Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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Most solicitors do not think that legal marketing sites offer them good value for
money. This is the result of a survey I carried out in April, emailing several
hundred solicitors from the circulation list of the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers.
The results are very similar to a survey I carried out three years ago.
By legal marketing websites, I mean commercial web sites attempting to attract
people with a legal problem to their site and then passing on these contacts to
solicitors on a "panel". The firms pay a fee for this service. The marketing sites
make their sites attractive to viewers by providing useful free information on their
site, by working hard to appear high up in the search engines or by advertising
in other ways. Some of these sites are specialised to particular areas of law, like
divorce, personal injury or property searching; others cover all or several areas
of law. I have basic information about these companies on my own site which
you can find at www.venables.co.uk/selling.htm (sections 3 and 7).
Around 60 firms replied to the survey and of these many were disillusioned with
marketing sites or were hostile to them in principle. Several indicated that they
had taken part in some of these schemes in the past but felt that the schemes
relied on keeping the solicitors' costs down to a level at which the work could not
be done properly. There was also concern at the quality of the leads provided
and that marketing site's desire to provide some leads (any leads) was greater
than their desire that they should be good ones.
I promised my respondents anonymity in their replies so they could be honest,
so here are some quotes without names (each paragraph is from a different
firm).
We have tried three of the sites in the family law/divorce area. In one case, we
found that we got a few leads but mainly those of a legal aid (or very hear)
nature which is not our market; in another, most of the replies seemed to be
from people who had already got a lawyer and were checking the advice; the
third provided few leads. Basically, we find we spend much less money and
spend it better by concentrating on our own sites.
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The difficulty with most sites is that
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I have a very limited budget and have never found advertising worth the cost.
These sites seem to be multiplying so that one would have to advertise on many
(at great expense) to retain significant benefit from any. I prefer to rely on the
keywords in my own website.
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I wonder if anyone looks at them; I certainly do not use such listing sites when
searching the internet for non-office information, except for price comparison
sites for some consumer goods. The marketing of these sites to lawyers is
classic opportunity selling (which lawyers are susceptible to) playing to lawyers'
fear of being left out.
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I have found that these sites tend to be start ups looking for cash. We have
been approached by quite a few over the years, particularly in PI, offering oodles
of work if we subscribe to a particular postcode area. They say there is a
national advertising campaign about to launch (note the "about to") but are
generally vague about exactly how many referrals might come our way. They
inevitably say that only one firm per postcode area can join and if we don't get
in quick our competitors will! There is an "up front" fee of course, I mean they
have to get their funding from somewhere. Usually we say no thanks, but
occasionally have been tempted. I cannot recall any scheme that we have
signed up for being anything other than a waste of money.
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We use
www.solicitors.co.uk which at £19 p.m. is quite cheap.
It does result in some enquiries but not very good ones. We have also experimented with
Google ads. Although they are much more expensive, they can be more
targeted - e.g. to people who want compromise agreement advice. You can also
link to a specific web page, which most legal marketing websites do not. You
can also switch Google on and off. If its done properly, Google ads are probably
more effective, but take more time, energy and skill.
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It would be interesting to find out whether the firms which have paid for a higher
level of prominence (such as on www.solicitors.co.uk) actually gain anything
from it.
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We use
www.employment-solicitors.co.uk.
It is very good and does appear high
up when you search. We have attracted a lot of enquiries and some of those
have become very good cases (probably about 10-15%) with about a third to a
half generating some fees for us.
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We tried
www.employment-solicitors.co.uk.
We received a few employee enquiries from the allotted postcode areas, but not enough to continue.
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We are a commercial firm and I think it is unlikely that commercial clients will
shop around for lawyers in this way, although it may be that it will become more
usual as younger business people enter the market. However, our experience
is still that personal contact is the main driver for choosing a lawyer in our field.
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We have subscribed to a few such websites for employment law as both
individuals and SME sometimes go to the net for contacts. In the last 2 years
these have paid for themselves and 1 or 2 have produced significant work. The
market is consolidating and we are aware of larger sites trying to corner the
market. These will probably fail to produce work as very few business chose
lawyers this way but will probably succeed in attracting lawyers to sign up
because once you get a few the others have to join.
