Tag Archives: legal marketing

SEO Improvement Tips for Attorneys: Legal Content Writer Explains

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Once your law firm or attorney webpage and legal blog is launched, there are certain legal marketing tweaks you can make to improve your website’s position.  As a legal content writer, I have seen many legal websites that were on the right track but lacking simple fixes that will yield big results.

Three Tips from a Legal Content Writer

While these tips cannot replace a legal content writer who specializes in drafting content for legal websites, here are three tips to improve your website SEO that can be implemented even if you have the most basic understanding of online marketing:

1) Focus on your General Locality and Drill it

Logically, this makes absolutely sense.  So much sense, that one would ask why this is the first SEO tip; it is stating the obvious.  However, the truth of the matter is most attorney websites or legal blogs fail to hone in on the locality they hope to tap into.  Others attempt to conquer too large of a locality that they cannot responsibly donate the time and effort into cultivating. As a legal content writer, this can be one of the easiest fixes to remedy.

For instance, a law firm seeking to obtain clients in the northern region of the state should focus on cities, towns, and counties in that area within their website content.  Prospective clients will search locally first to save themselves the trip of having to travel far distances to a lawyer if they do not have it.  Competition for these local places is likely to be significantly less than for larger geographic areas–such as entire states or regions–which require constant attention and more resources.  Thus, if the attention required is not provided, all attempts will essentially be wasted because they will be spread too thin to be effective.

2) Use Titles that Interest Laypersons, Not You (the Attorney)

Again, this appears to go without saying.  Yet, as a legal content writer, too often do I see attorneys posting titles such as “Premises Liability and You: Proving Constructive Notice.”  Most people have no idea what premises liability cases actually are in the first place, let alone do they know what constructive notice is or why it is important.

However, morphing this title into “Slip and Fall Accidents: What You Need to Do to Win” would generate significantly more interest for someone who has just fallen and sustained an injury.  Moreover, that is what they will be searching online; a slip and fall and how to win their case.  Then within the post, you can tactfully convert a slip and fall case into a premises liability issue.  Add the location you are hoping to focus on in the title, and you will have a solid title for your blog post.

Moreover, titles should be attention-grabbing or enticing.  You want prospective clients coming across your blog posts to be compelled to click on the link and see what you have on your webpage.  The best example of this is on news articles or tabloids.  We hate them and don’t intend to ever click on them, however, sometimes the titles are just to irresistible to not uncover.

3) Provide Helpful Links, not Wasteful Ones

Google is smart and ever-evolving.  In the past, heavy linking was the way to easily build your website’s online presence.  In fact, webpage owners would just provide hundreds of random links within their articles to increase their ranking.

But Google culled these behavior and looked for relevant links that have content and buzzwords similar to the content and buzzwords in your blog posts.  Thus, providing irrelevant links would actually harm your website’s potential.  This can disarm your legal content writer and render your online legal marketing useless.

But in the gamesmanship of “beating Google,” people have forgotten the reason for writing the blogs and providing links in the first place: Help the readers!  Regardless if you can make your website appear at the top of all relevant searches, if visitors to your website find, click on, and attempt to use your website–but it does not help them–you will generate no business.  The visitor will simply hit the “back” button and go to the next website down the line.

Employing these three simple SEO tips can improve your website’s visibility and utility greatly.  Remember, being at the top of the search engine is excellent, but it will still require solid and helpful content to impress your visitors to patronize your services.

While these are only a few tips, ask your legal content writer for more information on other ways to improve your website.  Other methods are not as easy, but certainly effective.

If you have more questions or would like an SEO review of your website, please contact NAB Legal Marketing, LLC today.  We are legal content writers who understand how to use SEO effectively to improve your law firm’s web presence.  Contact us today at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com

Firms With Legal Blogs Rose In Rankings, According to ABA Journal Article

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The American Bar Association (“ABA”) published an article reporting the findings of a LexBlog 2012 end-of-the-year survey regarding U.S. law firms and legal blogs.  The study itself focused particularly on large law firms and reported some very interesting findings.

