Internet Marketing for Lawyers – Advice That Counts

Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they must market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does – how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend — regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.

Prior to the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising choice for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a lot for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone’s guess — it’s hard for your colored, one page display ad to stand out when you have 20 other lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising philosophy that “bigger is always better” and “everything we sell is an opportunity,” so they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.

This line of thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for many decades, but the population now goes to the Internet for the information they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages may well get calls, but they’ll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as a cheap source of leads.

The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner similar to the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. “Bigger is always better,” so rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that makes financial sense and produces a decent ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as many top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at least they’ll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a quick way to get leads but quickly exit a month later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce nothing but expense.

While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising is the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to “pay for a lead” takes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for many lawyer related keywords, e.g., “personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defense lawyer,” can range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market, and when the typical lawyer’s conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.

Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend little time creating their pay per click ads and (2) the ads direct traffic to the lawyer’s website. Any Internet marketing professional who knows something about pay per click knows you never send pay per click traffic to a website. Instead you create special pages, i.e., “landing pages” for pay per click traffic to be directed to. The landing pages perform the job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer requires, which is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.

Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the particular attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed in them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that offer listings for free. The lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that “look” like they offer a lot — and a price to go with it — but for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend.

Many legal Internet directories and portals exist that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not automatically make them good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it’s not how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts who are searching for legal services. People have paid thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.

What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, whether the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer will get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is often hard to achieve.

Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising – the way that will ultimately get them the best long term results for the money they spend — is to focus on getting their website to rank high in organic search results. When all things are considered, people on the Internet who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to find their answers. They may look to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don’t find what they want they may turn to pay per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.

If a lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn’t require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call programs. Pay per phone call is like pay per click, but the lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will pay for a click in many cases. A smart lawyer may even want to consider getting involved with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to make involvement with these programs worth it.

Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works extremely well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.

One last thing that a lawyer should be aware of when it comes to the Internet and a website presence is that appearances really do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of all types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer’s website should be too.

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Should You Hire an Internet Marketing Expert?

Starting out in internet marketing is almost always overwhelming
to e-business newcomers, even if they are seasoned business
professionals or marketing experts. Internet marketing is truly
original and quite different from traditional marketing. The
complexity is compounded for those who do not have vast
experience operating or marketing a business. Whatever the
circumstances, many new internet entrepreneurs ponder the idea of
hiring an internet marketing expert to get their internet-based
business off the ground.

There are different types of internet marketing experts who
provide various levels of support and services. Hiring or
contracting to a full-service internet marketing expert can be
quite expensive, but using limited services of an internet
marketing expert can be both cost-effective and advantageous for
a new internet business. Another option to hiring an internet
marketing expert is to pursue training and educational
opportunities in internet marketing that will prepare you to
become an internet marketing expert yourself.

Some services offered internet marketing expert firms include:

1. Preparation of marketing plans

2. Internet marketing
consulting services

3. Management of specific internet marketing
campaigns

4. Full-service planning and management of the internet
marketing program

Having an internet marketing expert craft a marketing plan that
is specific to your business is a good way to gain an
introduction to internet marketing and to realize your internet
marketing potential. A marketing plan prepared by an internet
marketing expert should contain an analysis of your business and
your industry as well as identifying and evaluating your
competition and recommending a niche market for you to target.

The internet marketing expert should also outline internet
marketing strategies for you to use to reach your target market
and to drive targeted traffic to your website. Specifics of your
planned internet marketing campaign should be included in the
marketing plan along with milestones and an internet marketing
budget. Using an internet marketing expert in this capacity will
provide you with a clear internet marketing plan that will serve
as a guide for your internet marketing program.

Internet consulting services provided by an internet marketing
expert can be provided one-on-one, through classes or through
coaching. Generally, such consulting services accomplish the same
thing as a marketing plan prepared by an internet marketing
expert, but they are less formal and more intended to condition
you to prepare and administer your own marketing plan and
program. Working with an internet marketing expert on a
consulting basis is a great way to learn about internet marketing
and to prepare yourself to manage your own internet marketing
program.

Sometimes you may find it beneficial to hire or contract an
internet marketing expert to manage a specific area of your
internet marketing campaign that is time consuming. Search engine
optimization and pay-per-click management are examples of these
specific activities that may benefit from the use of an internet
marketing expert. Both require ongoing monitoring and adjustments
to be continually effective and cost-efficient. Linking campaigns
are also ongoing, time consuming tasks that you may want to
consider outsourcing to an internet marketing expert.

