Bullseye!
How great would it be if you could hand-pick the most qualified clients for your practice? The main goal of legal marketing is to increase the number of qualified people who are interested in retaining you as a lawyer. Expanding your online marketing presence involves two important elements that you should be aware of: tracking and targeting. Optimizing tools to track where your clients come from is a pivotal step. Additionally, there’s an entire pool of new business that you may not even be aware of, and gathering all of this data can help you learn how to gain more clients, and also put you ahead of your competition. That said, let’s look into a few different ways to get the most bang for your legal marketing buck.
A great way to track website traffic is via Google Analytics (GA), which is a free (yes, free) program designed to measure the ROI of your advertising ventures. From a business standpoint, you really need to have a good amount of data before investing serious money into your digital marketing. Once GA is activated, you have a ridiculous amount of tracking statistics at your fingertips, which you can use to ensure that you’re earning way more money than you’re spending. You can see everything from the geographic location of each visitor to your site, how many seconds they were on the page, and what pages they visited. There’s even a mobile app where you can check all this data, and even see how many people are on your site in real time. This might be a fun way to track your progress between meetings, or when you’re waiting for a session to begin at the courthouse.
To get set up, Analytics gives you a unique code snippet which you add to the back-end of your website. This part can get a bit technical, so feel free to contact me and I will walk you through the process.
Another great tool for tracking your clients is something that you may already use daily. The invention of Caller ID has proven to be a goldmine for lawyers, as well as other types of businesses. Many people who are looking to find a lawyer will pick up the phone the moment they have the opportunity. Taking that idea to the next level, many lawyers now use Customer Relationship Management programs (also known as CRM’s). Every time your office is contacted by a potential client, you can quickly note important details, such as primary contact information, upcoming court dates, and other data. Once you have this on file, take a look at some of your past clients and see if you can find a trend. For example, if they all came in by dialing your 800 number vs your local phone number, you may want to focus more on advertising the 800 number.
Another obvious but rarely used tool to learn where your clients came from is to ask them. After all, this person found you somehow and decided to pay you; you might as well pick their brains! Were they referred by a friend? Did they Google your name? Maybe they saw your phone number on that serious billboard you paid for on the interstate. Other sources could be TV commercials, print, or any number of websites where your information is listed. It’s easy to overlook your current clients as a resource for gaining new clients, so take the extra effort. On the phone, this can be as simple as ensuring your paralegal or secretary asks the question “How did you hear about us?”, then make sure the information is recorded in your CRM. While you’re at it, you can also ask for recommendations and reviews from your clients, which will help improve your digital credentials. All of this information is priceless, and can be a great way to enhance your legal marketing strategies.
Drive your legal marketing down new avenues (pun fully intended)
Getting a grip on where potential clients find you is only the first step. Once you’ve collected this information, you can then devise a variety of different, more optimized strategies. Sit down and decide on what works and what doesn’t, and use the data you’ve collected to see how much money you’re spending. I’m a huge fan of A/B testing one plan vs another; this is a great way to find out what works and what doesn’t. With all of this research already done, things will begin to fall into place rather quickly. It makes sense to increase your budget in channels that are already succeeding. Furthermore, research the areas where you’re NOT receiving any clients. There’s a chance you could double your case load this way.
Increasing your caseload by tracking and targeting clients require regular re-evaluations. Every month, take a few hours and look at what’s working and what isn’t working. Initially, the setup and research is the hard work. However, we see many lawyers who have built their whole practice by optimizing their online marketing. Savvy lawyers are locking up Internet referrals, leaving only the diminishing stream of Yellow Page and word of mouth referrals to other lawyers. If you need help getting started, contact me for hints and strategies in this rapidly moving market, and don’t forget to add us to your Circle on Google+ for more helpful information.
Kevin Maher
Lawyer.com Online Presence Manager
800-620-0900
About Us
