After my first 10 weeks of running my new company (Marketing Lawyers), some industry thoughts I’ve had over the past few years have been confirmed. Many of my new clients have come to us because they are either confused on what they should be doing or on what they are receiving from their external search engine optimisation (SEO) agencies. Most would like to speak to someone who has worked inside a law firm, achieved proven results and specialises in the legal sector.
What I am finding is that back in the day when SEO was the shiny new thing to do, many law firms promptly stuck their toe in the water with big or local agencies who then worked on backlinks and technical SEO. Then perhaps their account was handled by more junior staff without the higher level of strategic support needed which is relevant to the legal industry (obviously not in all cases). Therefore results might have been mixed or weak and potentially misaligned from what the law firm wanted to see. In the end, it’s all about simply getting more work and if that’s not happening after a certain period of time, you have to ask why.
What have I learnt?
I confirmed my thoughts that many firms haven’t had an agency that understands law firms, their practice areas, their client’s needs and joins the dots between handling the enquiry and converting it into a new case. Yes, the legal sector is different to other industries not because customers (clients) are any different in the legal sector, but because every industry is different. What I mean is the questions potential clients need answers to are specific to the legal sector and that’s why having an agency which understands the sector is important.
What I found is that the confusion from the above and misaligned results has lead to a continual chopping and changing of digital marketing agencies over the years, with clients not necessarily knowing what they are receiving and with little senior support, investment or training. This has given the industry a bad name and reputation.
I realised early on the need for industry insight and SEO to bring in more leads. This resulted in growing my last law firm’s website instructions from £250k pa to over £2-million per annum over 3 years.
Mind the Gap!
SEO and lead generation shouldn’t stop there. That is only half the job and where some SEO agencies stop.
Once you generate the leads you then need to handle those leads with the best strategy, track them and convert them into paying clients. That’s the holistic view which joins the dots and is why we specialise in providing the full package.
What can you do?
You could start by reviewing the following questions:
- Do you have an agency that specialises in legal marketing?
- Do they help you join the dots and ask how many leads you are getting?
- Have you had multiple SEO agencies in the past?
- Do you know what you are receiving?
- Do they understand what content you should be writing and the changes in the sector?
- Do they help train any internal staff to help add ‘fuel’ to the marketing fires in terms of SEO?
There are only a handful of legal marketing experts firms that I know of, that’s not to say other agencies can’t produce great results, but we believe better results can come from really understanding the industry. As a company, we only handle businesses in the legal sector for both marketing support and management consultancy.
Today the high street has largely been replaced by high-speed internet in the legal sector. In my time I have seen tens of thousands of legal enquiries from Google including large international business owners for both personal and corporate services, high net worth family law, employment law for businesses, business immigration and every area of private client work. I have even seen Google enquiries from the GC’s of large businesses. I have challenged nearly every practice area where they have said that ‘this type of work can’t be generated online’, but I’m always up for a challenge!
More and more individuals are searching online and a few years ago Google reported that there are over 2 million legally orientated search queries per day on Google.
Time for a coffee?
We are now working with law firms across the country, from London to Lancashire and Leeds. We are growing our business and if you’d like us to be on board with us, feel free to send us an email on ben@marketinglawyers.co.uk or call Ben Trott on 07881536290.
See you out there!
As ever,
Ben