Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. To be able to get new business they should market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers cope with the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does - how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers need certainly to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may produce little if any results for the amount of time and money they spend -- regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may tell the contrary.
Ahead of the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising selection for any lawyer was to promote in the yellow pages. Even today the print yellow pages contain a lot of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a great deal for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone's guess -- it's hard for the colored, one page display ad to stick 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 definitely better" and "everything we sell is an opportunity," so that they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.
This distinct thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages generally speaking, has gone the way in which of the dinosaur at a really accelerated pace. The yellow pages on the net form had their heyday for several decades, but the populace now would go 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 get calls, but they'll most likely be from vendors utilising the yellow pages as a cheap supply of leads.
The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to supply lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a fashion similar to the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. "Bigger is definitely better," so rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that produces financial sense and produces a significant ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as much top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high because they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at the very least they'll get exposure! Many lawyers enter into pay per click as a fast way to have leads but quickly exit a month later after spending plenty of cash for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce only expense.
While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising could be the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an incredibly expensive proposition for what they get. Just how much a lawyer is willing to "buy a lead" assumes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The fee per click for several lawyer related keywords, e.g., "personal injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer," can vary from $5.00 to $70.00 per click with respect to the market, and when the conventional lawyer's conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of anyone to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can end up paying well over $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.
The main problem lawyers face when they assist pay per click (and this translates into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend very 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 accomplish what the lawyer requires, which can be normally to get hold of the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.
Legal Internet directories and portals provide the lawyer a possible Internet marketing and advertising option for their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal may be for a lawyer with regards to marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the specific attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. Everything being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed included make more sense being 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 give you a lot -- and a cost to choose it -- however for whatever reasons simply don't 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 quite strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this doesn't automatically make them good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it's not just how many lawyers the portal attracts but how lots of people the Internet legal portal attracts who're searching for legal services. People have paid thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in how of Internet marketing and advertising results. A really wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to have some very accurate user demographics on what type of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is clearly attracting.
What's a lawyer supposed to accomplish? 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 choose Internet marketing and advertising - the way in which that will ultimately buy them the best long term results for the money they spend -- is to concentrate on getting their website to rank saturated in organic search results. When all things are believed, people on the Internet who look for goods and services mainly look for websites to find their answers. Rechtsanwalt Wels They might check out legal Internet directories and portals, and when they don't find what they want they might turn to pay for per click listings as a final resort (only about 30% to 40% of users work with pay per click) but ultimately those who search the Internet are searching for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.
If a lawyer is searching for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn't require being the main pay per click crowd, the lawyer might want to explore pay per telephone call programs. Pay per telephone call is like pay per click, however the lawyer doesn't buy a phone unless they receive one. And the expense for pay per telephone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer can pay for a press in lots of cases. A good lawyer may even want to consider getting associated with several pay per telephone call providers with the proven fact that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to produce involvement with one of these programs worth it.
Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions a lawyer chooses to look into should be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing may be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works quite well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.
One last thing a lawyer should be familiar with when it comes to the Internet and an internet site presence is that appearances do count. Many individuals have now been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of most types and styles. People are accustomed to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer's website must be too.
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