Pay per call for lawyers

Pay-Per-Call for Lawyers

A good provider of pay-per-call for lawyers can be a stabilizing factor in a law firm’s growth plan. The main advantage of Pay-Per-Call is only paying for qualified inbound calls, but there are other benefits as well.

At Forward Lawyer Marketing, we’ve seen some great success from our clients who choose to use pay-per-call services. We would want to make a personalized analysis of your business before recommending this service to you, but it’s something that fits in most lawyer marketing plans.

Feel free to contact us at (888) 590-9687 if you’re interested in learning more. Otherwise, please read on to learn about the following topics:

• What Is Pay Per Call?
• A Deeper Dive into Pay Per Call
• When and Why Pay-Per-Call Is Worth Considering
• Weighing Your Strategies: Pay Per Lead Versus Pay Per Call
• Summary of Other Lawyer Marketing and Advertising Techniques
• Pay-Per-Call as a Supplement to Other Paid Advertising
• Integration With Your Website, SEO, and Other Marketing Strategies
• Making the Most of Incoming Calls
• Maximizing Revenue/ROI With a Diverse Marketing Strategy

What Is Pay Per Call?

Pay-per-call services for lawyers provide a reliable source of incoming phone calls from people who are looking for the legal services you provide. You (as the attorney) only pay for calls you receive.

Behind the scenes, there are usually large, expensive advertising campaigns along with complex networks of publishers and platforms that act as marketing affiliates. However, your call provider would handle all of those details — all you do is choose the number and type of calls that you want.

A Deeper Dive into Pay Per Call

To understand pay-per-call better, let’s look at how advertising for lawyers works in general. You usually pay for a type of attention. For example, you might rent a billboard and expect people to glance up at it as they’re stuck in traffic. More expensive advertising generally has a larger audience, a higher probability to convert audience members into clients, or a combination of the two.

Pay-per-call services come from ads and affiliate programs. You could technically use strategies like these internally, but you would probably not be able to (or even want to) compete with the scale on which call providers operate. Most law firms could not handle the number of incoming leads and calls these large-scale advertising campaigns generate.

Buying calls gives you the advantage of a mega-campaign while maintaining the focus you need. When you pay per call, you are paying for a very small portion of the overall advertising effort and the extra service involved in processing and delivering the calls that advance your business development goals.

When and Why Paying Per Call Is Worth Considering

Pay-per-call services have some advantages over other types of lead generation techniques. Here are some situations when you should consider adding them to your business development plan:

• You want a lead source that converts at relatively high rates for many firms.
• You have limited time to process incoming leads and want to make the most of that time.
• You want a reliable minimum number of incoming calls per month.
• You would prefer to have a third party independently assume all of the advertising functions (and risks) necessary to generate calls.

There are many other reasons why you might use pay-per-call services, but most of those reasons have to do with your firm’s current processes and your vision for the future. We would suggest scheduling a free consultation with us to see if pay-per-call could work for your firm’s marketing mix. That’s usually the best way to understand how buying calls could help advance your unique business goals.

Weighing Your Strategies: Pay Per Lead Versus Pay Per Call

Pay-per-lead and pay-per-call services are similar, so choosing between them can be confusing. The main thing to keep in mind is your end goal.

It might seem self-explanatory but paying per call is often preferable to the extent that you are actually getting that potential client on the phone, which is the first objective before scheduling a consult and retaining that client.

When you want leads via other methods such as an email in real-time from a potential client asking to be contacted by a lawyer, paying per lead may make more sense. Forward Lawyer Marketing’s Pay-Per-Opportunity service, Legal Locator, offers the best of both worlds.

Look at your intake processes to help inform your decision. Do you have someone who is always ready to answer the phone, or are you willing to consider using a call-answering service? If so, you should be able to make the most of a strategy with a pay-per-call focus.

Summary of Other Lawyer Marketing and Advertising Techniques

As we’ve implied, pay-per-call services are usually part of a broader business development plan. You might also consider using the following:

• Law Firm Website with SEO: Your website is the hub of your online marketing and advertising. Optimizing it for search engines helps generate relevant traffic and leads for your firm.
• Pay-per-lead service: Pay-per-lead services have many of the advantages of paying per call, but the leads are generally delivered in real-time via email. These potential clients have requested to be contacted by an attorney and include contact information and a short note on what their legal needs are.
• Pay-per-click advertising: PPC ads are most common on search engines such as Google. You program the ad to display under certain conditions and then you pay when someone clicks.
• Local search: Local search results almost always display when people look for legal services — even if searchers do not type “near me” or explicitly state their location. Additionally, Google has a specific LSA program that allows approved attorneys a chance to connect with local searchers.
• Social media ads: Social media provides a variety of advertising opportunities for attorneys and having a profile on popular platforms could encourage people to connect directly with your business.
• Blogging: Blogging helps establish you as an authority online and gives you a wealth of resources to educate and inform current and potential clients. Well-written blog posts can also directly generate leads.

Pay-Per-Call to Supplement Other Paid Advertising

Combining different marketing and advertising techniques is standard practice. Pay-per-call falls more towards the active end of the active-passive spectrum, so you’ll want to keep that in mind when allocating your budget.

Examples of advertising techniques that use a more active approach are pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-call. You pay directly for each opportunity you get, and the opportunities are usually made possible by a third-party platform or service.

Paid advertising tends to get quick results. For example, your message can reach audiences almost immediately after you start running pay-per-click ads. Similarly, you can start getting calls very quickly after you subscribe to a pay-per-call service.

The trade-off for this effectiveness and speed is that these services tend to be limited in purpose. Each pay-per-call opportunity benefits your firm only to the extent that it provides a connection with a potential client.

The bottom line is that you will probably want to use a few different paid advertising techniques for your firm. However, you’ll also want to use some passive strategies to balance things out.

Integration With Your Website, SEO, and Other Marketing Strategies

Pay-per-call is a great complement for search engine optimization and other passive lead-generation techniques — especially when you’re just starting out. SEO takes a while to get up to speed, even with a strong, data-backed strategy. Pay-per-call ensures that you have incoming calls in the meantime. Pay-per-lead is also good in this situation.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to your current marketing mix and processes. That’s one reason you should find a call provider that offers flexibility: Marketing processes change quickly as your firm grows.

Making the Most of Incoming Calls

It is a good thing to get calls coming into your office. However, you will only realize these benefits if you can make the most of the calls you buy. Here are some tips to maximize revenue:

• Always have someone available who can answer the phone.
• Find a call provider that lets you increase call volume on short notice (avoid annual lock-in contracts).
• Be attentive during initial conversations with new prospective clients.
• Prepare specific sales processes to convert the types of calls you’re buying.

You might also want to consider your overall ROI as opposed to just increasing revenue. This means increasing efficiency, lowering costs, and avoiding burning calls. Here are some tips for that:

• Buy only the number of calls you need — start small if you’re in doubt.
• Automate intake, data entry, and client tracking as much as possible.
• Use intake staff rather than non-billable attorney hours.

Maximizing Revenue/ROI With a Diverse Marketing Strategy

Pay per call for attorneys is usually just one part of a diverse growth plan. At Forward Lawyer Marketing, our goal is to help you build a strategy that works for you, both in the immediate future and the long term.

To learn more about any of the marketing and advertising techniques we discussed in this article, please contact Forward Lawyer Marketing at (888) 590-9687. We’re looking forward to helping you realize your vision for the success of your firm.