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Keep Your Firm Competitive in A Fast-Changing Environment

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Over the last several blogs, we’ve identified the very real evolutions impacting law firms in today’s ultra-competitive legal marketing environment — challenges both internal and external in nature.

Figuring out what you’re up against it is the biggest piece of the puzzle. When trying to tackle a new problem, there is no better place to get started than the root of it.

After all, it’s one thing to realize that things are changing. But isn’t it much more useful to understand how and why they’re changing?

At Network Affiliates, we don’t believe in abstract goals or pie-in-the-sky plans. Rather, all of our attorney advertising strategies are designed to solve the problems we’ve already identified. A solution isn’t a solution unless you know what it’s solving.

Having gotten to the core of law firm’s frustrations in today’s crowded legal space; we now present some of our essential solutions to these ongoing attorney marketing problems.

Make Up Your Mind

Last month, we wrote to you about what it takes to reach the highest levels of success in legal TV advertising. At the top of our list is your firm’s mindset.

The reality is this simple: your firm can be a successful legal advertiser in your market. You just have to commit to doing what it takes to reach that goal — namely, hiring the right people and giving your campaign the time it needs to take root.

Messaging Matters

Most law firms market themselves with the wrong messages. You know what the wrong message is — it’s the “all about me” rhetoric you hear in almost every attorney ad on television. It’s redundant, it’s cliché, and TV viewers tune it right out.

There is nothing we counsel our clients on more than messaging. You need to stand out. You need to be different, creative, and bold. And most importantly, the message needs to focus on your clients!

Self-lauding messaging is the #1 mistake in attorney advertising. Speak to what your clients need to hear instead.

Know Your KPI Baseline

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators – criteria you can use to actually measure your marketing efforts’ effectiveness. Examples of KPIs include:

  • Cost per lead
  • Cost per case
  • Conversion percentage
  • Overall improvement in your bottom line
  • And many more

When it comes to KPIs, we stress three things above all else:

  • Focus on intake and conversion. Your clearest path to success is attracting new cases to build your client base.
  • Focus on improving the things you’re already doing (rather than spending more on additional, equally ineffective advertising). Too many firms are currently wasting money generating calls/leads that they never properly shepherd into actual cases!
  • Make sure you are clearly defining marketing KPIs before you start making changes. We call it a KPI Baseline. That way, you’ll be able to accurately measure your results down the road.

There is a lot to know about defining marketing KPIs. We invite you to learn more by reading our guide to Creating a KPI Baseline to Grow Your Firm.

Diversify Your Audience

In legal marketing, there are three primary ways to diversify your audience:

  • Complement the way you’re reaching audiences (try a new medium of advertising, new kinds of messaging as described above, etc.)
  • Try targeting new audiences (e.g. Millennials, different ethnic groups, diverse lifestyle demographics, etc.)
  • Broaden your law firm’s practice areas (auto accidents, for instance, are not the only thing worth advertising for in the personal injury universe!)

We find that targeting new audiences (in addition to the ones who are already responding to your ads) is one of the most effective growth strategies in all of attorney advertising.

Referrals

Lawyers often look at case referrals as a professional courtesy or as an ethical obligation when it comes to subject matter outside your usual purview.

Those are all fine ways to think about them, but have you considered making case referrals a part of your business model?

While you must be careful to stay well within the confines of your jurisdictions’ ethics rules (something we always take very seriously at Network Affiliates), there is still a lot you can do in the realm of referrals as a means of attorney marketing.

We encourage our clients to create new networks or strengthen their existing ones. Too many firms let their referral efforts fall by the wayside. Is that true of yours?

Strengthening your referral outreach is an easy way to enhance your existing marketing without spending more money.

Hire the Attorney Advertising Professionals at Network Affiliates

Did you know that Network Affiliates put one of the very first legal commercials on TV? That’s true, and we’ve been blazing trails in attorney advertising ever since.

We believe we can fundamentally change your law firm’s rate of growth. To learn how, we invite you to read our latest white paper, A Legal Advertising Survival Guide for PI Attorneys.

Even better, save yourself time by calling and asking how we can start helping you today. Call 877.709.0633 or contact us online — we’re here to help.

How To Create A KPI Baseline For Your Law Firm

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Increase performance and find “free money” by consistently monitoring your law firm’s key performance indicators

Attorneys continue to report that they are facing a more competitive market each and every year. With mounting influences from both inside (national and global players, Wal-Mart law firms, non-lawyer venture capitalists, tort reform) and outside (driverless cars, new standard safety features, Millennial driving habits) the legal industry, it’s important to know where your firm stands and how that measures over time.

