AVALANCHE: The Lawyer Marketing Group

Blogs - are they right for you?

We have found that blogs have been useful marketing vehicles for some of our clients. The reason? They are inexpensive, easy-to-find, and readership is increasing.

Some background for those of you new to blogs:

“Blog” is a term that is short for “web log,” or a journal on the web. The idea behind a blog is that without knowing the technical side of web publishing, a writer can publish new information regularly. And with the advent of easy-to-use tools, blogging has caught on as a popular medium.

From the reader’s point of view, a blog looks like a website with dated entries or articles.

Relative low cost to blog

In addition to the many great blog hosts and tools that make it easy to blog, the cost is much lower than many other marketing options. For the big names in blog hosting, businesses pay up to $150 a year for blogs. And many services offer free blogs.

The higher expenditure is your time. Because the key to a successful blog is adding new entries often, you need to write often and dedicate time to updating your blog.

Search engines love blogs

Because blogs are updated often, search engines are good about crawling and adding that new information to search results. In the world of increased search engine ranking importance, this can really give your firm a boost. Potential clients will find your firm more easily if you have a regularly updated blog online.

Blog readership is increasing

According to comScore’s August “Behaviors of the Blogosphere” report, 50 million US Internet users visited blogs in Q1 of 2005. That’s a big increase from the 34 million of 2004.

With blog readership increasing, and business blogs becoming more popular, it is a good time to attract clients with a blog.

We have found that blogging works best for those practices that have constant changes to communicate–product liability, class-actions, and pharmaceutical litigation are a few areas that can give up-to-the-minute information to clients and potential clients.

Areas that will have success with blogs are increasing

Any attorney that wants to establish a relationship with potential clients can do so by sharing their expert knowledge, and publishing insight and tips to the public.

What will you write for your potential clients?

Listing your site in link directories

Here’s another soft spot with me: Owners of sites whose content is comprised of links and advertisements are constantly soliciting link partnerships.

You might hear that search engine rankings are based on having other sites linked to your site. This is not entirely true.

Yes, search engines include ‘link popularity’ as a factor in determining rankings. However, the links are weighed. If the content of the site linking to yours is related to that of your site, it gets a substantial weight. If not, it may get a lighter weight, or, it may give you negative points.

Because the goal of search engine marketing is to help searchers get to pertinent information, I advise our clients that these lists of unrelated links are a waste of time. Don’t include your firm in a site whose name (and URL) says they sell quality DVDs.

Adding your URL to such a site could hurt you more than help you.

Primarily, you are associating your practice with a site with unrelated content. That does not boost your rankings. Links to sites with related content boost your ratings.

Next, some search engines blacklist sites of links and advertisements. That definitely won’t boost your rankings.

In addition, search engines may lower rankings of your site if they think you are using “schemes” to boost your rankings. (Those search engines that do not have this in their current algorithm will add it, as they see their own search result usefulness decline, and users switch to more reliable search engines.)

Furthermore, you may be associating your firm with a company that has unethical business practices or a company that is ignorant and is marketing themselves as such. These are both minor points, but in the grand scheme of things, you want your quality of service to show on many levels, so such associations aren’t the most valuable to you.

Keep in mind that there are directories that are legitimate and that would be useful to you. Directories of lawyers, community directories, and association directories are all great places for you to establish your link popularity. And they may also be useful to people trying to find a lawyer.

Should I exchange links with other sites?

In my inbox this last week was an email offering a link trade with some used car website. The email read,

“…The site was established to provide link popularity to sites…The site is very old and established in all the search engines…When I link to you from the above site, your site will perform better in search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo.”

Search engines use complex algorithms to give search results based on keywords that searchers type. The goal of search engines is to provide searchers with information they are looking for. They do so by evaluating a combination of data to rank sites in search results. The data includes links from sites with complimentary or related content.

A used car site and a lawyer marketing site are not complimentary and share no related content. People searching for used cars are searching for used cars, not lawyer marketing.

There are good partnerships to have in link exchanges, though. They are the same partnerships that are good to have for your practice in general—legal and community associations, places with information that will allow your clients to do some self-guided research, and links to the actual text of laws that apply to your clients. These are all good resources for your clients, and a link to your site from any of these sites would both increase your business and your search engine rankings.

So, remember that if you are considering exchanging links, your first priority should be to point your customers to useful information, and have customers at other sites be pointed to you, if your information may be useful to them. Only after this first requirement is satisfied should you employ a link exchange to increase your search engine rankings.

What is the best search engine marketing plan?

There's no straight-up, easy answer to that question. Because a search engine marketing plan is long-term, all sorts of factors go into deciding on the best course of action.

