a lawyer should be familiar with when it comes to the Internet and an internet site presence is that appearances do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of types and styles. People are accustomed to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer's website must be too.
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