The only way to do that is to create a scorecard that you can compare and contrast month-over-month, year-over-year, etc. This is what we call a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) baseline.

By tracking these specific pieces of data, you can better understand how your firm is performing in a given area or progressing toward a specific objective. This is a necessary first step in turning abstract goals into measurable plans as you cannot measure success without knowing where you started. Furthermore, the metrics empower your firm to make data-driven decisions that can have a dramatic impact on your firm’s bottom line.

Significant and sustainable growth is attainable – even predictable – when there’s a roadmap for getting there. So, if you have not created a KPI baseline for your firm, we encourage you to get started as soon as possible.

Let’s take a closer look at the important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you need to include in your baseline

General Marketing KPIs are an evaluation of how all marketing and advertising strategies are working to produce leads and, ultimately, cases.

Because law firms often engage in multi-channel marketing efforts, and the modern customer journey is a non-linear, multi-touchpoint experience, overall marketing KPIs give insight into the success of your cohesive strategy. Is everything working together to give you the lift you need? Are you getting more leads? Are these leads converting into cases? Leveraging KPI data allows you to accurately (and objectively) assess your cost of investment vs. ROI across television advertising, radio, print, outdoor, digital, event sponsorship and more.

  • Cost per Lead (CPL) – measures the effectiveness of your overall marketing and advertising efforts. To calculate, take your total marketing and advertising spend and divide by the number of leads generated over the investment period.

BONUS: TIPS TO HELP INCREASE COST PER LEAD

  • Keep score
  • Monitor your results – consistently!
  • Maintain brand consistency across all adverting and marketing channels
  • Evaluate new marketing channels, adjust budget allocation accordingly
  • Lead-to-client ratio – this can also be referred to as conversion percentage. First, you will need to define what you consider a “lead” – a call, website contact form, email, referral? All of the above? Once “lead” is defined, take the total number, divide by the number of clients within the same timeframe, and get a better understanding of how many leads you need to be generating to open your desired number of cases.

SEE WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF YOU INCRESED YOUR CONVERSION PERCENATGE BY JUST 2%!

  • Cost per Case (CPC) – measures the efficacies of your marketing campaign and conversion. To get this number, take your total marketing spend, divided by opened cases. Remember: cases opened = future cash flow! This is the most important metric.

BONUS: TIPS TO HELP INCREASE COST PER CASE AND CONVERSION

  • Consistently monitor intake
  • Hire intake personnel with client service backgrounds
  • Incent staff for improved metrics/goals met
  • Employ mobile intake for deserving cases
  • Understand conversion happens in office as well
  • Survey past clients
  • Get more reviews

Digital Marketing KPIs measure specific data related to your firm’s website. Here are the ones you should be tracking and what their results will tell you. For a more detailed look at what your top performing web pages are telling you – take a look at this post.

  • Number of unique visits – how well people are finding you
  • Time spent per visit – how well your current content holds visitors’ attention
  • Traffic-to-lead ratio – new contact rate
  • Landing page conversion rate – are your landing pages getting enough traffic and, if so, is the page converting traffic into leads?
  • Mobile traffic conversion – is your site converting visitors to leads on mobile devices as well?
  • Website goal completions – how many visitors are signing up for your newsletter or filling out a contact form?
  • Search engine rankings – how do you compete with rival firms for keywords and phrases on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.?

It’s never too late to start gathering data and crunching numbers.

We understand this can seem a little overwhelming. If you would like to jump start the process with an evaluation of your website – complete with insight into the digital marketing KPIs listed above – contact us for a free website audit. Or, download this Digital Marketing Glossary to help shorten your learning curve!

Network Affiliates is here to help you achieve your legal marketing goals. Take your law firm to the next level – call 877.709.0633 or contact us online today.

Current Challenges in the Legal Advertising Space – Part 2

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The legal landscape has never been more competitive. Firms are expending more energy than ever on legal marketing and advertising, and it’s all just to stand out from the crowd.

It’s difficult, though, because lawyers aren’t exactly swimming in free time, nor did they sign up for a second career as a marketing professional.

Still, every law firm is a business, and it’s their business plan that paves a path for growth.

Today’s article is the second in a series outlining the current challenges in the legal advertising space. In Part I, we detailed the many internal challenges coming from within lawyers’ own profession.