What you must do, is keep in mind the goal of search engine marketing:
Allow people to find your site (and your phone number) through search engines on the web. These include Google, Yahoo, AOL, AskJeeves, or any other general web search engine that potential clients may use.

When you launch a new website, or a redesigned website, you want to encourage the search engines to find you.

Your website design should include copy that is optimized for certain keywords that the search engines like. There are tools that you can purchase to help you find target keywords. And then there are agencies with experienced people and professional-grade tools to select target keywords. Though more expensive, it often pays off to have experienced people help with the optimization that goes into the design of your site. So far, no software can keep up with subtleties in language the way a human can.

When your finished site is live, submit your URL to the search engines.
Submission asks the search engine spiders (applications that crawl the web indexing all pages of all sites) to look at your site, highlighting your keywords. Again, you have options on how to go about doing this. Your evaluation should include pricing and effectiveness.

• You can submit to each search engine individually, by finding the submissions (sometimes called suggestions) page on each search engine. Make sure to include all the search engines, because the affiliations between them change often.
• You can buy software to submit to all search engines in one fell swoop. Frequent software updates will allow your submissions to stay current with the ever-changing search engine metrics and affiliations.
• You can hire professionals to submit for you. There are agencies that do only search engine marketing, agencies that include search engine marketing as part of a complete web design and development package, and there are full-service marketing agencies that include search engine marketing in their list of services. Whatever the case, go to someone who knows about search engine marketing. They will have the best possible combination of submission techniques. They will have high-level tools for submissions, and will know when it's best to submit directly to search engines due to engine-specific rules and regulations. In addition, search engine marketers can analyze your rankings on a regular basis, and adjust your site to continually boost your rankings.

Paid Search Engine Advertising
Because it can take up to eight months to get crawled by all the search engine spiders and get your rankings up organically, I often recommend that my clients consider the idea of paid search engine advertising in the first couple months to both get hits and push for faster organic rankings.

Following are some paid search engine advertising options:

Google AdWords
Google AdWords is a search engine marketing tool in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks through the ad to their website. This is often a successful way to jumpstart a new website, until organic search engine rankings are up. Any clickthrough will also improve organic rankings on Google, as it will associate your keywords to your site.

Google AdWords are included on many sites and search engines, including AskJeeves and AOL.

How it works:
Advertisers pay $5 to set up an account, and then set a daily and monthly budget, with no minimum fee. Advertisers select keywords to target, and set a maximum amount that they will pay per click (PPC - when a user actually clicks on the ad) for ads that come up on in the paid advertisements section of a Google search results page. Any Google searcher that clicks on an ad and goes to that site generates a charge to the advertiser.

AdWords PPC advertisements are ranked using a combination of click-through-rate (how many users actually click on the ad), cost-per-click (CPC) (higher price bids will get a better chance here), and relevancy of ad text to the keywords.

Google also has a pay per impression (PPM) option for advertisers who want to choose which member sites their ads get placed on. The budgeting is set up the same way.

Yahoo Sponsored Search
Yahoo Sponsored Search is another pay per click (PPC) search engine advertising option. Again, this is a possible short-term vehicle to get customers to your site as organic rankings improve.

Yahoo comes in at a close second to Google in search engine use, and as such deserves consideration.

How it works: Advertisers open an Overture account and maintain a minimum balance of $50, and spend a minimum of $20 per month for the PPC sponsored advertising. (See Google AdWords section above for more details on PPC.) The advertiser selects relevant keywords that will trigger the ad in a paid results section on Yahoo and participating sites and directories.

Yahoo Sponsored Search PPC ads are ranked by cost-per-click, which means that the highest bidder gets the top slot of ads that use the keywords. Note that if an advertiser does not get $20 worth of clicks through per month, he is still charged a minimum of $20. This might provide impetus to review an ad campaign and raise a daily budget or cost per click bid.

Yahoo Sponsored Search is also known as Overture and includes placement on many sites and directories including MSN.com.

Yahoo Directory Submit
Yahoo allows advertisers to pay $299 to submit their URL to the Yahoo Directory. This does not guarantee that the site will be linked in the directory, just that the directory spider will assess the site.

If a site is accepted in the Yahoo Directory, there is a $299 annual fee to maintain the listing.

In general, this is a low cost marketing vehicle, but I have found that it has not generated enough business for my attorney clients to pay for itself.

National Legal Directory Paid Submission
Check to see which directories and associations you are already a part of - your bar association? Your local community directory? Use these to your advantage. Most important in these directories is linking to your website(s). I cannot stress the importance of linking to your sites. Relevant links (links that come from sites with related material to yours) will both generate traffic and boost your search engine rankings.

