Why Does Your Law Firm Have a Website?

“Why does your law firm have a website?” 

You might not have ever asked this question, because you have either made up your mind and have a website for your law firm, or don’t.

However, to truly understand what you are hoping to achieve with a website is the only way to make it work for you. Your website should have a mission statement. Only then can you build, change, adjust, add to and improve your site, with the key concept of driving leads and getting cases.

’Incomplete’ Answers

In our opinion, the following statements, by themselves, are not strategic reasons to have a website:

• “Every firm needs to have a website these days.”

• “We need something to point the rest of our marketing to.”

• “So people can get in touch with us.”

• “All of our competitors have websites, so we need one too.”

• “That’s how people find lawyers now, on the Web.”

• “We want a website to show people how great our firm is.”

These are important considerations, but if these reasons explain your law firm’s website, you are missing out on a lot of potential. The statements above don’t provide much guidance for strategy. They certainly aren’t mission statements.

Finding the ’Right’ Answer

There is not a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of why your firm has a website. A site’s purpose will vary depending on many factors, such as:

• Your practice areas
• Your geographic location
• What your firm’s goals are for growth, income and specialization
• The size of your market and potential audience
• The size of your firm
• Who your clients are
• What sources your cases currently come from
• Other elements of your firm’s brand and marketing

By focusing on the right pieces of information, and crystallizing some concepts in your mind, you can begin to analyze whether your site is fulfilling its mission, whether you had previously defined it or not.

The following questions are meant to help you achieve additional clarity about your firm’s goals, its website, its target audience, your site’s purpose and your desired outcomes for it.

Consider your firm and your clients…

What are your firm’s overall goals? By examining what your firm wants to accomplish on a larger scale, you can better develop a Web strategy to help achieve firm objectives. Think about how your website fits into the overall plan.

Who is your current clientele? What are the geographic, demographic, psychographic, and other characteristics of the people who your firm currently represents? What, if anything, do they have in common? What makes them different from any other group of people?

The more you know about who you serve, the better you can serve them with your website (if that is one of your goals). Also, you’ll understand more about how to find and cater to more prospects who are like your current clients (if that is one of your goals).

How did your current clients find you? Was it by reputation and word of mouth? Was it by referral? Did they find you on Google when searching for attorneys in your area, or did they go right to your site because of another marketing effort?

Do you want more prospects to find you through search engines? Knowing where your clients come from, and what parts of the funnel your website is involved in, is helpful in gaining insight and planning strategy.

What questions do your clients have? Are they concerned about cost, timeframes, and how the whole process works? Does your website provide helpful resources that can help existing clients and new prospects, addressing their needs and making them more comfortable with their situations? Can your website help in communicating with current clients, providing FAQs to answer their questions and minimize the volume of nonessential calls to your office?

Now let’s think specifically about your website…

What is your website really for? Serving and communicating with current clients? Impressing referred clients so they feel comfortable signing with you? Providing helpful information to the public? Sharing news about the firm and its results? Bringing attention to an important legal issue? All of these and others may be possible answers to that question.

Many firms would say their website’s purpose is to increase awareness about the firm, bring in new prospects with the right kind of cases, and sign them up as clients. Many firms are looking for a positive return on investment from their websites as marketing vehicles.

Only you can answer that question, specifically, for your firm’s website, but knowing what you hope to accomplish with your website is crucial. How can you design and develop a website, write content for it, drive traffic to it, and make additions and changes to it, if you don’t even know what it’s for?

Obviously there may be a lot of steps in improving your website to fulfill its mission statement, but you certainly need to know what you want your website to do before you can plan out and execute how to accomplish it.

And perhaps the most important question… 

Who is your website really for? In just about all cases, the answer should not be, “for the firm.” Unless your site is an intranet page for your attorneys and staff only, chances are your site should be designed and developed for clients, prospects, and/or the public as a whole.

Does your site speak mostly about your firm, your record of success and your attorneys’ impressive backgrounds, or is your content focused on informing and helping clients and prospective clients? Do you provide unique and informative resources that the public will find helpful?

Is your content written in a way that your clients and prospects will understand, or is it more in the language of your colleagues? Would a visitor need a JD just to understand what is being said? It’s often suggested that sites for the public be written between a 5th and 8th grade reading level. How does your site compare?

Be sure you know who your site is meant to speak to, and strategize accordingly.

Taking Action

Once you have successfully defined your website’s mission, you can begin to analyze its current performance in fulfilling that mission. For example, if you’ve decided that you want your website to drive six new case signups from Google searches each month, you can start to analyze all of the aspects of your website that would lead to achieving that goal.

• Is the site ranking for relevant terms to bring enough searchers to your site?
• What strategy can be used to get better rankings?
• After visitors hit the site, are they finding information they need and engaging with the site, or are they leaving?
• Can changes be made to pages to increase the percentage of visitors who will contact the firm?
• Can improvements or additions be made to the available contact options that would lead to more case sign-ups?

By determining where your site may be lacking, in terms of accomplishing its mission, you can lay out a plan to make adjustments and improvements to work towards achieving success.