Now, in Part II, we look at the external factors that are swiftly changing the whole market — especially for personal injury attorneys.

Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing experts with decades of specific experience in this niche field. We dedicate ourselves to monitoring trends and zealously advancing our clients’ growth.

Below, we identify your firm’s biggest hurdles, and begin to unveil an effective legal marketing strategy — the very strategy we’ve customized for many of our clients to great success.

We believe your marketing needs to reflect the changing dynamics and new realities in PI. Among other things, that means advertising that appeals to Millennials — not always an easy task. In fact, the very nature of all your cases could be on the cusp of change.

Here’s what we mean:

Fewer Accidents, Lighter Injuries, Safer Vehicles

Cars are getting safer. NerdWallet recently profiled seven significant new-car safety features that are likely to improve driver and passenger safety. They include:

  • Backup cameras
  •  Automatic emergency braking (“forward collision prevention”)
  • Automatic parking
  • Lane monitoring / lane departure warnings
  • Alertness monitoring
  • Blind-spot monitoring

Those developments, alongside better airbags and improved automotive body design, might be contributing to a downturn in accident injury claims.

Indeed, auto accidents are on the decline. With the exception of 2015 (a statistical outlier in which auto accidents went up, due in large part to texting and driving), NTSB charts a sharp decline in overall auto accidents in the U.S. over the last decade.

While many of these features have existed for several years, they are only now becoming standard. Accordingly, it’s probably too soon to say whether better car design is directly responsible for making the roads safer, but it’s undoubtedly a part of the bigger picture.

The Rise of Self-Driving Cars

According to the United Services Automobile Association (USAA), many of the industry’s newly standardized safety features are emerging out of the self-driving car movement, which is already rapidly developing in the United States.

Experts predict that 10,000,000 self-driving cars will be in active operation on U.S. roadways by the year 2020. The potential impact of that trend on the Personal Injury market can’t be overstated.

While self-driving cars haven’t yet established a foolproof safety record, the industry does forecast some 30,000 fewer automotive deaths each year — with potentially millions of other injuries either diminished or prevented altogether.

While that’s a very good thing for society, it also means the PI market needs to take proactive action now.

Millennials Are Changing Everything

Millennials have been the brunt of generational jokes for a long time, but soon enough, they’ll dominate your client base. Since they have a very different relationship with cars than the generations before them, that could mean big changes to your firm’s bottom line.

“There’s a lot of evidence that Millennials don’t drive as much — or care as much for cars in general — as previous generations their own age did,” The Washington Post writes in a recent report. “They’re less likely to get driver’s licenses. They tend to take fewer car trips, and when they do, those trips are shorter. They’re also more likely than older generations to get around by alternative means: by foot, by bike, or by transit.”

Similarly, Time has noted a consistent year-to-year decline in the number of young people obtaining state driver’s licenses.

Consider also that Millennials are staying at home with their parents for longer, meaning they’re less reliant on independent transportation. And once they leave the nest, they’re flocking to urban areas, where mass transit and other public transportation options predominate.

They’re using bicycles more than their parents ever did, they care more about “green living,” and they’re waiting later in life to have kids of their own – all factors pointing away from the car as a mainstay of American adulthood in the future. In short, Millennials are speaking a different cultural language, and “transportation” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to them as it does to you.

If auto accident litigation is even one of your top five practice areas, this generational divide is something to take seriously.

Moreover, even outside of personal injury, Millennials show widespread skepticism toward traditional attorney marketing, as well as a preference for do-it-yourself online services like LegalZoom.

Knowing how to market to Millennials is an increasingly critical goal. It’s our belief that Millennial outreach and messaging should be a part of almost every marketing strategy for law firms.

Ride Sharing

Uber also occupies a sizeable chunk of the legal horizon, as ride sharing quickly eclipses traditional taxi services.

Coupled with Millennials’ preferences against private auto ownership, ride sharing could change the entire automotive market. Indeed, some experts even predict that Uber-like services will preclude the need for anyone to own a car in the future — we’ll all simply summon the nearest self-driving car with the click of a button (or so the theory goes).

A Future with Fewer Drivers

In the traditional business model, drivers are among the most loyal “customers” in the personal injury “industry.” While no one likes to think in such cynical terms — injuries are not commodities, after all — we do want to encourage lawyers to remember that even the noblest professions must mind their bottom lines.