FindLaw - findlaw.com
Lots of attorneys are familiar with FindLaw. This makes FindLaw a good resource when marketing to other attorneys. That most non-lawyers are not familiar with FindLaw makes it a non-cost-effective tool to market to the general public.

Because lawyers are familiar with this site, it would be worthwhile to consider FindLaw a viable option for Lawyer to Lawyer marketing. Note that negotiations can be made with the FindLaw sales staff as to the price of advertisements.

Thompson Legal Record/West Legal Directory
This also appears to be a directory that attorneys are familiar with, and as such may use to find services from other lawyers. I recommend that my clients keep their information on this site updated, and include a link to their site(s). The link is important here, as organic search engine rankings include relevant links in the determining algorithm. Links from well-known legal directories are valuable both for generating clicks, as well as for search engine rankings.

For attorneys that already have entries in this directory, so there is no additional cost for this marketing vehicle.

Martindale-Hubbell - martindale-hubbell.com, martindale.com
Another well-known resource for attorneys, attorneys are listed in a directory by practice area. It is worthwhile to consider paying for inclusion for both the potential clients that may come from this site, as well as for the links that will boost your search engine rankings.

Associations
Consider joining national and local associations to boost search engine rankings.
Use your current memberships to state and city bar or trial lawyers associations to both drive traffic to your site and boost those search engine rankings.

American Bar Association - abanet.org

Association of Trial Lawyers of America - atlanet.org

YourState Bar Association

YourCity Bar Association

YourState Trial Lawyers Association

After all that, what's your best plan?

Supercharging Your Print Advertising and Haircuts

Many law firms advertise in periodicals (newspapers and glossy city-wide magazines). Some firms experience great success with their newspaper or magazine advertising; others do not. One of the things that influence the success of advertising in periodicals has to do with the frequency an advertisement appears, and how readers respond to ads.

This post will show you how to supercharge your newspaper and magazine advertising through understanding how readers behave when they see advertising.

It will not, however, teach you anything about haircuts.

If you already have experience advertising in periodicals, you likely have experienced something that most law firms encounter when they advertise in newspapers and magazines: the ad works well the first few times it appears and then it stops generating telephone calls.

Even great ads, ads that give you a one hundred to one return on investment when they first appear, generate fewer positive responses with each successive publication. Why is that?

To discover why ads lose their effectiveness with successive publications, pick up any newspaper or magazine you read on a regular basis and read through it. Notice that you focus mostly on the editorial content in the publication. If a headline or a photograph grabs your attention, you probably read the first few paragraphs of the article. If the first few paragraphs are of interest, you may go on to read the entire article. However, you won’t continue to read the article if the content does not continue to interest you.

While you are perusing your newspaper or magazine for its editorial content, you also notice the advertising. (Generally, you are not looking for the advertising; you are looking for editorial content.) You use the same criteria for deciding whether you will read the content in the advertising that you use to determine if you will read the content in an editorial piece: am I interested in this?

While reading periodicals, people read the content they are interested in, be it a story, a news report, a stock quote, an opinion, a book review, or an advertisement. When readers are not interested in the content, they continue through the publication until they find something of interest to them. Okay, you already knew that. I just needed to remind you of that so you can better understand the next few things I am going to share with you.

Most newspapers and magazines have greater subscriber circulation than they have newsstand circulation. That means that most of the people reading any given periodical read the issues that came before the one they are reading now, and they will read the issues that come after the one they are reading now. That also means that your advertisement is seen by the same people each day, each week, or each month that it appears.

Maybe that’s a good thing. Most people who sell advertising and most people who teach marketing will tell you that multiple-exposure is a good thing. Multiple-exposure is important to build awareness and relationship. Multiple-exposure is necessary to build business. I agree with those points.

What salespeople and consultants often fail to tell you (what they often fail to understand) is that multiple-exposure to the same ad generates as much interest as multiple exposure to your new haircut! I know that comparing advertising to haircuts sounds like a mighty long stretch; but it’s a very good analogy. And, you are probably relieved to see that this post is about haircuts too. Remember the title, Supercharging Your Print Advertising and Haircuts? You found that title interesting, or you would not be reading this post.

So, you get a new haircut. It looks great. Several of your coworkers, a few friends, and a family member or two, comment on it. They noticed your haircut. The next day, perhaps only one person makes a comment. (That would be the person who did not see your haircut the day before.) Within a few days, nobody notices your haircut. You don’t notice your haircut.