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My feeling is that I'm never going to be able to compete nationally and wouldn't
really want to do so. I get a lot of work through Yellow Pages and advertising in
the local free property paper and having a website builds on that - people who
see the adverts in these publications look at the web site first and hopefully feel
happier when they phone me or make an enquiry through the internet. Internet
advertising is not the greatest thing since sliced bread but it will help.
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We did try some P.I. firms who sent us a couple of good cases as a “taster” but
when we then joined never sent us any good cases! At one time, I believe we
could not insist on exclusivity e.g over a postcode area (although this was more
honoured in the breach than in the observance) which made it difficult to ensure
that we got value for money.
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Generally, I am not in favour of paying to get work, although I do appreciate that
as an old established firm we do not need to rely on this as perhaps other firms
may have to. Experience and common sense suggest that the introduction fees
tend to increase and the referring organisation is more interested in increasing
their income than in ensuring that the firms to whom they refer work get “decent”
cases; it is in the referring organisation's interests to try to dredge up any old
rubbish. With the recent lifting of the ban on referral fees, I think we have got
ourselves in a mess. I understand the P.I. firms' anxiety to have a level playing
field but anecdotal evidence already suggests that we have opened the door to
estate agents insisting on all sorts of referral fees.
If you look at
www.google.co.uk and take the “Advertising Programmes”
at the bottom, you can see a description of “Google AdWords”. The idea is that you
can first choose your search terms (for which you want people to be directed to
your site) and then set a budget which is progressively reduced as viewers “click
through” to your page. This process was also described in the article on “How
to Get into the Search Engines” in the last issue, by Nicola Webb.
One person replying to the survey who agreed to be quoted, is James Carmody
of
Reculver Solicitors. He says:
With Google, you can place any sum of money you choose on account for a
particular campaign, as long as it is at least £50. Under a particular campaign,
you can then set up a series of adverts to pop up in response to certain key
words. You can choose the key words yourself and Google prompts you with
further key words.
For example, as my firm only does employment, I can set up a separate advert
for each of the following:
For each advert, the viewer can (if you choose to set it up that way) click through
to a different and targeted web page on your site.
You can also apply settings so that only users within a certain geographic radius
will see your advert (though the technology they use to make this work is far
from clear to me). You can choose how much you want to pay per click- through
and set a daily budget. The position of your advert and the actual cost of the
click-through is calculated using algorithms based on the click-through rate to
date, the amount of your daily budget, plus the cost per click other advertisers
have agreed to bid. Basically the more you are prepared to pay per click-through, the higher placed your ad will be and the more frequently it will be
seen. However if your ad is particularly popular, you might get a high listing even
if you pay less per click-through than competitors.
You can choose to pay more for one advert (for a particular service) than
another. For example, if I was particularly keen to get Compromise Agreement
work I could agree to pay more per click-through as a result.
Google provide you with statistics on click-through rates per advert and per key
word, though it is harder to assess what results in a 'sale'. Click-throughs do not
necessarily result in phone calls, and I sometimes wonder if some of them are
from other solicitors checking out the competition!
Both an advantage and a disadvantage is that you can turn the adverts on or off
when you want, as compared (say) to yellow pages when the ad stays in for a
year. When your money on account runs out, your ad disappears! It's therefore
important to budget carefully. I'm not running a google ad at the moment but
probably will in the future.
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To see the equivalent option from Yahoo, which is operated by a company
called Overture, take www.overture.com and then the Search Marketing
products option.
Back to Contents.
Most Solicitors Shun Legal Marketing Sites
by Delia Venables
What the Firms Say
1. You have to pay to go on them.
2. They always want you to charge the cheapest fees possible.
(See more from this firm under Paid Search below)
Paid Search on Google and Yahoo
Despite the general similarity to the results of 3 years ago, there is one area
which is new - the possibility of using Google or Yahoo to provide paid search
results, i.e. when the user types in the key words, there is an area of the page
returned to the user (generally the right hand area of the page) which contains
the paid-for advertisements.