The Truth About Lawyer Internet Marketing

Option 1: Your Yellow Pages Representative

Here are the positives of using this source:

If you are dealing with the major Yellow Pages Company in your region they may have a good program for advertising on their Internet Yellow Pages. The official “Phone Company” Yellow Pages usually has excellent usage, and provides a good return on investment. Verizon/Superpages typically has decent usage outside of their region because of their wireless brand that is known everywhere. Yellow Pages.com also has fairly good usage nationwide.

Dex Media usually provides good results in their region, but the jury is still out on new markets they are trying to enter like Las Vegas. They have a good television ad campaign, but it’s hard to beat the “verb”: Google.

You may have a good relationship with your rep if you have had the same rep for years. You probably trust them and they probably want to do what’s best for your business.

Risks of dealing with your Yellow Pages Representative as your Internet marketing consultant:

Here is what to watch out for:

Yellow Pages reps are under a lot of pressure to sell you as much advertising as they can-whether or not it is good for your business. This may result in them overselling their Internet Yellow Pages, and they will do everything they can to keep your print advertising. Back when I was working with Dex Media we were $1.6 Billion a year print media company, and even though we more than doubled the Internet revenue for the company-the end result was still under $70 Million in yearly revenue.

RH Donnelly/Dex and other major yellow pages companies are holding on tight to a sinking ship. You can still get a good quantity of calls from the yellow pages with the big ads and the outside cover products, but trusting them with your Internet money is risky. One of the major reasons is that the yellow pages companies do not specialize in attorney Internet marketing. In my previous post I elaborated on how that can be a problem.

Yellow Pages advertising does have merit, and many businesses profit from Yellow Pages advertising, but usage is declining and the return on investment is not as good as it used to be-certainly not as good as a quality Internet Marketing Strategy.

While the rep may have your best interests in mind, the experienced Yellow Pages rep rarely understands what the best Search Engine Marketing solution is for law firms. If they did, they probably would not try to sell you all of the Search Engine Marketing products their company offers. Utilize them for their online Yellow Pages, but you are probably better off utilizing an Internet Marketing Consultant to help you succeed with the search engines like Google, Yahoo! & MSN.

Be careful of any Search Engine Marketing program they try to sell you. The Yellow Pages companies are usually not completely “transparent” with where your clicks are coming from, and they may charge you as much as a 2,000% mark up (yes-TWO THOUSAND) on your Pay-Per-Click program to manage it for you. This can eliminate the potential return on investment that a program like this SHOULD be providing your business.

Their websites are usually packaged with marketing programs that are often over-priced. While often times a package deal sounds good, in this case it may be more costly than if you were to buy them separately or invest in a more law firm tailored program.

Next week I will be posting the Google rankings for the major online yellow pages in Seattle and Las Vegas for the top online lawyer searches.

Option 2: A Marketing Firm
Marketing firms can provide some great strategy development and big picture programs. I have yet to find one that truly understand the ins and outs of Internet marketing, and figured out how to implement a strategic Internet marketing program. If you find one, please let me know.

In many cases they are your outsourced “Creative Marketing Project Managers.”

This is very important, because when your whole marketing program is designed to work together it can be much more affective than the sum of the parts.

The downsides to utilizing this kind of service is that they will probably outsource anything to do with the Internet, and you will be relying on their discretion when it comes to picking a web designer or an Internet marketing firm.

They are often provided with referral commissions from the advertising they sell, and may be biased towards using media providers that pay higher commissions. I have seen some Marketing firms cut out their clients profitable advertising programs because they could not get paid commissions from that media provider.

Option 3: A Website Developer

MOST good web designers and web developers build great websites. Few of them are SEO experts and fewer still are Pay-Per-Click marketing experts. If they try to steer you away from Search Engine Marketing, you probably should steer away from them, or hiring an Internet Marketing company to work with them.

Lately I have seen a lot of well-designed sites on the front end, but on the back end they are still using pre-2005 search engine optimization strategies.

Option 4: An SEO Firm

There are some superb SEO firms out there-and there are also some scam artists. In a previous post I discussed what to watch out for when it comes to SEO firms. If you need help before then, please feel free to call me and I will help you avoid getting ripped off. You call me at 702-966-9414, 206-501-4569 or 720-985-7945.

Option 5: An Internet Marketing Firm

A high quality and trustworthy Internet Marketing firm will help you build a website that meets your specific needs and budget, and recommend a marketing plan that will help you grow your business. They will show you how to get the most for your marketing dollar utilizing the Internet, and also help you integrate it with your other marketing efforts. They will also help you avoid Internet scams.

It is hard to find a firm that has been around and is going to be around in 2+ years.

If you are going to trust anyone with your money-more specifically the potential success of your business, you need to check their references.

Most people I work with simply trust me, but I often think they are lucky that I am actually a trustworthy Internet Marketing consultant. So many people are so confused or naive about the Internet they want and need to trust someone, and often times it’s simply the first convincing person that comes along.

An Internet Marketing Firm That Focuses on Lawyers’ Needs

LexisNexis/Martindale Hubbell has the most comprehensive Internet marketing solution for attorneys that I am aware of nationwide. They are experienced, they are honest, and they have been at it a long time-long enough to learn what works and what does not. They Lawyers.com, Attorneys.com, they offer SEO services, Press Releases, Pay Per Call, Pay Per Click, semi-custom web sites and fully custom web sites. They even have a classy television advertising program that is affordable for smaller law firms.

Thomson Westlaw
I have discussed in previous posts how they fall short in meeting Lawyers’s needs, but they do know the industry. Attorneys tell me it is difficult to get them to live up to their SEO promises, because they tend to over promise more often than not.

Tags: attorney marketing, las vegas internet marketing, lawyer marketing, search engine optimization, seattle internet marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under search engine optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.