Same thing with a new dress: no matter how stunning it makes you look, people stop noticing it after they have had multiple exposures to it. (Unless, of course, you are a big, burly guy, and then people will probably notice your dress no matter how often you wear it.)

When people see the same thing over and over again, they lose interest in it. Remember: interest is what gets us to read editorials, look at advertisements, go to movies, and order entrées. If you want your advertisement to generate new clients, it must be read. To be read, your advertisement must interest readers.

You want people to notice your ad every time it appears.
At the same time, you want — you need — the benefit of multiple-exposure because multiple-exposure creates familiarity and relationship. Multiple-exposure brands your firm. Multiple-exposure generates phone calls. But, if you run the same ad over and over again, people don’t see your ad anymore. You lose the benefits of multiple-exposure when you run the same ad repeatedly because people stop seeing it.

So, when you want to supercharge your print advertising, create multiple ads. Create each ad with a great headline, a headline that captures the readers’ attention. Create each ad with a stunning graphic, one that draws readers’ eyes to your ad.

Graphics (illustrations or photographs) get attention best when they get people to think, “Hey, what the heck is this photograph about?” (Tempting as they are to use, photographs of lawyers tend not to generate a “hey, what the heck is this photograph about?” response from most readers.)

You might start your ads with stories. People read stories. Stories can be serialized. If people like your first story, they are more likely to look forward to and read your second story, and so on.

Though you want to create different ads to keep people interested and reading, you don’t want to lose the value of multiple-exposure to your brand, so make sure your ads have continuity in their design and theme. Most importantly, make sure your logo, your most identifiable brand, appears at the bottom, right corner of the ad, right next to your telephone number.

Why the bottom, right corner? You will have to call me to find out why the bottom, right corner of any print ad is the most important piece of real estate on the planet.
(800) 554-9939

Community Directories: Good or Bad Investment?

Sometimes community directories can offer a good return on investment. It depends on where the books are distributed, who publishes them, how large of an area the “greater metro” area is, who publishes the primary book, how long the community books have been published, and local use habits. What it really all boils down to is: do people use these community books?

The publisher will have all sorts of charts and surveys that “prove” people actually prefer the community directories to the phone company’s telephone book. Don’t believe the surveys; they are often misleading and the methodology to create the information is seldom very scientific. (I saw one survey that demonstrated that more than 98 percent of the community used the directory. Astonishing for a brand new directory. How was the survey data collected? Inside the front cover of each book was a postage paid survey card. It asked the reader to check the box that said “Yes, I use the XXX phonebook” and then to send the card in to qualify to win a $1,000 shopping spree. The only people who would have seen the card were the people who opened, and presumably, used, the phone book.)

It takes years for a telephone book to establish itself in a community. Newly-published directories seldom get a “go ahead” from me when I am spending my clients’ money. Also, community directories tend to work better for neighborhood businesses. The reason people open them is because they want to go to a business that is close to home, a restaurant, hardware store, pizza delivery, video store, library, etc. For more important decisions, such as choosing a dentist or hiring a lawyer, people want more choices. “Close to home” is not a primary consideration; lots-of-choices is a primary motivator. So the greater metro area directory is almost always used when people are making important vendor decisions, want choices, and don’t plan on making regular trips to the vendor’s office or store.

I would recommend that you save your money for other marketing investments.

Getting Your Picture Taken

So you have decided to use your photo in your yellow pages ad. Great!

Read about why you may want to reconsider in "Should I put my photo in my ad?".

The purpose of placing your photo in the ad is to build a relationship. Your facial expression, posture, clothing, perceived age, hairstyle, etc. dictate the type of relationship that will be created. In display ads where your photo is prominent (or even comprising the bulk of the ad), the photo is probably the most important thing. It makes the viewer stop looking to read more about your firm.

When selecting a photographer, find a person you like. If you are uncomfortable with your photographer, it will show in the pictures. In our experience, wedding and event photographers tend to be better at getting the look you will need for your ad. They are adept at capturing moods and people being their natural selves.

Your facial expression should be a natural one.  No big grins or frowns.  How do you look when you are listening to a client?

The background can be anything muted. The photographer will likely have a number of backdrops to choose from. Stay away from the standard light blue or grey backdrop. Earth tones tend to look best.

Make eye contact with the reader, keep your posture open and inviting. Wear professional attire, but nothing overly formal. A blue shirt with a muted tie is always a good choice—even for a black on yellow ad.

In summary:

• Listen and talk to the camera
• Take photos with and without your jacket
• Go to a wedding photographer - not a portrait studio
• Show the photographer your ad