Marketing for lawyers, solicitors and attorneys is a needlessly expensive activity-expensive for solicitors and lawyers.
The big winners in online marketing for legal professionals are internet marketing consultancies who exploit the ignorance of many busy lawyers by selling them online marketing services that are completely inappropriate for their industry.
I suspect that this misselling is not intentional but arises from the mistaken assumption that what works in other industries for these consultants will work for law firms.
It won’t.
For example I recently read some advice on the website of an internet marketing consultancy who specializes in marketing for lawyers. The piece was riddled with mistaken assumptions about the type of website and online marketing that would be best for lawyers.
One of the prime assertions in this article was that because internet surfers have short attention spans it was futile for a law firm to publish anything other than short, frothy pieces of little substance on their law websites.
The truth of the matter is that people with legal problems who are looking for information about their problem have incredibly long attention spans with heightened adrenaline.
If your child has been taken into care or you have been charged with drunk driving or dangerous driving or you have just received a summons from a bank seeking the return of their money you can be pretty confident that attention spans are not short.
Anything but.
The story set out below is a true story and was first published on an American website for lawyers.
The name of the gentleman has been changed to protect his identity.
Lead generation for solicitors
“Micheal O’Shea is a worried man. It’s 3 am on a wet Sunday morning.
Fifteen minutes ago he had been breathalyzed by the road traffic police while driving home from his sister’s 40th birthday party. He might have had one or two too many.
He walked into his den and switched on his computer. He began typing “drink driving limits in Ireland” into the big white Google search box.
The first search result that he sees, sitting at position number 4 on the 1st page of Google, that can confirm or allay his fears is a video on YouTube called “drink driving limits in Ireland”.
His interest is piqued because this is exactly what he is looking for.
Five weeks later I am standing shoulder to shoulder with Micheal O’Shea in the Criminal Courts of Justice, Dublin, Ireland when his case is called by the Court Registrar.
Mr. O’Shea is now my client.
3 Step Client generation for lawyers
Client generation for lawyers is a simple task when you remember an old sales adage-“don’t talk to me about your weed killer, talk to me about my weeds”.
There are 3 fundamental steps you need to take to ensure your website is a genuine asset for your business and not just a necessary but ultimately useless adornment, somewhat akin to a chocolate fireman.
1) Provide useful, relevant, keyword optimised content (lots of it) about the problems facing your potential clients;
2) Make it easy for them to contact you (and they will);
3) Respond quickly and professionally.
Keep in mind that you must become a problem solver. Your searcher and potential client is looking for a solution to a problem.
Will your website provide that solution? If it does, your client pipeline will flow freely.
Offices in London, Tokyo, Paris
Your potential client really doesn’t care if you have offices in London, Tokyo and Paris. He is not concerned about your wood panelled offices. He doesn’t care about your country club memberships or your society memberships or your charity work.
All of the above is very impressive and laudable.
But your searcher simply wants a solution to his problem.
And just how many videos do you think there are on YouTube about “drink driving limits in Ireland”?
You guessed right if you guessed one. And it took all of five minutes to make and upload.
Always be solving and good luck..”
The internet marketing strategy at work here can be just as easily applied very successfully to many other professions and businesses.
Relying on a one size fits all approach to internet marketing for lawyers and the drawing of incorrect conclusions of marketing campaigns in other industries can be an expensive mistake..for the legal professional. (Solicitors Dublin)
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