Of the top Am Law 200 law firms, 77-percent of those firms had legal blogs which constituted a 26-percent increase over the last report.  These firms were responsible for 633 blogs, which correlates with a 63-percent increase over the last report as well.

But what does this all mean?  The report found that, on average, firms with blogs rose in the rankings while firms without blogs slipped.  While all of the Am Law 200 increased their revenue last year, the study found that the 155 Am Law 200 firms with blogs increased their revenue by over a million dollars compared to the Am Law 200 firms without blogs.

The study admits that there could be some contributing factors, but still acknowledges that the results are important: Firms with legal content on their blogs will perform better than firms without.

Even though the study is for large law firms, the effect may be more pronounced for small to mid-size firms, particularly those in less-saturated markets.  That is because most, if not, all of the Am Law 200 firms are in large, saturated markets.  Firms in regions outside of the large markets would have a stronger affect with any advertising that they make.

Here are NAB Legal Marketing, LLC, we are legal content writers and focus our legal content drafting business on small to mid-size firms in any market, particularly smaller or mid-size markets.  We stride to improve the marketing of these firms through legal blogs by writing engaging and informative content for a law firm’s blog.  If you have any questions or would like to learn more, contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

What is PageRank and Why It Matters for Legal Content

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Too many legal content writers go off the “content is king” approach.  That is not entirely true though.  Legal content is much more complex than just drafting blog posts and articles.  But as you’ll read in this post, content is less than one-fourth of a webpage’s overall ranking.  Each post or article must consider Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) and how it will help increase a legal website’s PageRank.

PageRank is Google’s way of ranking webpages and is named after co-founder Larry Page who devised the algorithm to link websites.  This system ranks a webpage on a scale of one to ten, with ten being perfect; very few webpages have a ten!  What is important to note is that PageRank measures individual pages and not entire websites.  This means that internal links between pages in a website are permissible.

Initially, PageRank looked purely at the number of links to and from a website equating them to “votes” for the page’s popularity.  And this makes sense, because the more substantial and relevant the content, the more people will link to that website.

However, people learned how to abuse this and began spamming links on their webpages or having surrogate websites to feed to their main page; this became known as “Google Bombs.”  Google countered by upgrading their algorithm to prevent his behavior–or attempted to.  While there is still the possibility of websites abusing this to a decree, if Google identifies such behavior, there are major demerits given to a website’s PageRank.  Google does not directly provide their own PageRank check unless you use their Toolbar, but other websites such as this link do have online checks for free.

In addition, Google added “Google Panda” in 2011 to look for higher-quality and more relevant website.  This algorithm is significantly more sophisticated and was added to this year by “Google Penguin” which is an even more sophisticated algorithm program which takes into consideration a myriad of other factors.  Most notably, Penguin looks for duplication content, manipulation, and violations of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Previously, we have posted this updated “Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors” which Google uses to add or subtract from a webpage’s rank.

So why is this important? 

Well, if you go to the Periodic Table linked above, you’ll see that content encompasses five factors of the eleven “on the page ranking factors” that Google now uses to rank your webpage; about one-half.  But that completely ignores the eleven “off the page ranking factors” and eight harmful factors you want to avoid.  Content itself can certainly help your legal website’s ranking because it constitutes one-fourth of the positive ranking factors, but it cannot alone boost your rank to superior levels.

With so many other legal websites and competitor-attorneys, a lawyer or law firm’s legal content needs to distinguish themselves from their competitors both on and off the webpage ranking.  Here at NAB Legal Marketing,we understand SEO and PageRank factors, while also having the ability to draft substantial legal content for your website.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquires@nablegalmarketing.com.

Why to Hire a Legal Content Writer for your Law Firm Website

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Many people ask why hire a legal content writer to draft blog posts or articles for your firm’s website.  Many firms typically assign this task to their support staff, associates, or even have partners/members and of counsel on a rotating schedule.  This is a flawed approach for many reasons.