To Sum It up

Just about every law firm has some kind of Web presence these days. Far fewer have a deep understanding of what they want from their website, how it fits in with their law firm’s goals, and who are the most important people to consider with regards to the site. By clearly defining your website’s mission statement, you can ensure that all of your decisions are governed by a unified purpose, which will lead to greater success.

 

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Of Lawyers, Leads, and Legal Marketing

Leads!

That’s what marketing a law firm is all about, right?

Calls and clicks that turn into cases ─ that’s all marketing is, right?

So signing up for a lead generation service is the smartest and most cost-effective way to get some marketing in the air and some business in the door, especially for a small or solo law firm, right?

Investing $10k with a large digital marketing agency is seen as a gamble. Whereas, a handful of annual injections, $1k here or there, to get some quick leads seems safer. Right?

Working for a law firm marketing agency myself, I may have some bias here. But after interviewing and speaking with marketers and lawyers alike, I’m discovering a more complicated and costly picture around lawyers, lead generation services, and marketing.

First, let’s explore the differences and definitions of marketing and lead generation. Then we’ll finish with advice for lawyers looking to increase leads, save money, and take their marketing beyond the campaign.

Leads: Not the Only Part of Marketing

“We sell, or else.”

This fantastic quote from famed advertising legend David Ogilvy has consistently helped center the marketing methodologies here at Consultwebs.

Our success as a law firm marketing partner is dependent on the success of our clients. That’s why we take a comprehensive look at marketing that’s not just exclusive to lead generation.

Leads are a massively important part of marketing, but they are only one end of the spectrum. Without a balanced marketing strategy, just “drumming up leads” can actually have a negative impact on your business and your online rankings.

Until recently, I had no opinion on lead generation services working with lawyers.

When I managed an intake call center at my old personal injury law firm, we had to go through leads generated by these services, knowing that the volume of leads always outweighed the quality.

For those prepared to sift through the noise to find the gold, lead gen services have their place in the marketing mix.

However, after a recent engagement with a solo on Twitter, my opinion has become more strongly flavored, tinged with bitterness and scorn.

NOLO and the solo

This lawyer first reached out to inquire if any other lawyers on Twitter were having trouble accessing their Martindale Hubbell/NOLO lead gen sites?

After she got in touch with an account rep, she messaged this –

I followed up with her to inquire whatever happened with the site, told her I was going to write a piece on it, and was shocked, but not surprised, at her awesome and frank response.

At this point, I started getting enraged in my head and then doing some math. Meanwhile, I got another message, which made my calculator burn even hotter.

MATH BREAK!

Say this lawyer charges around $350 an hour for her time. And she spends 7 to 8 hours setting up profiles and payment plans, choosing filters, filtering leads.

She’s lost the ability to make $2,800, right there!

Now, add on the $700 (or $35 a lead) she pays for NOLO = $3,500!

After the work and missed billables, the actual cost of these $35 leads, was $175.

I messaged this lawyer back and showed her my math and got an amazing response.

And so it got me thinking, if this solo is having to lose all her billable time to crap fixes for one piece of the marketing pie, which is lead generation, then there stands a chance to put a marketing partnership on the bargaining table that addresses this issue and also delivers higher quality leads, over time, at better value.

Marketing: More Than Leads

As covered in our Legal Marketing Nutrition Guide, an effective marketing strategy balances lead generation activities with brand-building activities: Sales Activation vs. Brand Growth.

Besides the indisputable fact of diminishing returns from short-term investments, without a portion of your marketing budget focused on growth, you’ll never have the financial stamina to reach any goals.

As covered in our Marketing Marathon Mindset, an effective law firm marketing strategy understands the balanced and comprehensive nature of proper marketing in order to win the race.

By establishing strong foundations at the intake and return on investment (ROI) levels and building up toward activities solely designed to convert, the Legal Marketing Nutrition Guide is a good starting point for lawyers looking to go beyond the next campaign.

Another way to think about marketing is to break the activities down by objectives, like Attraction, Conversion, Branding, and Delight/Loyalty.

If you aren’t managing and maintaining client expectations at each point of this process, you are not properly engaged in marketing and should expect heavier workloads with patchy results.

So, marketing is not just about getting leads, it’s about improving the quality of leads you get, and that is the secret of effective marketing.

Law Firm Business Development Solutions from Consultwebs

You can do your own law firm website design, pay a couple thousand dollars for a lead gen service, do some marketing and social media when you get to it, and perhaps, for a while, things may work out.

But what about next year? Or the year after?

Who is in your corner?

Law Firm Marketing Beyond The Campaign isn’t just our tagline. It has been our vision for the last 20 years, and our clients’ success in marketing their practices online and generating leads, as well as cases, is what we hope to see with every law firm of every size.

I wanted to use this space to just lightly, but directly, pitch the services Consultwebs brings to lawyers and law firms, and outline and compare some of the differences and value we offer.

