How to Manage a Small Law Firm
Why Read This Guide?
You are here because you want to do better connecting your law firm with the people online needing your legal services. This can be hard without a good website marketing guide. The first step in managing a small law firm is to make sure you have enough people interested in your legal practice. We have developed a digital marketing system that consistently delivers high value legal cases. Download this guide to learn how we do it.
Download The Attorney Marketing Guide
This Guide Will Teach You 3 Things! 1. How to enhance your online presence and tell your story better online.
2. How to attract and convert more quality legal cases online.
3. How to track your website’s return on investment.
“For over 14 years we tried websites made by Lexus and Westlaw. Our website was essentially just an electronic business card. If somebody knew my name, they could find my website, but no one ever Googled for a personal injury attorney and found me. Our business at Morgenstern and Herd has grown substantially since Accelerate Now took over our website. Never did we have the results we’ve had since we obtained the services of Accelerate Now. We couldn’t be happier with our website or the results.”
Law Firm Websites That Attract Legal Cases Online
Many attorneys are frustrated because their law firm website marketing isn’t working. They have an out-of-date website and they are worried, because their website is consistently out-ranked online by lower quality attorneys with better digital marketing help. If you want to have success connecting with people online today, you need a website that delivers a lot of valuable content to your web visitors. If your website only provides the most basic information then focus on developing practice area content. You can do this yourself or have some one that specializes in law firm marketing do it. The key here is to make your website more educational. Here are some core areas to focus on:
- Practice Area Content
- Comprehensive and informative written practice area content that is educational.
- Practice Area Videos and eBooks
- Informational videos and eBooks will educate prospects and generate more interest in your firm.
- Automated Prospect Follow-Up
- Stop losing prospective new cases. Email nurturing campaigns keep your firm top of mind, drive people back to your website and generate more interest in your legal practice.
- 24/7 Live Chat Functionality
- Get more legal cases with live chat. You need live operators monitoring your website 24/7 and engaging with your web visitors instantly.
- Practice Area Mobile Apps
- Over 50% of all local search engine traffic is done with smart mobile devices. Create practice area mobile apps that will put you in the palm of your clients’ hands.
- Lead Tracking and ROI Reporting
- Make sure you track your website online so you have real-time, in-depth lead tracking and return on investment reporting. There are some great reporting portal options available.
Pricing: We include all of these things in our attorney websites. Stand-alone websites are $10,000. Fast, secure web hosting is also available. Legal Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You may be struggling with SEO. Many attorneys have struggled with this for years. It’s actually pretty easy with the right SEO partner. The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to get top organic listings on search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) when someone types in keywords that are important to your law practice. An example might be DWI Lawyer, Personal Injury Lawyer, Divorce Guide, or Divorce Lawyer. The top SEO position gets about 42% of the traffic. The second organic position gets about 24%, and the percentages really start to drop off as you go down the page. Therefore, the goal has to be to get the top spots. There is very limited business value to being on the bottom of page 1. To get top SEO rankings consistently, you need a lot of high-quality, educational web content. The right SEO partner will make this easy for you.
“We had a website that was built by one of the major media publishers in the area. This supposedly came with a very high price tag. When it was built, there were errors and issues with functionality and appearance. Accelerate Now took us from being relativity obscure in web searches to being on the first page for almost all search terms that we consider important. New clients are calling all the time and we’re also getting good name recognition from those people that we have helped before.”
Practice Area Videos
Showcase your legal expertise and build your brand.
You may be wondering what law firm practice area videos are, and why they are so important. A practice area video is basically a video answer to a commonly asked legal question. Practice area videos help people understand their legal issue more, help people get to know the attorneys at a firm better and help people find law firms online. We offer unlimited practice area video production to all our SEO clients at no additional cost, because these videos help us ensure our clients will be successful online. The idea of unlimited video production all started back in 2013. In 2013, we went to our very first client, Andrews, Bernstein, Maranto, & Nicotra, PLLC and said “Google really wants your website to produce more useful content, so our SEO program is going to offer unlimited practice area video production. Would you like to give this a try with us?” As soon as we launched their new website, they started getting cases. Their website went from delivering zero cases a month, to delivering 4 cases a month, then 8 cases a month. Today, they close approximately 25 cases a month and 60% of their personal injury cases come from our website marketing program. The key to success online is to always keep an eye on what Google loves. If you do what Google loves, they will reward you with more top rankings and you will get more cases online.
Pricing: Our SEO Clients receive unlimited on-site practice area video production at no additional cost. Individual videos can be purchased at a cost of $150 per video.
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Practice Area eBooks
Google has always loved good content, but today Google really loves comprehensive, educational content. One of the things we have done to improve our program since we started working with Andrews, Bernstein, Maranto, & Nicotra has to do with the addition of deep, definitive guide blog posts and eBook content. We create definitive guide blog posts and eBooks that rank extremely well for everything covered in the books! The practice area eBook content is added to your legal website. Potential clients then have the opportunity to submit their email to get a free copy, along with related practice area videos. This is all done automatically and the content is delivered via email over time, constantly driving potential clients back to the website. This frees up a lot of time for our attorneys, because the initial prospect information gathering and sending is all done automatically for them. Due to this automation, when their clients do schedule their initial consultation, they have a much more educated and happy client. The results have been truly amazing.