There are major internal and external forces at work, and the writing on the wall spells “change” for law firms all across the country. These challenges are not insurmountable, and your business is not doomed. But it is wise to start taking strategic action to position yourself as the firm to corner the changing market. We can help you do that.

Network Affiliates: Leaders in Marketing Strategy for Law Firms

Network Affiliates is an industry leader in law firm marketing. We know how to position you against your biggest challenges and produce results. In fact, our agency produced the country’s very first lawyer television commercial. That’s how long we’ve been in the game!

We invite you to learn more about our marketing strategy for law firms by reading our two latest white papers:

  • Tips on Reaching Hispanic Millennials in Your Market
  • A Legal Advertising Survival Guide for PI Attorneys

Be sure to check back for our next article too, where we’ll offer even deeper insight into how you can overcome these and other challenges in today’s legal field.

Or, in the meantime, simply give us a call and ask how we can start helping you today. Call (888) 461-1016 or contact us online.

Current Challenges in the Legal Advertising Space – Part 1

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It’s never been easy to become a lawyer. But these days, even if you passed the bar a few decades ago, just being a lawyer is hard.

Why? Competition is a big part of the picture. More law firms are competing for the same number of clients. And more money is going into legal TV advertising than ever before.

In a world where advertising is simultaneously more important and harder to execute, we think it’s crucial to have a solid strategy to achieve better results.

Network Affiliates has been a part of the attorney TV advertising space for as long as it has existed. We’ve stood as a witness to the shifting trends and mounting challenges, and part of our job is helping our clients sail those winds of change.

In life, the best solutions come from an in-depth understanding of the problem. To that end, we’re using our deep industry knowledge to map out the current challenges facing legal advertisers today.

We begin in this article with the internal challenges facing your firm from within your own industry. Later, Part II will look at the external challenges.

We want you to understand these challenges so that, in turn, you’ll understand how we can help you overcome them. Our goals for your firm are simple:

  • More clients
  • Increased referrals
  • Better cases
  • Increased ROI
  • A reputation as the local leader in your field

Our marketing strategies for law firms are, frankly, very effective at making these goals reality. They work for our clients, and they’ll work for you. But here’s what you’re up against.

Your Competitors Are Probably Outspending You.

Between 2014 and 2015, overall television spending grew from $69.2 billion to $71.1 billion. Forecasters expect that number to hit $81 billion by 2019. That’s less than two years away!

Do you know which industry is driving the biggest portion of that growth? You guessed it! Legal services.

Attorney TV advertising grew six times faster than all other ad spending from 2008 to 2014. And in 2015, it claimed the sixth spot on the Top 20 Broadcast Advertisers chart.

If you do much channel surfing in your all-too-scarce free time, you’ve probably noticed this uptick yourself. Attorney commercials are everywhere. There’s a reason for that: they are mightily effective.

This means you have a real challenge in front of you: your competitors are making significant investments in TV advertising. So how can you outdo them? How do you stand out from the pack?

National Players Are Entering Your Market.

Once upon a time, your biggest competitors were in an office two blocks away. Jurisdictional boundaries meant that law was a local game. But that’s changing.

Huge multistate law firms are aggressively expanding beyond their home states. They have effectively established themselves as national law firms “for the little guy.” And because they invest immense amounts in advertising, they’re able to quickly build a reputation from many miles away.

In addition, the internet has become a “national player” all its own. Millennials are on the cusp of adulthood, and they are a very web-savvy bunch. The internet is their playground. Free online tutorials and do-it-yourself services like LegalZoom are a big threat to local law firms.

Dentons recently announced an all-new, free-to-use Nextlaw Global Referral Network. It’s the latest blow to localized legal services, as it mechanizes lawyer referrals on a global scale.

All of this means your advertising efforts must set you apart not only from your rival across the street but also from all the other options available to your clients in our globally interconnected world.

Consolidation

Last year, Bloomberg Law reported that law firms are consolidating in record numbers in the United States. If you aren’t one of those firms, then your competitors are only growing bigger.

Venture Capitalist Money

According to Law.com, at least 18 major law firms are either considering or actively engaging in ongoing relationships with deep-pocketed venture capitalists.

It’s called litigation investment, and it’s a booming business. Essentially, non-lawyers are getting together and pouring money into blossoming law firms, recouping part of the profits as a return… just like they would in any other capital venture.

