Tag: leads

How to Build a Lead Generation Machine Online with Content Marketing (Part 2 of 2)

If you struggle with creating quality content for your website or blog, I’ve pulled together 8 best practices for content marketing to guide you.  If you missed the first four in the series of eight, see yesterday’s blog post here.

These are the second 4 of 8 best practices in content marketing:

Best Practice 5: Use video to give visitors a sense of who you are. Video is one of the best ways to improve your website conversion rates. I highly recommend you record several videos for your website: an overview of each major practice area your firm offers, a few case studies of typical clients you want to attract, a video introduction for each attorney, and reasons why people should hire you versus a competitor. You can also add videos from seminars or presentations you make to add more content to your site.

Best Practice 6: Take a position on a topic and frequently update your blog. When you begin a blog, you need to make sure that it is a topic you feel passionate about. Make sure that you will still be energized to write about the topic in six months or a year. You also need to make sure that there is an audience for your blog.

In order to keep your website and blog at the forefront of Google’s mind, you will need to post regularly. The most successful lead generation blogs post every day. If you aren’t willing to post new content at least a few times per week then you should seriously consider hiring someone to do the writing for you. In a survey of over 7,000 small businesses, Hubspot.com found companies that blog 15 or more times per month generate five times as much traffic as companies that don’t blog!

Best Practice 7: Add social media to your website to make it easier for people to share your content online. Most major websites people visit have fully integrated social media-whether its Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter you want to make it easy for people to share your content with their friends and colleagues.

Best Practice 8: Keep your content consistent with your brand. If you’re an estate planning attorney, write about estate planning and rarely about anything else. Professional blogs need to remain professional. The tone, content and focus should demonstrate the type of attorney you are. If your office is more relaxed and friendly, then try to convey that in the tone of your blogs. If your firm is more traditional, that too should be apparent in the tone of your piece.

Your content also needs to stay relevant. If there is a major change in what area of law you practice in, then you should be discussing it right away on your blog. If there is a big ruling in your practice area that is causing a lot of questions or anxiety for clients and prospects and you are the last person to mention in on their website or blog, then chances are the readers will have moved on to someone who is more on top of things.

Conclusion. Content marketing is one of the best ways to build targeted traffic to your website and become recognized as a thought leader. However, it is a long-term strategy so set your expectations appropriately. Depending on the level of competition in your practice area, how well-established your website/blog is, which key terms you are targeting, and how frequently you update your blog it may take several months to start seeing some significant results.

Content Marketing

ARTICLE BY
Stephen Fairley

OF
The Rainmaker Institute

How to Build a Lead Generation Machine Online with Content Marketing (Part 1 of 2)

The Rainmaker Institute

If you are looking to drive more high quality traffic to your law firm’s website, one of the best ways to do so is via unique, high quality content on your blog.

lead generationIt is estimated that 95% of law firms already have a website, but too few attorneys are consistently generating quality leads from their online presence because they lack great content.

Google has made it increasingly difficult to rank high without putting a lot of quality content on your website.  If you want to continue ranking well on Google, which drives more qualified traffic to your website so you can generate more online leads, you must put more and more content on your website.

Here are the first 4 of 8 best practices in content marketing:

Best Practice 1: Create content prospects will connect with and will want to read. If your website is the first to pop up in a Google search, but a potential client reads your home page and finds it littered with meaningless legal jargon, then chances are they are going to move on to website number two. People hire attorneys they feel a connection with. If the viewer doesn’t connect with your website, then chances are they aren’t going to call you.

By creating content that viewers find informative and relevant, easy to digest and in multiple formats (like audio or video as well as written) you are encouraging them to spend more time on your site. By filling each page with informative and easy-to-understand language, an attorney is boosting their visibility on the web and converting browsers into believers.

Best Practice 2: Know the critical keywords prospects use to search. While Google is making sure the context fits the keywords, websites still need to focus on certain keywords. Start by making a list of at least 20-30 terms you believe an interested prospect might use to search for your kind of services. Then do your research.