First, support staff may not have the knowledge of or ability to present the law effectively in a short blog post.  Second, all of this positions have many other tasks to complete in a busy law firm and drafting substantial, accurate, and useful blog posts are the least important task in the day; this is particularly true for partners/members and of counsel.

Third and final, all of these positions are being paid more per hour than most legal content writers.  More importantly, each of these positions are billing more per hour than it would cost to hire a legal content writer.  For example, if you are billing an associate’s time at $200 per hour and it takes the associate an hour to draft a blog post that day, you just lost $200!  Moreover, if that associate’s salary equate to about $50 an hour, you had to pay out that $50 to the associate while losing $200 for billing a client making your net loss $250!  Here at NAB Legal Marketing, it costs between $15 to $40 per post which is significantly less money than you will pay if you use your own staff!

In addition, hiring a legal content writer goes further than just knowledge, time, and cost.  Other issues take into account the complexity of attorney websites and search engines while staying abreast to market changes.  Here are five other reasons why to hire a legal content writer:

1 – Search Engine Optimization

Legal content writers such as NAB Legal Marketing understand how to effectively use keywords in such a way that search engines will pick up the content in posts and your website to increase your overall page ranking.  This is done when search engines send out “spiders” which search websites for content.

2 – Attention-getting

Generally, most people do not think of legal content has particularly interesting to read in their spare time.  But that should not be the case!  While the post of legal blogs and articles is to help prospective clients get answers and to entice them to retain you as their lawyer, these posts should also interest other individuals who are searching the web and come across your website.  At the very least, your legal content should have catchy titles or blurbs which entice readers to click on the link.  Legal content writers have more experience drafting articles in this manner because of the shear volume of law firms and posts they are servicing.

3 – Writing for the layperson as opposed to the Judge or Opposing Counsel

Sometimes lawyers and law firms forget that the vast majority of individuals seeking information on the web are, well, not lawyers!  Sure, some attorneys will be viewing your legal website for information to possibly refer clients to you, but that is certainly the minority of cases.  Legal content writers are able to separate themselves from drafting legal documents or arguments in their writing, and truly break down articles in ways that laypersons are able to comprehend.  Moreover, legal content writers such as NAB Legal Marketing understand how to break down legally complicated issues, cases, laws, or terms in ways that not on a layperson can understand, but also search engines.

4 – Understanding Newsworthiness vs. Over-reported stories

Nothing can hurt your website ranking more than the same stories, information, and posts as other websites.  With the thousands of legal websites on the internet, if all of them are posting about a certain event that is happening and you join them, you will never be able to differentiate yourself.  For example, the oral arguments for the affordable care act were certainly newsworthy, however, because nearly every legal website has reported on the events that day, it became impossible for any one source to separate themselves from others.  In fact, some search engines like Google may issue a demerit to your webpage because of repetitive and unoriginal material.  Here at NAB Legal Marketing, we understand these differences and know when to effectively tap into these sources to stay ahead of the curve before the story shifts from newsworthy to over-reported.

5 – Multiple Layers of Review with Editing Experience

When legal content is generated in house through support staff, associates, partners/members, or of counsel, generally no one will second guess and may not even read the blog post before publishing it.  This is a major mistake, particularly if the lawyer’s name is attached to it.  Legal blog posts are meant to impress clients.  Hastily-put or error-ridden articles will not help your cause.  And while it really does not always matter that a practitioner does not have Law Review or similar journal experience, the level of editing is significantly more advanced if that experience is present.  Here at NAB Legal Marketing, articles go through multiple levels of editing and review before being sent to your firm or posted to your firm’s website.  Further, the final reviewer of NAB has experience as an executive editor on a flagship Law Review in addition to multiple publications in state bar journals and other law reviews.  It is this experience that separate NAB Legal Marketing from other legal content writers.

 

All of these reasons should show you the importance of hiring a legal content writer and how NAB Legal Marketing is different than other legal content writers.  But if you have any questions or would like to receive a FREE sample post, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com!

