Does your legal website marketer have a conflict of interest?

In the world of advertising, most agencies do not represent competitive clients at the same
time. Obviously it would be difficult for a single ad agency to create and implement
advertising and marketing for both Coke and Pepsi without a conflict of interest. Lawyers, of
course, should be familiar with this concept as they are ethically bound to avoid any conflicts of interest when representing their own clients. So with that said, why in the world would thirty-five competing law firms in the same city all be represented by the same website/internet legal advertising marketer?

This has got to be one of the most mind boggling phenomena in advertising and marketing history. I am referring to legal internet marketers such as FindLaw, Einstein Law, Lexus Nexus and others. Upon a quick review of lawyers in Atlanta, Georgia, I found that at least thirty-five rival personal injury plaintiffs’ law firms have websites designed and hosted by FindLaw. FindLaw states that they’ll “make your law firm stand out from the crowd”. Join the crowd is more like it! All these law firms are seeking the same potential clients with nearly identically structured websites that utilize the same search engine optimization strategies! Plus they are paying thousands of dollars a month for ridiculously overpriced website design, hosting and internet marketing services. Law schools might want to add Marketing 101 to their curriculums!

This same scenario is being played out among competing law firms in every major city, not just Atlanta. Even law firms with websites created by other companies, are paying for a listing on FindLaw. Every time you refresh the page or return to an additional search for lawyers on FindLaw, the listings rotate like a roulette wheel - talk about a crap shoot! This isn’t like the yellow pages where you simply buy the ad space, or in this case a piece of cyberspace. These legal internet marketers claim they are continuously utilizing search engine strategies to make sure their law firm clients are getting the best rankings. Well just how in the heck do you avoid conflicts of interest when you represent thirty-five rival law firms?
Obviously, FindLaw and others have done an extraordinary job of hyping the necessity of online legal marketing and advertising. Granted, a presence on the web is important for all law firms. But there is a limit to the return on investment and there are far more efficient and cost effective ways to reach potential clients.

Here’s a quote from a recent FindLaw blog: “Much like the shipwreck survivor floating out there in the ocean waiting for the Coast Guard to find them a site sits and waits to be discovered by search engines.” This perfectly illustrates one of the major problems with internet marketing. Rather than putting your advertising in front of the masses with media such as television, your advertising, i.e., website, is sitting somewhere waiting for the masses to come find you.

Advertising on media such as television, cable, and radio, you can promote your web address and refer viewers/listeners directly to your site. This creates more direct referrals to your website thus reducing dependence on search engine rankings and advertising. In fact, web statistics for one of my television advertising law firms showed that 80% of visitors came directly to the website via bookmark or by typing in the URL. Of numerous “paid for” internet listings such as FindLaw, Yellowpages, and ExpertHub none produced more than 2% of visitors. Of course the real problem isn’t the number of visitors; it’s the exorbitant cost per response.

I have an Einstein Law, price sheet that list their basic website hosting rate to be $1,495 per month. If you want free monthly website corrections, email accounts and Stats, the rate is $2,995 per month! And this doesn’t include the website itself. For a custom web design you’ll need to pay and average cost of about $1000 per page or 20 pages for $16,000! You can add Flash for $4,000 and up! Wow! I design, host and maintain websites, and on average the costs and labor involved isn’t enough to command such hefty rates. I can create some super nice television commercials for that kind of money and my client could take the money they save on inflated hosting fees and buy airtime.

Lawyers spend billions of dollars a year on advertising and marketing. Unfortunately, that brings out all sorts of businesses and services who are looking for a slice of that pie. Some are doing great work for lawyers but many are relentless sales people who do not have the law firm’s best interests in mind. A lawyer who tries to deal directly with these people can be unknowingly led to part with far more money than the return on investment is worth. I have over twenty-five years of experience in legal marketing, advertising, branding, media placement and multi-media productions. Someone like me can sort through the hype, look at the big overall picture and then implement strategies that will utilize a law firm’s advertising and marketing dollars as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Why are so many lawyers still being taken for a ride down the yellow page road?

It’s astounding how yellow page sales people are still able to persuade so many lawyers to
waste so much money on advertising in a nearly extinct media format that sits unused in drawers, closets and back rooms. What’s even more unbelievable is how they are able to get lawyers, of all people, to sign a one year contract that cannot be canceled, modified or legally challenged. But such is the case. In every major U.S. market there are double and full page ads for numerous law firms under multiple categories. Some law firms are paying tens of thousands of dollars a month!