I recommend two sites: Google Keyword Tool and WordTracker.com. You can find the first one simply by searching on Google for it. The terms definitely emphasize Google’s pay-per-click model, which is why I strongly recommend double checking your findings against the results from WordTracker.com. Use only one or two key terms per blog post and do not post duplicate content.

Best Practice 3: Make sure your blog is on the same domain/subdomain. I used to recommend having two different sites: your primary website and a separate blog site. Due to the recent changes in Google I now recommend keeping your blog on your website (use ABClaw.com/blog instead of blog.ABClaw.com). If you already have two separate sites don’t combine them unless they are less than six months old.

By integrating your blog and your website in one place, you can increase your rankings by adding more content via your blog. Topics for your blog can include recent cases you have handled, commenting on current events or stories in the media, answering frequently asked questions, and discuss aspects of the law.

Best Practice 4: Create geo-targeted pages. You need to write several pages for each city you want to target. For example, if you are a business litigation attorney in the East Valley of Phoenix, you want to have several pages of content focusing on each of the following cities: Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler, Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, etc.

Do not make the mistake of only targeting Phoenix because every single other attorney is doing that. Put as many pages of content up there for the secondary cities. Even though you will not receive nearly as many hits for those cities the competition to rank on the first page of Google will be significantly less.

Come back here tomorrow where I will share the last 4 of 8 best practices for content marketing.

ARTICLE BY

Stephen Fairley
OF
The Rainmaker Institute

Chasing Leads – You’re doing it all wrong.

1.  Don’t be cheap on lead acquisition.

I’m constantly amazed at how cheap many lawyers want to be on getting someone to identify themselves as in need of legal services and then closing the deal. Folks, we are in a high transaction business! Your emailed newsletter (alone) will never cut it. We must be arranging our businesses to outspend our competition on the generation of a new lead. It won’t happen overnight, but this has to be your mindset.

My view is that in order to do this, you must be very efficient in your marketing. Being “efficient” does not mean being cheap. It means being “smart.” When you sit down to create an ad, ask yourself: What exactly are we trying to accomplish? Before that ad is let loose, there are usually about 7–12 different steps/other pieces that must be created in order to make the ad work. This will usually involve at least one (and sometimes two) videos, with well-thought-out scripts, one or more physical marketing pieces that must be designed, and a funnel with follow up specific and appropriate to that ad created. Going through this process is the only way to achieve the goal of “spending more than your competition is willing to spend to acquire a good lead for your office.”

2.  You need real clarity and comfort with whatever it is you are selling.

You can’t really have any “moral ambiguity” about the fact that you are a lawyer and you are selling.  Everything I do is marketing and selling. Every conversation with a client, every conversation with a judge or opposing counsel is a marketing opportunity. (Tip: after every trial, I send my opposing counsel one of my books, congratulating them on a job well done for their client. Not necessarily a marketing book—sometimes it’s a business book, sometimes it’s “The Ultimate Success Secret.”) If you follow most of the lawyer listserves that don’t have anything to do with marketing, you will see a trend “against” the marketers. It’s just so easy to jump on that bandwagon. I see it all the time, lawyers who don’t have a clue about the quality of another lawyer’s legal work slamming them in a listserve because of the ads they run.

Here’s what to think about if they are the least bit squeamish about marketing and selling: I have two questions for you.

  • Is there a potential new client out there for whom you would be the perfect lawyer?
  • Someone with a problem that you would, in fact, be the best lawyer for and with whom you can make money? (If you can’t answer Yes to that question, then you really need to be looking for another line of work.)
  • Assuming that the answer to the above is yes, why in the world would you leave it up to that person to choose the lawyer to solve his problem by random chance?
  • It’s your moral obligation to get yourself in front of that client, just as it is your moral obligation to reject and send elsewhere that client you have no business representing.
Article By:

Ben Glass
Of: 
Great Legal Marketing, Inc.