• Law Firm Website Design – $10k Total (Actual Client Results: 90 leads a month from site within 18 months – $33 to $90 lead potential)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – $5k+ Monthly (Actual Client Results: Site traffic increased by 900%, 4 to 6 page rank jumps within 18 months)
• Digital Advertising (PPC) – $3k+ Monthly (Actual Client Results: 50 to 100 quality leads within 90 days – $20 to $50 leads)
• Social Media – $500+ Monthly (Actual Client Results: Family law firm enjoys $23 leads) – View this Case Study

Along with these services, as well as dedicated marketing managers who work with you, Consultwebs offers law firm marketing strategy and original content written for your practice area, focused on driving qualified leads through your site.

In Conclusion

Lead generation services can work to generate calls and leads for your law firm. However, the benefit of these services must be balanced with proper expectations and scope.

Whether you choose to grow your law firm’s book of business with Consultwebs through marketing, or a lead generation service, or smoke signals, the most important concept to takeaway from this is balance.

A goal of marketing is to draw people to your business, but success in marketing is when you’ve given them a reason to stay.

With your law firm’s marketing activities balanced between the two pillars of Legal Marketing Nutrition ─ Brand Growth and Sales Activation ─ you can generate more qualified leads that turn into cases, over a longer and more reliable timeframe, at a greater value.

Interested in giving your clients a reason to choose your law firm online? Get in touch.

Want more advice on law firm marketing? Sign up for the Consultwebs newsletter, follow us on social media, and subscribe to the LAWsome Podcast.

 

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When Law Firm Marketing Seems Too Easy: Overcoming the Perils of Overconfidence Bias

The practice of law is a confidence game. Even if you may not know exactly what you’re doing, you have to appear as if you do. It’s how you get and keep clients, win your cases, and ultimately grow your practice.

But it can be dangerous when the line between confidence and false confidence is crossed. Overconfidence bias appears when someone believes in their expertise more than evidence suggests they should. Have you ever had a client tell you exactly how to handle their case? As if they have a law degree? There’s no evidence to suggest that they know what they say they know, yet they firmly believe they’re right.  They do this to their detriment – and yours.

Overconfidence can be a problem for growing a practice, especially when it comes to making marketing decisions. Not all lawyers have experience in law firm marketing – but many believe they know enough. I mean… how hard can it be? Honestly, having worked in the legal and marketing professions, I can say they seem easier the less you know, and in both, mistakes show up in the details. For instance, not all marketing strategies are created equal.  For some practices in certain locations, a TV ad might make perfect sense. But change one aspect of your situation and television may be a waste of time and money. A novice may not be able to spot the details that make a specific marketing approach work.

Unfortunately, human beings aren’t great at gauging how hard something is. In fact, the harder a task is, the greater the risk of overconfidence bias.  Humans generally underestimate learning curves because they don’t know what they don’t know. Everyone does this, at least once, without knowing it. It’s being human.

To protect ourselves from overconfidence bias, we need to adjust the way we see and handle certain situations.  To ensure overconfidence bias doesn’t negatively affect your business or marketing decisions, consider doing the following as you decide on a marketing strategy or tactic:

1. Second-guess your decisions. It’s uncomfortable to do sometimes, but it can be necessary. Ask yourself how you know what it is that you think you know. Is there evidence? Do you have data? Do you have substantial experience? If you can’t come up with a good answer, stop there. If you do have an answer, make sure you’re not being affected by what I call a “decision pitfall.” In other words, were you swayed by social expectations or some other mental short-cut? Did you tell yourself “this is what a successful lawyer would do” (acting on identity) rather than “this is what’s good for my business” (acting on objectivity)? Re-examining our decision-making processes can keep us from becoming overconfident.
2. Set out to prove yourself wrong. We don’t generally do this, but if anyone is good at it, it’s a lawyer. To win a case, you have to see it from the other side, and then prepare for all contingencies. The same is true for the business side of your practice. You have to prove the counterargument to understand the strength of your own position. One way to do this is seek help from a marketing professional. Their greatest value isn’t always in executing a plan for you.  Sometimes they can assist you by telling you where you may be going wrong with your marketing strategy leading you to a more customized approach to building your practice.
3. Ask yourself what you fear and what you hope for, especially regarding your decision. And avoid acting on it. Many cases of overconfidence are really about emotional management. We “confidently” arrive at a decision because it’s what we want to have happen, or because it helps us avoid what we might be afraid of. If you really want a financially lucrative practice, you have to get understand the source of your decisions, even if it involves reaching out for help.

These days, self-awareness is praised as strong positive quality. It requires looking inward and being self-reflective. But we all have blind spots, to where all the introspection in the world won’t always give us true clarity. But if we look outside ourselves, specifically to what behavioral and social scientists have learned about human decision-making, we can be armed with knowledge to make better choices.  “Know thyself” is a popular mantra but knowing and learning more about human decision-making generally can really take you, and your practice, to the next level.

Nika Kabiri, JD PhD, is a consultant and market researcher who uses Decision Science to help businesses grow. Check out her services and reach out to her to learn more about making optimal decisions for your practice.  

 

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