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Back in the day a law firm’s marketing strategy usually consisted of investing in billboards and Yellow Page ads, today most utilize pay-per-click advertising. The various PPC platforms allow law firms to run ads that target their ideal potential client which drives leads to their law firms. You can run ads that send leads to a contact form and you can also run ads called click-to-call ads that allow the potential client to call directly from the ad.
Many law firms today are opting to contract with a pay per call agency that handles all of the advertising for them. The law firm then only pays for actual calls that are completed, you can even make it where you only pay for viable leads from the calls. What many attorneys like about this option is that it does away with having to sift through leads that may not be good potential clients.
Probably the biggest benefit of pay per call is instant contact, which most real leads want above anything. When someone has a legal issue many times they need immediate help, especially when it is a criminal matter. People that call from these ads tend to be more serious and ready to commit than those that just submit a form online.
The pay per call model allows lawyers and law firms to decide the hours that they want to receive calls if they are receiving calls directly. It also allows you to set the advertising area to a specific geographic location.
Another pay per call method has an agency take the calls and screen them and send you only the viable, qualified leads. The advantage of this method is that you are only dealing with people that you know have a real interest in your legal services.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that PPC isn’t difficult, including lawyers. The fact of the matter is that running PPC campaigns requires levels of expertise in multiple skills including copywriting and data analytics in a addition to being an expert at online advertising.
When setting up ads there is a lot of tweaking that has to be done to be profitable, to be effective this must also be continued moving forward. You can’t just “set it and forget it.” This is another good argument for hiring PPC experts or contracting a pay per call agency. As you can ascertain from what I have shared so far, I am a big fan of pay per call because of the quality of the leads.
The vast majority, if not all of our attorney clients judge the success of all marketing by how many calls come into the law firm. Since your main goal is getting the phone to ring it makes more sense to skip all of the other steps and go straight for the phone call. As stated previously, callers tend to be the most qualified leads that are ready to make a decision.
Most of your potential clients are in a time-sensitive situation. If a person is searching online for specific legal help odds are they need it now, not six months from now. This is particularly true if someone is in jail and looking for a lawyer to help them get released. If they can’t talk to a lawyer immediately they’re going to keep trying until they can.
Your intake process needs to take this into account and you must make sure that whoever is answering phones and taking messages is efficient. If it takes days to get back to a potential lead they may have already signed a contract with another law firm.
Audit your own processes and be honest about what it’s like and if there is room for improvement. Would YOU want to be on hold for as long as your hold times are? Do you have the staff available to allow for instant transfer to a live person that can answer the caller’s questions?
Another thing to consider is to create a strong message that plays while callers are on hold and another for calls that go to voicemail. Make sure to point out what makes your law firm different, what your law firm values, and share a few success stories or testimonials to entice the client. Sell them on why they should choose your law firm over another to handle their legal issue.
We need to be aware of how long it takes them to get from a receptionist or being on hold to a lawyer that can answer their questions. Make sure that whoever the call is being transferred to has as much initial information as possible so you can make the person feel comfortable. As the old saying goes, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Here is an expert marketing tip for lawyers, make sure that anyone from your firm that speaks with the lead is informed of the personal details of that potential client. If each step of the customer journey with your law firm involves the customer explaining their traumatizing event to you, then you may lose this client to a more caring and service-oriented competitor.
Look at the leads that converted, and understand their demographics, where they are from, when they are calling, etc. Is there something unique about this group of people that you may have not noticed before?
By providing feedback your lead generation partner can work with you to target more of your ideal clients and send more qualified calls to you. If you don’t know your ideal client demographic you must identify that before you spend a dime on advertising.
If your potential client can’t reach you immediately, or if it takes too long to reach a live person, the chances are high that they will move on and call competitors. Are you aware of how many customers abandoned the call, and gave up on trying to reach you?
When running law firm pay per call campaigns we look deeply into analytics for bounce rates, dead-air, and drop rates. Using this data can help us increase your conversion rate and lower costs, and can provide insights into conversions you may have missed out on.
We have to reduce the number of leads that hang up while waiting. If we do this we can eliminate the first roadblock to signing them as potential clients and convince them that your law firm is the best in town. We look closely at what stage of the process they abandoned the call, to see where we can fine-tune and optimize the customer experience.
Grow your law practice with high-quality leads. We’ll take on the risk, you’ll reap the benefits. Through our vast legal marketing network, we will provide you with the highest quality legal leads to help you grow your law practice.
Rather than risk losing thousands on digital agencies and burned ad budgets, partner with Legal Locator and only pay-per-result. We don’t charge hefty retainers or ask you to risk your capital. Each month, we generate thousands of leads and send them to our legal partners across the country. When you retain a new client, we all win. Partner with us and only pay-per-result.
At FORWARD Lawyer Marketing we believe in taking a “leave no stone unturned” approach when it comes to our legal clients. With that in mind, we employ extremely experienced people in the industry. Our SEO Director has been marketing online for well over two decades and oversees all SEO tasks including editing content and performing on-page optimization as well as internal and external linking. Our specialty is law firm marketing and SEO for lawyers at FORWARD Lawyer Marketing, call us at(888) 590-9687 to discuss how we can increase the revenue of your law firm.
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