ROI, ROI, ROI!
Return on investment. You hear this a lot if you’re an attorney that advertises. A positive ROI seems to be the biggest pitch made by legal marketers. “Hey, we may be expensive, but you’ll make more than you pay us!”
I don’t doubt that a lot of times this is true. One client that pays a law firm a retainer of $2,500-$5,000 may cover a few months up to a year of a firm’s advertising budget. But we’re told that as long as we keep making more than we pay out, everything is great. Is it?
The first problem is that a lot of firms do not track their leads. Some ask when meeting with a potential client and while others don’t care at all how the potential client heard about their office. A law firm might be getting 90% of their cases through personal referrals. If they don’t ask AND keep track, it’s impossible to know. Legal marketing companies realize that there is a lack of lead tracking and focus on the law firm’s total amount of revenue compared with it’s advertising budget.
I also don’t believe it’s merely enough to have a positive ROI to justify high legal marketing fees. Is spending $1,000 a month directly getting you 4-5 new clients? Could you be getting those same clients paying half that price? There’s a reason why sales reps for phone book companies and FindLaw/Lexis are driving in Cadillac’s and BMW’s. A large portion of the money you’re paying is not going towards your website.
I get that results matter. But results can often be replicated by paying a portion of what the large legal marketing companies charge. Attorneys should no longer be happy with an advertising budget that merely pays for itself or makes a little bit of money. Try going with a smaller, local company. You’ll instantly make more money without increasing your caseload.
The Great Attorney Rip-Off: Paying Monthly Website Fees
Attorneys are an easy group to take advantage of when it comes to technology and advertising. And when the two come together, watch out!
Although the trend is changing, there aren’t a lot of attorneys out there who are very technologically aware. Let’s face it: the legal services field is…older than most other fields. Because of that, many firms aren’t able to keep up with advancing technologies. All you have to see is how much use their fax machines get during the day.
Many companies out there openly take advantage of attorneys and their lack of technological, or more specifically, website design knowledge. While people in other professions may not know the ins and outs of web design, attorneys are unique in that they typically have a generous budget to use on advertising. Therefore, law firms used to spending $1,000-$10,000 a month on phonebook or billboard advertising don’t blink an eye when it comes to spending similar amounts on a website.
I’m not sure what I was more surprised by: that law firms actually pay this amount of money per month for a website or that they don’t ask or care what the money is going towards. Most attorneys I’ve asked tell me they assume the money is going towards “hosting” their site. When I tell them that hosting a website shouldn’t cost anything more than $50, they generally get very angry. But most can’t do anything. Under a contract.
A lot of these large legal marketing companies claim that the monthly fees are going towards search optimization or that it’s spreading out the cost of building the site. In other words, an attorney might pay $3,000 a month because his website actually cost $36,000. Wow.
There’s a lot more to get into with this subject, but I’ll save it for other posts. The bottom line is that the specialized legal marketing companies that charge monthly fees are generally a rip off. I’m not saying I’m the only answer either. Go with a small creative company in your area. They’ll do a kickass job and make a website that stands out from the pack.
Why I do this
I figured my first blog post should be about why I decided to be an Internet marketer for attorneys and law firms. A lot of it has to do about my background. My undergraduate degree is in management information systems. When I was interviewing with technology companies during my senior year in college, I realized I didn’t want to be a programmer or an “IT” guy for the rest of my life. Thus, I went to law school. Made total sense, right? Not really.
Fast forward 7 years. I now find myself doing the techy-type things I went to law school to avoid. But now it feels right. It feels right because I’ve found the right mix: I’m doing the techy thing while also having the lawyer thing to fall back on. I figured it would be the other way around, but things don’t always work out the way you plan.
So here I am, helping attorneys make their presence felt online. It really is an important part of a law firm’s marketing budget. If you’re ignoring the online audience, you’re cutting off a large pool of potential clients. And that pool keeps getting bigger as more and more people refuse to open a phone book.
Feel free to contact me if you ever have a question about website design or SEO. I really do like to help even if you aren’t a client of mine.