10 Reasons Why Lawyers Should Market Their Services Online

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Recent studies show that search engine queries have surpassed Yellow Page and directories for local business searches.  In addition, less and less people cite paper advertising as their primary source of information; upwards of seventy-five percent refer to search engines seeking local services as their first resource.  Moreover, your best clients and your strongest competitors are all online which makes it imperative for you to also be.

If these are not good enough reasons, here are ten more reasons to market online:

1 – Costs

Per customer, your costs are rather low with online marketing as compared to other forms of advertising such as paper, TV, newsletters/mailings, or radio.  Whether you use a website provider to organize your attorney or law firm webpage/blog, or post online ads on websites or on the side of search engine results, you will undoubtedly save money while experiencing a greater return using this medium.

2 – Speed and Efficiency

It goes without saying that internet marketing is instant and fast.  The fact that you can reach a multitude of prospective clients in such a short period of time is incredibly efficient for a busy lawyer or law firm.

3 – Larger Geographical Reach

Particularly with TV and radio advertising, your outreach is quite restricted.  By using the internet to market your services, your outreach is really limitless.  For example, here at NAB Legal Marketing we have visitors from Australia and multiple countries in Africa (Zimbabwe, Chad), Europe (Sweden, UK, Germany), and South America (Belize, Brazil).  While it is true that search engines will generally seek local webpages first, very close keyword searches will still bring up your website in regional, national, and even international searches… if your webpage is properly optimized–see this past week’s posts!

4 – Making a Sale

While using the internet to make sales for legal services is certainly different then purchasing items online through sites such as Amazon, you can gather prospective client information online and use that to assess the strength of the case before taking it by merely reading the information.  This is efficient because it allows you to avoid an initial client meeting on weak or no claims and thus saving time for you and the client.  Moreover, your website/blog allows the client to try YOU on and see if your services are a good fit for them.

5 – Advertising Design and Effect

Using the internet to help market your legal services allows you to use an excellent and advanced medium to make impress customers.  You can only so much using paper, TV, and radio advertising; all of them lack an interactive element.  With the internet, you can incorporate videos, soundbytes, and of course text or pictures in your webpage or blog while also having the ability to include interactive elements to engage prospective clients.

6 – You’re Always Open; No Hours of Operation

Even though your law firm office closes–hopefully–your website almost never will.  This allows you to continue to advertise your services, answer questions about your services through you FAQ or blog, and to gather prospective client information at all hours of the day.

7 – Ease of Adjustments/Corrections

Once your advertisement goes out, if there are errors it is likely too late to correct them.  However, with internet marketing, you can go back and edit your webpage, advertisement, or blog if there are any mistakes.

8 – Limited Advertising Life Span in Paper, TV, or Radio Mediums

An obvious advantage of online marketing is that it will continue as long as you pay the bills!  Whereas with other sources, generally your advertisements will only run for a limited time span and then cease to be used.  Thus, it really does pay to put more effort into your online advertising because of the potentially limitless life of the material.

9 – Flexibility and Responsiveness to Market Demands

Marketing your services online as opposed to print sources allow you to be flexible and responsive to trends in the law and market demands.  For example, when there are certain product recalls that have caused personal injuries to many people, you are able to immediately create online advertising campaigns to seek out those clients.  Moreover, if an ethical opinion prohibits a certain kind of marketing or advertising, you are immediately able to make changes using the internet as opposed to dealing with the hassle of withdrawing other mediums.  Furthermore, you are able to provide as much information or as little information about your services and practice as you want without having to abridge or expand your advertisement to fit into a thirty-second time slot or a narrow column in the newspaper.

10 – Better Customer Service

Particularly with legal services, attorneys seek to empower the client with their representation.  Ethically, lawyersmust allow many major decisions–such as settlement decisions–to be made by the client.  By utilizing a website and blog, you are empowering the client to make smart decisions as to retaining you and providing them with general information about the law with your blog.  As noted in yesterday’s blog post, if you also use the “Live Chat” features many website providers offer, you will be giving a prospective client more personalized service which they will truly appreciate.