If that sounds unethical to you, you might be onto something. Some legal watchdogs expect ethics boards to crack down on the practice. But they haven’t yet, and there’s no way to know whether (or how) that might happen.

In the meantime, these venture capitalists only add to the mega-firm trend.

Law Firms in Local Wal-Marts

It almost sounds too weird to be true, but believe it or not, law firms are opening inside Wal-Marts around the country. We don’t mean that figuratively. You can actually walk into some of these big-box retailers and find a fully functioning law firm sandwiched between the game arcade and the nail salon.

ABA Journal and FindLaw have both profiled once-small law firms that have partnered with their local Wal-Marts to hang a shingle inside their warehouse walls.

While many lawyers look down on the idea, they also need to take it seriously. Wal-Mart has hampered (if not crushed) many a small business in this country. You can imagine that many of your prospective clients might find the idea of a one-stop shop for legal services appealing, especially in the personal injury field.

A Wal-Mart firm enjoys unparalleled visibility — something you’ll need to rival on television.

Tort Reform

There is remarkable political momentum toward tort reform in the United States. Already, many jurisdictions have made it harder than ever to bring these cases in the first place. Even a successful settlement or verdict comes with a smaller profit margin than ever before.

Indeed, of all the challenges we’ve enumerated in this article, tort reform might have already had the most profound impact on your business (especially if you’re practicing med-mal in a state with a pro-reform political climate).

So How Do You Survive?

It isn’t easy. The legal space is getting more crowded, and the competition is dense. There is good news, though. Television is a proven and reliable answer to the problem.

Law firms that make prudent investments in lawyer TV advertising see measurable results. Many tell us it’s the best decision they ever made. To stand out, though, you need the right mindset and a truly strategic approach. We address that approach in further detail in our latest white paper, A Legal Advertising Survival Guide for PI Attorneys.

Network Affiliates is an industry leader in law firm marketing. We know how to position you against your biggest competitors and produce results. In fact, our agency produced one of the country’s very first legal TV commercials. That’s how long we’ve been in the game!

Put our experience on your side. Call (888) 461-1016 or contact us online today.

Becoming a Legal TV Advertiser: What It Takes to Reach That Level of Success

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Many attorneys think getting ahead of their competition can be as simple as running an ad on television. After all, no other medium puts you in such direct and immediate contact with so many potential clients.

We’re here to tell you: there’s nothing “simple” about it.

Just think about the TV ads you’ve seen in your own market. Some of them are great. Most are not. And many are costing attorneys way too much money because they aren’t being produced, packaged, and targeted strategically.

So how do you orchestrate a legal TV advertising campaign that puts your law firm atop all your competitors?

Let’s take a look at real and actionable ways you can get in on the TV game — the right way.

It’s All in Your Head: Why Your Mindset Matters More Than Anything

Television advertising is a commitment and an investment. Decide today that you will take your law firm to the next level. Making that choice, consciously and deliberately, is probably the most important ingredient in the whole recipe.

Because here’s the thing: attorney commercials work. They absolutely work.

Did you know that in 2015, legal advertising ranked #6 in the Top 20 Broadcast Advertisers? That’s an incredible statistic. When you think about every industry, every product, every service, and every advertiser in all of American commerce, law firms are in the top six.

They’re there for a reason, and it isn’t just ego. Television is a powerful, proven engine for law firm growth. In fact, TV advertising for attorneys has grown by 68% in the last eight years alone (even as most other industries’ investment levels stayed flat).

That’s why your mindset matters so much. Your competitors are investing in TV advertising left and right, and they’re getting new clients, better cases, and bigger profits as a result.

It Takes a Little Time: The Attorney TV Advertising Lifecycle

Television’s real power is in the long term and the benefits are too substantial for you to give up on after a few weeks or months. We encourage our television advertising clients to approach this market with the seriousness and patience it deserves.

For instance, imagine a working mother who lives fifteen minutes down the road from your office. She works hard every day, and as a reward, she watches her fair share of TV at night. Every night when she turns on the TV, she sees commercials from multiple law firms. Now, she might not have a lawsuit on her hands today, tomorrow or next week… but she’s exposed to the messaging anyway, and your firm is making an impression. The next time she needs a lawyer; wouldn’t you want your firm to be included in her consideration phase?

Now, envision the tens of thousands of individuals and families in your community that you can also consistently reach through the airwaves. The next time they need a lawyer; wouldn’t you want your firm to be included in their consideration phase?

