Internet Marketing for Legal and Financial Businesses

Internet Marketing for Lawyers

internetmarketingservices — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:33:41 +0000

This article deals primarily with Internet marketing for lawyers and to a lesser degree non-Internet marketing for lawyers. Various forms of Internet marketing and non-Internet marketing are discussed with some very innovative Internet marketing solutions thrown in for the lawyer to think about or act upon.

Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order 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 to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend — regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.

Prior to 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 your colored, one page display ad to stand 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 an opportunity,” so they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little. This line of thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for many decades, but the population now goes to the Internet for the information they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages may well get calls, but they’ll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as a cheap source of leads.

The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner 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 decent ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as many 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 process, but at least they’ll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a quick way to get leads but quickly exit a month later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce nothing but expense. While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising is the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to “pay for a lead” takes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for many lawyer related keywords, e.g., “personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defense lawyer,” can range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market, and when the typical lawyer’s conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.

Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend little 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 job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer requires, which is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.

Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of 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 particular 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 in them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that offer listings for free. The lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that “look” like they offer a lot — and a price to go with it — but 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 that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not automatically make them 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 thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.

What is a lawyer supposed to do? 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 will get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is often hard to achieve.

Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising – the way that will ultimately get them the best long term results for the money they spend — is to focus 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 find their answers. They may look to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don’t find what they want they may turn to pay per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.

If a lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn’t require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call programs. Pay per phone call is like pay per click, but the lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will pay for a click in many cases. A smart lawyer may even want to consider getting involved with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to make involvement with these programs worth it.

Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works extremely well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.

One last thing that a lawyer should be aware of when it comes to the Internet and a website presence is that appearances really do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of all types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer’s website should be too.Michael Merten is an advanced Internet marketing professional who specializes in working with legal and financial industries. He typically gets websites and blogs to the first page of all of the major search engines in record time and can show the proof. Michael Merten can normally be reached at michaelmerten@hotmail.com or called directly at 651-207-4941.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Search+Engine+Optimization, Promotion, SEO, Internet+Marketing, Web+Marketing, PPC, Blog+Promotion, Online+Markeging, Search+Engine+Marketing, SEM, Pay+Per+Click, Website+Promotion, Blog+Marketing, Website+Marketing, Online+Promotion, Pay+Per+Click+Marketing, PPC+Marketing

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Pay Per Click Marketing for Lawyers

internetmarketingservices — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:05:25 +0000

Many lawyers use pay per click (ppc) advertising/marketing as a means by which to generate new business leads and ultimately clients. In fact the whole business world seems to have gravitated towards ppc as a means of getting business leads (clients). The problem is most lawyers don't know how to really use ppc. They aren't the only ones — statistically about 98% of the businesses using ppc don't really know how to use it or work with it from an advertising standpoint.

PPC is very expensive for lawyers in most cases. The average conversion rate for many ppc programs (the number of clicks it takes to get a lead) ranges somewhere from 1% to 3%. And this is just for a lead. So if you're a personal injury lawyer, happen to live in New York and want a decent ppc position (normally on the first page) you're most likely going to pay between $20 and $50+ per click for your ppc advertising campaign. At a 1% to 3% conversion rate (just to get a lead), this can add up pretty quickly.

What I've been recommending to quite a number of lawyers I've been in contact with is that they seriously consider bowing out of the ppc advertising scene in favor of high organic listings. For what they're throwing out the door with ppc they could be working towards getting their website higher organic search rankings and these rankings would basically stay – not go the way of the cost of a click.

Michael Merten is an advanced Internet marketing professional who specializes in working with legal and financial industries. He typically gets websites and blogs to the first page of all of the major search engines in record time and can show the proof. Michael Merten can normally be reached at michaelmerten@hotmail.com or called directly at 651-207-4941.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Search, Engine, Optimization, Promotion, SEO, Internet+Marketing, Lawyers, Web+Marketing, PPC, Law+Firms, Blog+Promotion, Online+Marketing, Search+Engine+Marketing, SEM, Pay+Per+Click, Attorneys, Website+Promotion, Blog+Marketing, Website+Marketing, Online+Promotion, Pay+Per+Click+Marketing, PPC+Marketing, Legal+Marketing

Introduction

internetmarketingservices — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:55:53 +0000

Internet Marketing for Legal and Financial Businesses is a blog designed to give lawyers and financial professionals ADVANCED Internet marketing knowledge and tips on how to market themselves on the Internet. The majority, if not all of the content lawyers and financial professionals will see on this blog is written by me (Michael Merten). Questions about Internet marketing are welcome — I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. For the lawyer or financial professional who doesn't have time to do Internet marketing and wishes to outsource the activity, I have been doing Internet marketing for over 10 years and typically can produce unbelievable results in terms of website visibility in record time. My e-mail address is michaelmerten@hotmail.com and my phone number is 651-207-4941.