Spending more and more to “keep up with the Jones's” is the essence of guerilla marketing in the yellow pages. Lawyers are led to believe that they absolutely must have as big and as many ad pages as the competition. Every year this ridiculous scare tactics scenario gets played out over and over. Lawyers are told that if they do not spend as much as last year they will lose their all so important placement in the book. Now more than ever, your law firm needs to break this wasteful and ineffective habit and start advertising for the future.

One of the biggest problems with yellow page advertising is the lack of frequency. In the course of one year, how often are people going to open the book and see your law firm’s ad? The majority of the population probably won’t see that ad at all. By comparison, for that same amount of money you spend monthly for a full yellow page ad, your firm could be airing thousands of commercials a month on local television and cable. With that kind of frequency you’ll build name recognition and top of the mind awareness. Plus those airtime slots are exclusive, unlike the yellow pages where your ad appears somewhere between dozens of others. With television, you bring your ad to the masses, but with yellow pages, your ad sits somewhere waiting for the masses to come find you.

I’ve always viewed the yellow pages as a secondary advertising source. By the time a potential client picks up the yellow pages to find/call a lawyer, they should already be aware of your law firm. Can you imagine a layperson attempting to decide on a lawyer by simply looking at all those yellow page ads? They might as well open the book and select a page blindfolded! But what about that survey that found that consumers consider the yellow pages the most acceptable form of lawyer advertising and that half of those surveyed would select a lawyer based on a yellow page ad alone? Sorry, but I don’t buy it. Those types of surveys are commissioned by the yellow page companies and questions are designed to produce biased results. The fact is that most people are not going to select a lawyer from a yellow page ad like they would a plumber for an emergency leak or clogged drain.

I also don’t buy the number of monthly references or impressions claimed by those yellow page sales people. According to yellow page guidelines, an impression is defined as a reference to a directory within the last 30 days. The references include both personal and business use. In the case of a personal injury law firm, that means the impressions include not just potential clients but also all other types of business matters. So, many of those calls that your law firm receives every month that are not from potential new clients are included in those yellow page usage estimates. Based on national usage levels, of the yellow page users who made contact with an attorney, 30 percent made “a purchase”. Well, in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, the numbers breakdown like this. There are approximately 1700 lawyers listed A to Z in the Columbus area yellow pages. According to that 30 percent figure, 34,232 new clients a month sign up with yellow page advertising attorneys. So there you have it. Welcome to the Land of Oz where each and every one of those 1700 lawyers signs up 20 new clients per month!

Are you marketing your personal injury law firm as a memorable brand?

Okay, you’re spending big bucks with big full size ads in the yellow pages, a FindLaw, Einstein or Lexus web site, television commercials and maybe some radio, billboards, etc. But are you creating name recognition that generates top of the mind awareness within your market? Do people recognize you or your name when you are out in public? If not, then odds are that your advertising is not promoting your law firm as a memorable brand.

The fact is that your services are basically the same as those offered by all the other advertising law firms in your market. So how do you make your firm stand out from the crowd? By using your most valuable assets: you, your partners, your reputation and your good name. Your advertising should consistently and prominently feature your firm’s name, logo and a likeness of you or your firm’s chosen spokesperson. Use your advertising to introduce yourself to potential clients, let them know a little about who and what you are.

Too many lawyers promote what they do instead of who they are. For example, I’ve viewed hundreds of attorney yellow page ads in most major markets and all too often these ads are dominated by large words such as “injured?”, “accident”, “we care”, “we’ll fight”, “we’re tough”, etc. Large pictures of accidents, doctors, emergency vehicles/personnel, victims in wheelchairs, courthouses, scales of justice and many other illustrations may also be prominent. Then way down on the page, past the mumbo jumbo, in a relatively small presentation is the name of the law firm and contact information. This is not effective branding and marketing.

Many attorney television commercials, especially generic ones, are similarly ineffective. For twenty-five seconds we may see various scenarios involving victims or grieving loved ones. Then a five second tag shows the law firm’s name and phone number. The law firm’s name is only mentioned once in that valuable 30 seconds worth of television advertising real estate. Now this type of ad may not be all that bad if it is part of a campaign mix that also includes other more personalized/customized commercials. But if these are the only type of TV spots you are airing, you’re not getting a very good bang for your buck.

Likewise, you might want to think before you leap at those “vanity” phone numbers and domain names. Relying on phone numbers such as 1-800-INJURED or 1-800-HURT911, to sell your services is not an effective means of branding. Neither are domain names such as victimlawyer.com or floridalawfirm.com. Memorable phone numbers and/or domain names may assist in your marketing efforts but they should not be the main focus of your advertising. A marketing plan that consistently promotes your unique good name and services as an established, trusted brand is far more likely to motivate and influence potential clients.