If there reasons were not enough, please feel free to contact us for more information why marketing online is important for your law practice.  Without a doubt, the stronger your website is and the better information that you provide to visitors will impress them and make them more likely to retain your services.

We offer a legal content writing service which is personalized to your firm.  If you are interested in learning more about our services, please contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

Online Legal Marketing: Beyond Just Having a Website

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Did you know that almost eighty-percent of consumers researching legal information use the internet?  Did you also know that online legal directories receive millions of visitors each year all looking to obtain representation?

While having a website is certainly a step in the right direction, to effectively tap into this online market a lawyer or law firm needs to do more.  They need to ensure their website expands their web presence so that their website is the one giving answers to those eighty-percent searching the internet while increasing exposure to the millions also searching online legal directories.

The best way to do this is to have a frequently updated blog attached to your attorney or law firm website.  Drafting posts on a variety of legal issues related to your services will expand your web presence by generating new sources of information prospective clients will search for.  When prospective clients do come across these sources of information to answer their question, they are also directed to your website.  If there are any follow-up or future questions, they will contact you for the answers.

You need to think of your legal blog posts as almost bait to attract prospective clients to your line.  The stronger, more substantial, and wider the array of topics, the more prospective clients you will attract to your blog and your website.  It is critical that your website has substantial and competent information on it!  According to one study, almost fifty-percent of prospective clients choose an attorney online whose website demonstrated “expertise in a particular legal field.”

In addition, because of the ailing economy, prospective clients are more likely to thoroughly investigate the best value for their legal services.  More and more prospective clients are reading throughallof the information on an attorney’s website–including their blog–before retaining them.  Providing free legal information on a blog adds value to the service a prospective client gets, but it also allows them to see the quality of work that a lawyer or law firm will do for them.

This is why your legal blog or website needs more attention than just a busy associate’s or paralegal’s quick write-up at the end of the day.  Hiring a legal content writer such as NAB Legal Marketing will ensure your blog has substantial, well-written, and informational posts added to your blog.

But the rules of a law firm apply to legal content writers too!  Shop around and look for legal content writers who regularly write their own blog posts.  Who have well-maintained websites, Facebook sites, and Twitter accounts.

If you are interested in retaining our services or have a question, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

Changes to Our Payment Options

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We are announcing that we have changed our payment options to include a monthly invoice plan.  We have also structured this plan to give our clients more control in the frequency and need of our legal content service.

This option will give our clients greater flexibility if they want a more individualized plan.  Clients can simply let us know a week in advance how many posts and what days they would like them for the upcoming week.  This will allow clients to vary the amount of posts each week as their needs or changes in the law occur.

We have not confirmed how the Finder’s Fee option will work for the monthly billing plan.  It is anticipated we will allow the Finder to choose to collect either a percentage of the amount of posts or $50 for the first month, for wait 3 or 6 months and collect a percentage of it then.  Look for an update in the days to follow.

We will continue to have our pre-paid monthly contract option.

If you have any questions, please contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com for more information.

 

 

Marketing Your Law Firm’s Practice Area, Not You the Attorney

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As an attorney, having a website dedicated to your law firm is a must today.  You are at a considerable disadvantage if you fail to tap into this excellent resource.  But once you have placed yourself on the internet, and have an attorney website, you need to be using it correctly.

This might go without saying, but you would be surprised to see how many attorneys have on their home (landing) page discussing their credentials; particularly small and solo practitioners.  Listing your law school, moot court achievements, positions on law review, and clerkships with judges are all great achievements.  But no prospective client is going to wonder what clinic you did 2L year, let alone know what a “2L” actually is.

That is because the prospective client is on your website because they have a legal problem and they are seeking a solution.  You’ve done the hardest part which is to get them to your website, but now you are failing to land their business by listing this extraneous information on your home page.

Your main page should have one, simple objective: hook the reader.  It should convince the prospective client they do not have to look any further–that you can help them with any of their problems.  Your website should do this by showing the client you can get them the answers they need to solve their problems.  This can be done by listing in bullets on your home page your practice areas, some recent cases, or by having a listing of your latest blog posts which would exhibit your firm’s competence in a particular area of law.

