How Do You Create Long-Term Business For Your Attorney Clients?

Interviewer: How do you utilize other strategies such as SEO and buying leads?

Richard: Now we’re talking about short-term versus long-term. Some attorneys are doing okay. They’re not dying right at the moment. They don’t need short-term objectives. If they want a short-term injection, or need business right away, then they can buy leads from lead providers.

I have dealt with Lead Rival, Legal Brand Marketing, Expert Hub, Go Low and Legal Match. These places will sell you pay-per-leads. It can go anywhere from $30 to $80, per lead. A lead will come to you in email; and it has the person’s name, phone number and a brief description. You want to jump on these and call them back as fast as you can. You try to convert the person.

It sounds great, but a lot of these leads are garbage. There are some good ones. The average attorney I see closes about one in 10. If you’re spending $40 a lead, one in 10 means it costs you $400 to get a client. That may or may not be very profitable for you. That is one quick shot in the arm injection of business.

Interviewer: What exactly are companies doing when they buy leads?

Richard: They have websites where they do pay-per-click and generate leads. They are out there and they generate leads for personal injury, bankruptcy, DUI, divorce and all that. They sell the leads on a pay-per-lead basis, or a monthly basis to an attorney in each city. It’s like you have a national website.

For example, I ran FindDUIattorneys.org and we did it nationally. I have some in Tampa, Florida, where I may get 900 leads a month. I ask, “Joe, do you want to buy these leads? They’re $80 a lead.” I send Joe my leads for Tampa. Then in the Los Angeles I have Mike, and he buys my leads there. That’s what these companies do. They build up a network of people that buy their leads.

People search online. An example is my DUI attorney network, myduiattorney.org. People come there after being arrested for DUI or DWI. We help you find an attorney. Put your information in, and we show you who is on the website. We act as an advertiser, essentially.

You send people to an attorney or you show people five attorneys in that area. They pick one and call them. Then that becomes a lead. They call or email you or the attorney, and that information will get to the attorney. The attorney will get the alert on their phone or email saying, “Joe Shmoe’s number is 555-5555. I got arrested for DUI two nights ago.” Give him a call.

Interviewer: You say no one marketing strategy works. How many different marketing tools does an attorney need? Does it depend on the individual client?

Richard: Yes, it does. There are two more major areas: SEO and pay-per-click. When you Google something, there are two things on the page. On the top right, there is a faint pink color and those are paid ads. It’s called pay-per-click. You can pay whenever you want so whenever someone clicks on an ad, it goes to your website. They may or may not call or email you, but you pay whenever someone does that.

That’s one way to get, again, an immediate injection of leads. It is very expensive and very difficult to do right. There is a lot of competition. The other stuff with a white background is free. It is called an organic search.

When someone searches “divorce lawyer Kansas City Missouri,” Google has to say who is going to show up first, second, third and fourth. Who is going to be on that first page, and who is going to be on page 10,000?

All these sites are competing. Google sifts through them. Google determines which site has the most authority and which one is the most relevant to what this person is searching. Your goal with SEO is to make someone’s website appear on page one for as many different things people can google them for. They are called search terms. That is a long-term plan.

It is similar to working out for your health and building muscle. At first, you’re a wimp and have no muscles. However, after six months of working out you become strong. If you stop, it doesn’t go away immediately. It stays with you. You are stronger.

You have this healthy base of people coming to your site, becoming leads for you and calling you. That’s another big area that attorneys can succeed in to get leads. But that’s long-term plan; six months, a year. Now you have an asset to your website, and it will work for you for a long time.