Attorneys have one main marketing goal: to generate qualified leads. Traditionally, lead generation was accomplished through direct mail marketing. In today’s world, digital marketing is king. Attorneys who don’t have a website that continually generates fresh, qualified leads will fall behind.
If you’re a lawyer looking for a digital marketing agency to help you generate leads, you might be tempted to contract with the first reliable firm you find. While any reputable marketing firm can be a match for most businesses, that’s not the case with lawyers.
Your profession is a niche like any other, but your lead generation strategies differ from the crowd. When generating leads, legal expertise matters; you need a digital marketing agency for lawyers, like FuelWebMarketing.com.
Why lawyers need specialized lead generation strategies
Lead generation is the foundation of every digital marketing strategy. You need leads toDigital MarketersDigital Marketers run any kind of marketing campaign, and you should be generating leads on a continual basis.
Digital marketing agencies are experts in deploying a variety of lead generation strategies. For example, most digital marketing agencies are extremely good at creating lead magnets.
Lead magnets work for a variety of industries and include offers like free downloads and discounts. Lead magnets are usually a marketing agency’s go-to strategy. However, lead magnets aren’t appropriate for lawyers.
Lawyers won’t generate leads by offering free downloads, discounts, or bonus products. People seeking legal counsel don’t want freebies – they need legal representation, and they usually need it quickly. People searching online for an attorney are looking for someone they can speak with immediately.
Since people seeking legal counsel are looking for immediate help, your website is your most important digital marketing asset. SEO and other marketing strategies are important, but if your website doesn’t make it easy for potential clients to call you right away, you’re losing leads daily.
For lawyers, it’s not enough to buy a good-looking website template and call it a day. To maximize your lead-generating potential, you need a website customized from top to bottom. You need custom graphics, custom colors, a customized layout, and most importantly, you need a customized client inquiry form.
Lawyers need custom websites
Have you noticed that most lawyers have a similar website design with dark, high contrast colors, limited navigation, and contact information at the top of each page? There’s a reason for that – it works. Lawyers aren’t trying to get visitors to become loyal subscribers to their content – they’re trying to get people to call them.
Lawyers’ websites are simple because they want potential leads to fill out their contact form or call them. Drawing attention to anything else is a distraction. For example, you don’t need to use a bunch of stock photos to impress your visitors. You want to use real photos of you and your team, but sparingly. One or two images per page are okay, but images should never be the center of attention at the cost of eclipsing your contact information.
If you’re an attorney, your ideal lead generation strategy is to have your entire website revamped. That might sound like overkill for generating leads, but it’s necessary. For example, if your website isn’t built to accommodate your phone number in large text at the top of every page, you’re losing leads.
When your phone number is immediately visible, the majority of leads will call you before they read the content on your website. When your phone number isn’t visible, it’s harder for potential leads to contact you. They’ll click around for a bit and maybe read some content, but ultimately, they’re going to head to your contact page. That’s where your contact form comes into play.
A lawyer’s contact form is a lead-generating machine
For lawyers, a winning lead generation strategy involves a combination of expert copy plus a proper lead generation web form. Both the copy and the form need to be strategically designed to speak directly to qualified leads and simultaneously exclude the rest. This is the best way to reduce the number of unqualified leads you’ll generate.
For example, say you’re gathering litigants for a class-action lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company for a drug that has harmed people. Your copy needs to speak directly to people who have been injured by the specific drug(s), who can also quantify their damages with specific injuries. By emphasizing the serious side effects, you’ll discourage people from contacting you if they took that particular drug once twenty years ago and never had any problems.
Likewise, your contact form should also serve to filter out disqualified leads. The way this works is you ask a simple question with drop-down answers. Then, you program your web form to automatically segment any leads who select disqualifying answers. You can contact those leads if you want, but you won’t need to waste time calling to determine if they qualify at a basic level.
Lawyers need high-level inbound marketing
To get your website to show up in the search engines, you need a high-level inbound marketing strategy. This can include content marketing, PPC ads, and general SEO services. However, each component needs to be targeted and strategic.
For example, disqualification – especially with PPC ads – is critical. Leads aren’t cheap in the legal industry. If your leads cost $45 and you have a 10% conversion rate, that’s actually costing you $450 per lead. You need to disqualify people before they even click.
Once people click, your PPC ad should direct leads to landing pages that will encourage them to contact you immediately, whether by phone or email. You’ll get better results when a professional marketer designs special landing pages for your PPC ads rather than using your existing webpages.
Specialized digital marketing will get you results
No matter what area of law you practice, you need a specialized digital marketing agency to get big results. Before committing to an agency, shop around. Try to find a niche agency to get the most value for your marketing budget.
