The TOP Return for YOUR Law Firm’s Advertising Dollars!

By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2007 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved.

This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.

If you are reading this and think that the Internet is just a passing fad, stop reading now…this article is not meant to change your mind but to show the great potential for moving your practice to the ‘next level’ through sensible use of the Internet.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) assertively states in a recent article that:

• The Net is the Fastest Growing Medium in History

• Internet Demographics are a Marketer's Dream

As Jeffrey Graham says "Good online advertising incorporates into the user experience and offers relevant, gripping information just as any other form of advertising does."

As per a PriceWaterhouse Coopers Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the 3rd quarter of 1999, "Internet/online advertising revenues surpassed the $1.0 billion quarter for the first time, totaling $1.2 billion for the third quarter of 1999" and this was a "148 percent growth over the 1998 third-quarter total of $491 million."

The Industry Standard magazine displays projections for online advertising to reach a stunning $30.8 billion dollars by 2005 - up from $7 billion in 2000.

All of our clients have their own firm websites. Because the Internet and search engines, the gate keepers to the Internet, are not listed alphabetically, they have become part of our many city-specific legal directories. Thus they are able to take advantage of the potential search engine page one placement for a city specific legal phrase that precisely relates to their practice areas.

Yes, the explanation is page one placement of specific targeted legal phrases that a potential client would enter into a search engine to find your firm. Broad phrases and single words are a waste of time in this regard. It’s not the general traffic you want but the targeted visitor that turns out real returns. That being said, our experience in the legal Internet field shows that it takes quite a few targeted visitors to equal one paying client!

Now look at the ROI for the Internet vs. the phone book. The competition for phone book ads is fierce. Unless you are prepared to spend thousands per month on a multi-page color ad, your chances of getting noticed, and called, greatly diminish. Our clients tell us, due to the huge costs involved, the ROI is in almost all cases substantially less than what is being achieved through the Internet.

We have one very successful client attorney who has now dropped not only phone book advertising, but all print advertising, in favor of the Internet! We have also had a couple of clients, whom after a year in our directories were not sure if they were effective for generating new business. Both of these clients were back with us after just a few months when they became aware of the decrease in inquires and real clients. In truth, one of these clients even raised their firm’s ad with us by 300%!

I’m not saying make a radical move, though I would love it, but to think about ROI and the low price it would cost to have your city specific legal phrase on page one of Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL, etc.

Our flagship San Diego legal directory www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com had 4,970 unique visitors in March ’04! Instead of taking a search phrase from this directory, let’s look at a much smaller directory for Los Angeles Orange County lawyers.

Look at the very competitive legal phrase: Los Angeles civil litigation lawyers

The five major search engines below, all show that our directory attained a page one, position one result as of 4-4-04. AltaVista, AOL Web Sites, Google, MSN, Netscape.

To get the real potential from the Internet, your website must achieve page one placement for your specific practice area key word phrases. With directories like Google returning a mere ten sites per page, to say that any one firm could achieve more than one page-one placement, would be highly implausible. This is where search engine optimized legal directories can provide the lynch-pin to maximizing your firm’s Internet potential.

Copyright 2007 Promotions Unlimited - search engine optimization - All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Schwartz is the founder of Promotions Unlimited, an Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst. You can contact Bob via e-mail at seo711@gmail.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at: http://www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com/special.htm