A full-service internet marketing expert generally provides a
wide-array of internet marketing services. Among them are the
marketing planning tasks of reviewing the industry, identifying
the competition, analyzing the market, pinpointing a target
market, developing a unique selling proposition, identifying
marketing methods, and planning the marketing budget. Once the
marketing plan is in place and approved by you, the full-service
internet marketing expert actually launches and manages your
internet marketing campaign.

Considering all of the levels of service that an internet
marketing expert can provide will help you to decide whether or
not to hire an internet marketing expert. The main advantages of
using the services of an internet marketing expert are access to
expertise and freeing up your time. The disadvantage, of course,
is the cost associated with the use of an internet marketing
expert. In making that crucial decision for your unique business,
a cost-benefit analysis can provide guidance to ensure that you
make the best decision for your business.

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Traffic Building – How to Create a Landslide of Visitors to Your Website

Traffic, everyone wants it and is trying really hard to get more people to their site. Traffic is what generates more traffic, and vitally for website owners, increases their revenue. When you are planning a web site, part of your thinking should include a strategy for building traffic and realistic time scales and budgets for doing it. Be prepared to wait several months for your traffic to build, unless, of course, you have the budget for some instant advertising.
Here are four essential key elements of traffic building:

Pay-per-click (PPC)

Link building

Search engine and directory submissions

Article marketing

Pay per Click Advertising

There are dozens of PPC advertising opportunities but until you understand how PPC bidding works and how to make a profit stick with Google Adwords. Pay per Click advertising like AdWords is worth spending money on. I would suggest reading up on AdWords books and articles on how to use this great advertising avenue to its fullest.

Link Building

Search engines such as Google see links from other sites as a vote of confidence in your site and will boost its position in their search engine results accordingly. Acquiring links from other sites is a slow process and requires a much organised approach. On the plus side, running a link building campaign means that you are not solely relying on search engines to bring you visitors. A link from an authoritative site lends you credibility, a link from a popular site sends you traffic and a link from a relevant site boosts your search results. Reciprocal linking is an effective, free way to get more visitors to your site.

Search engines

Getting your site listed with all of the major search engines and directories is essential for building traffic. Increasing search engine traffic organically can be an essential part of the promotional mix of for your website. When setting up a website, a vital task to carry out is to submit it to website directories.

Article Marketing

Article marketing has come a long way to become one of the core traffic building strategies for internet marketers and webmasters. Writing and submitting quality articles to article directories is an excellent way of promoting your site and sending it lots of targeted traffic. Article traffic is big, big, big: and here is why. When you write articles and submit them to the highest ranked article directories, for well targeted keywords, they can rush to the top of the search engine rankings.

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Why is Article Marketing Such a Powerful Traffic Building Strategy?

Of all the diverse traffic building strategies available to internet marketers, article marketing, is by far the most powerful method of increasing web site traffic, boosting sales, and maximizing profits.

If you have not yet implemented a powerful traffic building strategy for your website, you should definitely consider writing and publishing articles for the following reasons.

Writing useful, informative, high caliber articles about your market niche will identify you, to your readers, as an expert in your field.  

Being recognized as an “expert”  instills an aura of credibility, builds trust, and confidence with your potential customers.   Your prospects will feel more comfortable when buying from you, and an increase in sales from your online business will be the direct result.  

Cost effectiveness is also another reason why article marketing is such a powerful traffic building strategy.

It is not extraordinarily expensive to hire a ghost writer to create articles for you, if you don’t have the time available or ability to do so for yourself.  

It costs nothing to submit your articles to article directories for publication, and if time is a prohibition, there are tools that are now commonly available to automatically submit your articles to several directories at once.  

Multiple directory submissions dramatically increases the back links to your website, which in turn translates to increased traffic, and an increase in web site sales.  

Article marketing is an extremely important and powerful traffic building strategy, for increasing back links, that the search engines robots are constantly on the lookout for.

Including keywords when writing your articles, and submitting multiple articles to the article directories, is a very powerful traffic building strategy that makes your website more visible to the search engines.  Your web site will be quickly indexed by the search engines when using this strategy.

Published articles become viral in nature.  All your articles will contain an author’s bio or author’s resource box, where you can give a brief pitch about your business, and insert the URL for your web site.   The author’s resource box is always located at the end of your article and is usually limited to about 250 – 300 words.

Unlike other advertising strategies; when your articles are published by the directories, your website URL, which is contained in the author’s resource box, will become viral and will be disseminated throughout the internet universe to remain there indefinitely.

Your article will be archived in the various article directories, and will over time continue to funnel thousands of permanent back links to your website.  

That is the primary reason why your article should be well written, useful, well thought out, and keyword rich.  

It should now be evident to you why article marketing is such a powerful traffic building strategy in comparison to other traffic driving methods.

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