Once you decide to go after all that TV offers, commit yourself, your firm, your staff, and your budget to at least 16-24 months in support of that decision.

Will It Be the Best Decision You’ve Ever Made?

Most of our legal TV advertising clients will tell you this is the single best investment decision they’ve ever made.

If you approach it earnestly and strategically, there is a reasonable likelihood you will say the very same thing.

While other kinds of marketing can confer many worthwhile benefits, TV advertising remains the clearest available path to measurable law firm growth.

Why Can’t Your Attorney Commercials Be the Most Successful Attorney Commercials?

Ask yourself that question! There’s no good answer, because the truth is your firm can reach that level of success. You just need the right strategy and the right partner to make it happen.

We Are the Pioneers.

At Network Affiliates, we know a thing or two about TV advertising for lawyers because we literally created one of the very first.

When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed law firms to embrace television back in 1977, it was our founder, Norton Frickey, who led the charge. He assembled a team that continues to lead the industry to this very day.

We invite you to learn more about our philosophy on television marketing for law firms, including examples of our work and our Four Golden Rules.

Or, even easier — just give us a call. Ask how we can help. Our expert legal marketing professionals are ready to talk. Dial (888) 461-1016 or contact us online. Let’s grow your business.

3 Reasons Your Landing Pages Aren’t Converting

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It’s all fine and dandy to have a PPC ad or other online advertising tactic that’s driving people to your law firm’s landing page. But what if that page isn’t converting at the same rate you are driving people there?

Let’s review the reason a landing page exists anyway: to convert visitors coming from marketing campaigns as quickly as possible. Remember, this is not your law firm’s website, this is an entirely different beast. Continue reading “3 Reasons Your Landing Pages Aren’t Converting”

Common Legal Marketing Mistakes Series: Small Law Firms

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Lawyers in smaller markets get stuck in rigid thinking that can be detrimental to the future of their practices.

The biggest issue we see? Thinking “small” just because of the size of your market and community.

There are big benefits of being in a highly localized community. There are so many affordable strategies and tactics law firms in smaller markets can use. There’s a great opportunity because you can dominate for a reasonable cost.

More assumptions that inhibit winning new business include ideas such as:

  • Everybody already knows who we are and what we do
  • If clients already came to us, they will always come back
  • Not enough of our clients use the internet or smartphones regularly

If you can relate to these statements – keep reading! Smaller law firms can and should compete like law practices in large urban centers. Continue reading “Common Legal Marketing Mistakes Series: Small Law Firms”

How to Market a Law Firm Series: Organic Digital Marketing

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There are lots of questions that pop up when lawyers hear the phrase organic digital marketing. For example:

  • How is organic web traffic different than paid?
  • What are the latest organic strategies in law firm digital marketing?
  • What metrics will help me measure the success of organic efforts?

These are some the very questions that we address daily as we help our legal clients find the right mix and balance of search engine marketing tactics.

Q: How is organic web traffic different than paid?

There are two ways—paid and organic—to get your law firm’s website to appear in the first page of the search results, regardless of which search engine you use. Paid and organic marketing have the same goal: getting potential clients to your site. But the strategy behind them couldn’t be more different.

Paid search is exactly what it sounds like. You, or your law firm’s marketing agency, create ads for keywords with high search volume or high conversion rates, paying only for each click or impression the ad earns. Of course, your law firm’s pay per click campaigns may be  more complicated than that. If you have that do-it-yourself attitude, you can check out this guide to SEM & Paid Search Marketing from Search Engine Land.

Organic search (SEO) is a different process entirely. You’re not bidding on clicks and impressions, which can save a lot of money in the marketing budget. But organic isn’t 100 percent free either. You don’t pay for clicks or impressions, but you do have to invest in meaningful, well-produced content, site design and functionality, and site promotion.

You are paying for results one way or the other.

 

Q: What does organic digital marketing entail?

You can ask six different SEO experts how to do their job and you’ll get six different answers. That said, there are clear strategies every law firm should employ in order to have a successful organic campaign. Assuming your marketing agency or in-house SEO specialist isn’t using black-hat tactics, these include:

Engaging content

You need content on your properties that resonates well with your potential clients. Content can be anything from a 500-word blog post to a well-crafted infographic or video.

Each piece of content should have a specific purpose—the key to content marketing for lawyers. That’s how you know if it works or it doesn’t. For example, a service page on your site may convert well but perform poorly on your social media pages. Whereas a video, infographic or a piece of interactive content might earn a ton of social shares or backlinks, but convert poorly. Having both scenarios is ideal. There’s one piece of content that directly affects your law firm’s bottom line and another that improves brand awareness.