Additionally, your website’s home page–well, really all the pages–should be well organized.  The best why to organize your website is with headings–very catchy headings actually.  For instance, your blog posts should have titles that entice readers to click on them for an answer, even if they were not looking for that answer.  But there is, of course, a balance.  Your titles still should be informative in that your readers will know what the headings are about.  So catchy but informative; a difficult but possible task.

Furthermore, your home page should clearly show a visitor where the next step is.  If they are interested in retaining you, the link should be easy and obvious to find.  If more information about your services or practice areas are required, that too should be easily found.  Even better, individual links to practice areas really create efficiency.

Remember, there are thousands upon thousands of attorney websites on the internet.  If your website is not easily navigable for a client, they will just hit the “back” button and try another.  The bottom-line is that the first thing a visitor to your website should see–without much effort–is that you have or can find the answer.

However, this does not mean you should not list your law school, law review position, and other achievements on your website; it just should not be on your main page.  These achievements should be listed somewhere on your website, particularly also very easily accessible in an “About You” page.  Of course, most large, mid-size, and even small firms typically have descriptions about the staff.  But remember, marketing is not always one-size-fits-all.  A solo or small firm might not have this information on the website, but it should be there, separate from the main information.

But why?  For referrals!

While prospective clients will unlikely know many of your achievements, other attorneys who have been through the rigors of law school will.  This is important, because most referral agreements are not handled by the percentage of work completed, but based on joint responsibility for the case.  Therefore, when you are referring a case to another attorney you want to make sure they are competent to handle the case to prevent malpractice against YOU.  Thus, listing this information is still an important asset to market yourself for your other clients, other attorneys.

As mentioned, having a website is a major step forward in marketing your law practice.  However, using it ineffectively or incorrectly could–and likely will–actually HURT your business.  Make sure you are utilizing your website to its full potential.  Update your pages frequently, reorganize your main page, and frequently maintain your website–particularly your blog.  Remember, a well-established blog that is continuously updated will draw in prospective clients.  The greater the variety of your blog post topics, the wider the variety of problems it your blog will provide solutions to, which will bring in a larger number of clients to your website.  In return, you will increase the potential for new clients to contact you with the problems for a solution.

If you have questions on how to utilize your website or blog more efficiently, don’t hesitate to contact us.  Moreover, if you think it is time to take your website’s blog to the next level, please contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com for more information or to retain us.

Photo credit: Free images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Law Firm Marketing: Is There A Magic Bullet?

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Most other legal marketing experts will tell you “absolutely not–it is a combination of a lot of complex factors.”  And you know what, they’re generally right.  You cannot simply buy the side-advertising space of a larger bus to beat your competitors, nor can you add borders or colors to your Yellow Pages ad to make it stand out.   BUT there still is a common theme underlying many–if not all–of the legal marketing “theories” out there.

Persistence.

To be success at marketing you need to consistently keep at it through many avenues.  Paying large sums of money for the most attractive, functional attorney website out there will, frankly, do nothing for you in the long run if you are not 1) adding content to it regularly, 2) updating the pages regularly, 3) advertising it through more than just organic internet searches, and 4) updating your website’s frame work.  You need to continually work at attracting prospective clients through new means.

So instead of really one magic bullet, you need more like a magic gun–a golden gun of legal marketing. You’ll need to shoot out your image:

  • On the internet through search engine searches advertisements on the side
  • On your website; keep it updated!  The internet changes overnight–paying once for the be-all, end-all website will not continue to work for long.  SEO rules particularly become outdated at a pace which seems daily!
  • On your blog–it is absolutely one of the most important marketing and information tools out there today for attorneys who generally do not utilize its full potential.  Constantly updating and adding content is the only way to keep your website effective.
  • On social media like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.  These are free and easy opportunities for you to expand your readership and presence out there.  As some friends and family directly to re-share some of your posts, or just generally your Facebook page, to reach new individuals.
  • Through mass-mailing newsletters to send out to current or past clients to let them know you are still willing to assist them with any legal issues that may arise.  Newsletter could also include information CDs or DVDs for your clients who prefer to listen as oppose to read your newsletters; give them many different mediums.
  • Perhaps on the TV through advertisements we well.  Generally, I disfavor TV advertisements because people are trained to ignore what’s in between the shows.  However, if you neglected to advertise on the TV, you would certainly miss out on a certain demographic.
  • Through YOU.  That’s right–you’re face-to-face interactions with individuals.  You need to marketing yourself through these interactions, even if it is just letting others know who you are, what you do, and that you are always willing to help them .  A sharp business card does wonders here, particularly when you hand them two; one for them, and one for a friend.

These are just examples of SOME of the different ways to expand your presence.  Recognize the heavy emphasis on internet solutions; a must.  Simply failing to use the internet to your advantage will leave you miles behind your competitors.  Also notice that most of these solutions can be rather simple or basic, but you need to have a full and balanced lineup to win the game.  Only doing what is best or simplest for you, is still neglecting other facets you could be taking advantage fo that might be best or simplest (accessible) for your clients.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquires@NABLegalMarketing.com.

Law Firm Marketing: Why it’s Hard and Why Legal Blogs Work

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Let’s face it: People ignore advertising–there is just too much.  For instance, Consumer Reports estimated that Americans see 247 commercials in a day.  Marah Creative, a successful web development firm, estimated that number to be 287 directed advertisements a day.  A news agency swelled that number to 500 advertisements a day for the average American.  Yet another source estimated we see–in one form or another–up to 5,000 advertisements, marketing campaigns, or slogans a DAY!

This is particularly true of attorney advertising as well.  Most firms and attorneys pay hefty amounts of money to over-saturate the market with there names, slogans, and logo; the principle being name recognition.  Particularly against large firms, other attorneys cannot compete head-to-head with this advertising strategy; it just costs too much.

But we already acknowledged people ignore attorney advertising.  The fact of the matter is most people do not need attorneys, and the ones that do likely already have attorneys.  Thus, why would people focus on attorney advertising in those situations?  They won’t!

For instance, you do not pay attention to car dealership or real estate opportunities until you need either a car or house.  At that point, you will investigate–generally online–your options to make your best choice.  You’ll seek out information not just about the car or house, but also the individuals who are imposing the product on you.  The same is true for attorneys.

So how can you stand out to either individuals who do not have an attorney yet or those that have one?  A legal blog!

Like cars and homes, attorneys are expensive.  With the difficult economy, individuals want to make sure they are getting the best value for their money.  Despite seeing significant amounts of advertising, individuals will still go online to look up the attorney’s information.  Think about it–if you want to buy a car and you see hundreds of commercials for a dealership, do you call that dealership straight from the TV commercial?  Or do search online for “car dealerships in [city/town]“?

This is another boon to your practice!  A “TV law firm’s” website might only be a shell providing just contact information, YouTube videos of that commercial (again), and some over-broad statements about their practice or successes.  The client really does not get a feel for the quality of their work though.

However, your website is well-maintained and contains a legal blog.  This blog provides insight into your practice, how your firm operates, and provides free legal information to clients.  Free is always good–especially because some clients do not want money or “justice,” but they actually want answers.  Providing quality information on your website with the answers embedded in a blog will empower your clients to understand their situation better with the material provided.

Moreover, your blog extends your practice area and generates more internet “buzzwords” which can be hit-on by more internet searches.  The more buzzwords you have out there on the internet, the more opportunities that prospective clients have to connect with your legal blog on your law firm’s website.  It is this expansion of “web presence” that will get your more clients then forking over significant amounts of money for “name recognition.”

We provide quality articles or blog posts for your law firm’s website to be drawn in these new clients.  We believe it is essential for attorneys–young and experienced–to be on the internet in this day and age.  If you are interested in our services or have any questions, please contact us at inquiries@nablegalmarketing.com.