Marketing a Plaintiff's Firm: The Pros and Cons of Top Personal Injury Law Firm Marketing Tactics

So, you recently won a major verdict, or settlement and are ready to take your plaintiff's personal injury firm to the next level. How do you put your limited law firm marketing budget to good use? Do you pay for a billboard on a local highway, buy television advertising, go on the Internet, target a niche community? There are many directions you can go in and while I usually pitch the Internet because of its growing influence, high return on investment and accessibility, today I will objectively address the pros and cons of a number of the more popular law firm marketing tactics.

Network Referrals

Pros: Minimal cost - very high return on investment, relationships can be perpetual and provide a steady stream of business, can open new business opportunities, additional revenue source on referrals,
Cons: Can take considerable time and effort to build network, not all lawyers have the skillset to network effectively, fee sharing with another plaintiff's firm can reduce profit margins, ensuring accountability on cases you refer, may not always be a reliable source - circumstances change

Television

Pros: Can lead to high volumes of incoming cases, Low cost per qualified lead relative to other forms of traditional marketing, immediate results, measurable and controllable
Cons: Expenses of producing ads, expertise required to stand out and maximize response, may be less effective at lower frequencies, national firms can buy ads cheaper than local ones

Media Coverage

Pros: Exposure to huge numbers of consumers, Having a tv or radio legal program can help your firm dominate a market, can have sustained positive impact on firm's brand, You are always one case away from potential stardom
Cons: Hard for PR firms to deliver without truly newsworthy material, need to be very lucky, or very connected for homerun-type publicity, easy to get caught up in distracting and self-serving efforts that do not generate results

Yellow Pages

Pros: Once a powerful lead generation tool: measurable, consistent and predictable
Cons: Internet has greatly diminished its effectiveness, too many brands caused saturation, hard to compete with big spenders

Internet Search Engine Optimization

Pros: Can yield high return on investment, provides flexibility for focusing on niche, there is room for small budgets despite big spenders, investment can have positive long term lead benefits, measurable, highly qualified leads, consumers prefer organic search results
Cons: Requires several months of ramp-up time, vendor choice is absolutely critical in keeping cost per lead low, changes in algorithms require regular program to stay on top, if keywords are not in the top 5 results in Google, you do not exist, more challenging to use to target new torts, best results require considerable content production (like this blog)

Pay Per Click

Pros: Immediate results, easily measurable, works with any budget, great for immediate response to toxic torts and product defects, small budget programs can be "do-it-yourself", no clickthrough - no pay, allows for very strategic niche marketing that other firms may not be aware of
Cons: High value keywords get bid up and return on investment goes down, can lose money until expertise is developed, pay for every lead, consumers prefer organic listings to pay per click ads.

There are many marketing options, but whatever you choose make sure to always monitor and measure impact to maximize the efficiency of your marketing program.

Are You Paying to Market Your Law Firm or Their Marketing Firm?

I get it, there's comfort in face to face relationships. You just finished your educational session at a major legal conference and proceed to walk into the exhibit hall, where you greet an array of Lawyer Internet Marketing vendors pitching you on the latest and greatest products and services.

Most lawyers, who have been buying products and services in the same way for years, will select one of the 3-4 Internet marketing vendors within these halls to handle their online marketing. Why? For the same reason you are willing to pay double at the supermarket, for a product with the exact same ingredients, but different labels. It is the power of branding.

By experiencing their brand in person, you gain a sense of added comfort. If they are at this event, they must really be experts in their trade. They are tangible and real, there is comfort in the fact that you have shaken hands with them and thus they have created the perception of added trust, credibility and work product quality.

I believe in branding, but I also believe that brand power is dying. We see this today in supermarkets, through the increased dominance of store brand products and there is no reason to think that this trend away from big brands will diminish.

The reason for this is that the Internet is educating consumers at an extraordinary rate. People are sharing information like never before and there is an increased surge in demand for true value over hyperbole.

I always go back to referencing Honda. They do not have the best marketing in the industry, but they have the best product. They succeeded in communicating this value to their clients and the rest is history... that is until Hyundai came along and started giving them a real run for their money on value...

Back to the big attorney tradeshows. There is a price to pay for shaking hands with those marketers. That price is exhibit fees, travel costs, sales and marketing staff overhead, sponsorship fees and additional high operational expenses - all of which have to be passed on to YOU.

You will not get to shake my hand at conferences because the way law firms are buying is changing and we are on the cutting edge of this trend. All of our promotion today is done via the Internet and direct e-mail. We leverage a stellar offshore delivery team that is extremely talented and can deliver results that are equal to or better than anyone else you will find in the business today. Simply put, there is no more efficient model than ours available today.

You may not have the that same warm and cushy feeling until we handle an Internet marketing project for your firm. We fully expect to see a backlash from every marketing company out there that is comfortably used to charging you 2 to 3 times more than you should be paying and everyone else that is profiting from this.

Mom and Pop stores all over the country kicked and threw mud when Wal-Mart came in and changed the face of retail in America. You know who didn't hate it? The customer, who received superior value. Similarly, established online marketing companies ("the overchargers" and their supporters and partners will likely throw mud at us. Like Wal-Mart, our #1 focus is delivering maximum value to our clients and at the end of the day, results come down to basic finance that we can measure and no detractor can deny.

YOU SPEND LESS WITH US FOR MORE LEADS - PERIOD.

Our vision is to change the online legal marketing landscape in the same way that Wal-Mart changed retail. We promise that once you see how your fees compare to your results, you will never want to work with another Internet marketing vendor. Visit LitigatorEdge today.

If Search is King, then Content is its Queen

Any law firm that targets a consumer client base and wants to be a major online player over the next 10 years should read this post very carefully:

By now, you probably don't need anyone explaining the value of being at the top of search engine results pages for keywords relevant to your area of practice. If you're only focused on traditional media and rely on referrals, know that there are firms in your geographical area generating tens of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements using the Internet and they are not spending millions to drive this business through their Web sites.

Now, unless you do something about it, these firms will likely continue to generate this traffic and the more they learn about Internet marketing and the more consumers use the Internet to find law firms, the larger the competitive gap will get between the top online marketers and everyone else and the harder it will be to catch up.

Why is the gap getting larger?

OK, here's the scoop. Google loves content and also loves links to your site from relevant Web sites with content. What is one of the best ways that is completely within your control, to generate quality links back to your site? Writing and submitting online articles that are relevant to your area of expertise and having them linking back to your Web site.

That's right... Quality Content -> Quality Back Links -> High Rankings

While Google can change the rules whenever it pleases, this is the general law of the land in SEO and while it may be tweaked here and there, no one expects it to deviate radically.

So, it will be very difficult to dislodge firms with significant content and links from their positions of search engine dominance. The good news is that the online content world for law firms is still in its relative infancy and only a few firms have really grasped its long term value.

If you want your firm to climb to the top for your favorite keywords and stay there, contact me today and I will explain how we can help. Just make sure that you don't come to see me after they have stopped publishing the Yellow Pages, OK?