Creating content at such a high level requires a lot of research, trial and error, and a bit of luck, to be honest. It’s also unique to each market. What works well for a Boston firm may not earn the same results in Tampa or Seattle.

Likewise, “If you build it, they will come” worked great in A Field of Dreams, but it won’t work for your content. You need a promotional component to get your content in front of the right people.

These time-consuming tactics range from sharing it multiple times on your social channels to sending personalized messages to individuals and webmasters. You could add a paid Facebook campaign as well. It’s a high-risk tactic, but if successful, the results are well worth the investment.

Mobile-friendly & local search

In 2015, Google announced that mobile search volume outpaced desktop for the first time. So what does that mean for your website and digital marketing for law firms in general?

It means you ignore mobile devices at your own risk. Google tweaked their ranking algorithm to ding sites that aren’t friendly to mobile users. That first update in 2015 was called “Mobilegeddon,” promising to do just that. Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of fall out because agencies and webmasters made the necessary changes to websites to avoid the penalty.

It doesn’t matter if your website has a responsive design (adjusts to a user’s screen size) or a standalone mobile site, as long as it’s user friendly. If you don’t know if your site is mobile friendly, you could ask your marketing agency or use Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing tool.

But you’re not done yet. You need to pay local SEO some attention.

The first organic result isn’t what it used to be. The first organic listing used to get the majority of clicks. These days, depending on the search result, that No. 1 position may actually be the eighth link on the page—behind four paid ads and three local listings.

It’s one reason why folks in the SEO marketing industry have moved away from just reporting on keyword rankings to validate their work. Just remember, rankings are still important, but they aren’t the indicators of success that they used to be.

So how do you overcome this change to the results? There are two ways. First, you could start a PPC campaign. But depending on your market and the legal keyword you’re targeting, that can get expensive in a hurry.

The second option is getting your business in that local pack. Like creating content, that’s easier said than done, but there are a few things you can do to improve your chance of getting in.

You’ll want to create or claim a Google My Business profile. (Tip: Always claim a listing if it already exists.) After claiming the profile, you or your representative should confirm the information is correct and add in anything that’s missing. Repeat that process on Bing, Yelp and other local listing platforms.

 

Q: Can you outline some smart strategies for organic digital marketing?

 

All law firm marketing strategies should answer one question first: Are your attorneys or law office giving prospective clients (users) what they want?

From the content on your website to the videos and photos you share on  Facebook or Twitter, these are all tools to reach an audience. If you don’t know who your audience is and what they want, then you’re essentially just throwing things against the wall and hoping they stick.

Identify your audience,  give them what they want, and share your content where your audience is. Go to them first, then they’ll start coming to you.

We can get into the weeds about content, backlinks, mobile-friendly designs and so on. But if you’re ignoring the user, then why are you wasting time and money advertising at all?

 

Q: What are the best metrics & tools for measuring success?

Measuring success for organic strategies requires teamwork between your law firm and advertising agency. At Network Affiliates, we can tell you how many users filled out a form or clicked on a digital ad to call your office, but that’s where our data ends. And unless you’re using a track-line phone number, we have no way of knowing whether those leads turned into clients.

That’s why intake is such important component of marketing plans for lawyers. If your intake specialist is capturing the right information from online leads, then we can compare the information we gather with theirs. It gives us a better idea of how well (or poorly) your site is performing.

Google Analytics is the most important tool to have installed on your website. While it’s far from perfect, it’s one of the better ways to see how people are engaging with your website. You can track how many leads your site generated, where those people came from and how many pages they visited before converting to a lead. Analytics lets you monitor traffic sources from organic and social channels, time on site or page, and a myriad of other metrics.

It is far from perfect. Spam traffic can inflate bounce rates and page visits and improperly set goals can skew your conversion data. Those issues can be fixed with the right configuration or a little bit of foresight.

For social channels, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ have their own reporting dashboards. Those dashboards give you the social information that Google Analytics can’t. You can really dive down to see what resonated with your audience for that respective platform.

That level of reporting and teamwork takes all the guesswork out of calculating your ROI, cost per lead and cost per case. Time consuming? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.

Let Network Affiliates eliminate the guesswork from your law firm’s digital marketing efforts. Give our organic search pros all call today – (888) 461-1016

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