“I was confused in how to find a marketing company because so many marketing companies find me. I sought out a company that had the highest rating websites of their region. I wanted to be one of those high ranking websites. I chose Accelerate Now because they had an actual marketing plan that involved redoing my website’s design, creating apps for mobile phones, putting together videos, and actual visits with me to discuss the websites’ return. I’m getting more calls, more emails, and more chats. All of that has happened in a relatively short period of time. I’m very satisfied with their attention to me and my business.”
Automated Prospect Nurturing and Follow-Up
Continuously drive prospects back to your website
- First, your website visitors sign up to receive some free practice area information.
- Then our system automatically sends these potential new clients content (eBooks, videos, blogs, etc.) at preset intervals, continuously driving them back to your website.
- Through the educational process, they learn more about their legal issue, are introduced to the attorneys, and begin to understand how you would approach their specific legal matter.
- This nurturing process keeps prospects engaged and drives more interest in your firm, leading to more cases.
Attorney Mobile Apps
Many attorneys are losing cases to competitors because they don’t understand the importance of having law firm mobile apps. Today, over 50% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. Is your law firm missing out on the opportunity to connect with potential clients on their smart phone devices? Mobile apps create immediate access to you and your firm, literally putting you in the palm of your clients’ hands. Mobile apps act as a dynamic and interactive online business card that promotes client retention, and new referrals. Our custom mobile apps include practice area videos, informative eBooks, click-to-call functionality, built in GPS directions to your office, access to your firm’s social media channels, and more.
Pricing: Our SEO clients get individual mobile apps for all practice areas and attorneys at no additional cost. If you would like to purchase individual attorney or practice area mobile apps for your firm, please contact our office for a quote.
Download The Attorney Marketing Guide
“I have worked with other providers in the past, and I don’t want to name names, two major providers, and I have been sorely disappointed over the years that I was working with them. Right from the beginning, Accelerate Now has over-performed and exceeded all my expectations. My experience has been over-the-top. I think anyone who does not engage in a business relationship with them to host your website and support you with SEO is making a serious mistake. These guys are awesome, and I’m serious!”
Legal Website Live Chat Operators
You are here because you are looking for ways to make your website more dynamic and productive. One easy way to make your legal website more dynamic is by adding a 24/7 live chat operators that engage your web visitors instantly. Today, website visitors want instant gratification and engagement, regardless of the time of day. Research shows that many potential new referrals visit attorney websites after hours. So, you want a live chat operator that will monitor your website 24 hours a day. The goal of website live chat service is to engage visitors, assist them quickly, and gather valuable information for you including:
- The visitor’s name.
- Their contact information.
- A brief description of the legal issue they are facing.
Immediately following each live chat session, we send you an entire transcript of the conversation for quick follow-up and appointment scheduling. Adding live chat operators to your website can improve your lead capture rate by as much as 20%.
Pricing: Our 24/7 legal live chat service starts at $200/Month. Local Directories & Citation Management
If you don’t appear prominently in the local online search results, it can be frustrating. The frustration may be heightened even more when you see lower quality attorneys appear instead of you. Search engines are all about confidence. They want to ensure the results they are displaying to users are accurate and relevant. It is critical that the search engines understand exactly who you are, what you do, and where you are located. Local directories and citation sites help search engines verify your law firm’s information. This helps your law firm establish trust and authority, and helps give you increased rank in local online search results.
1. What are local directories? Local directory sites specialize in indexing law firms based on practice area categories and geography. Some of the most common sites include Google Local, Yelp, Yahoo!, Bing, Yellow Pages, Manta, etc.
2. Why are they important for local SEO? Today, over 60% of internet searches come from mobile devices. Due to this trend, search engines are changing the way they are displaying results, putting more emphasis on providing “geo-targeted” local results. 3.
How can local citations help my law firm? When your firm appears in our network of 70+ highly authoritative local directory sites, Google is more likely to display your law firm’s listing in the local search results with your user ratings, map location, and other key information that will encourage people to contact your firm.
Pricing: If you would like help claiming and maintaining your local directories and citations, our stand-alone services start at only $99 per month. Download The Attorney Marketing Guide
“My old website was pretty static and was not user friendly. There was no way for potential clients to instantly speak to my office and there was no in-depth content. Since I started working with Accelerate Now, my business has really improved. My client leads have gone from referrals from other attorneys in the community, to almost 100% online. There is absolutely a return on your investment.”
Review Generation and Reputation Management
You may be worried about how you are perceived online. A proactive online review generation program can be extremely influential in ensuring your firm is perceived positively online. Plus, Google’s search engine algorithm prioritizes legal websites with positive reviews across a variety of platforms, placing legal websites with more reviews higher in the search results.
- 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting or contacting a law firm.
- 84% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local law firm more.
Pricing: If you would like help with review generation, our standalone services start at only $99 per month. Social Media Marketing
Many attorneys worry that other law firms are going to pass them online because they don’t know how to leverage the power of social media to attract new clients. We will make social media easy for you and manage everything for your firm.
- 62% of people in North America use Facebook. Over 1 billion users log in daily.
- Google+ reaches 38% of the entire US population.
- LinkedIn has quickly grown to over 467 million members.
- People watch about one billion hours of videos on YouTube every single day!
- People send over 500 million tweets per day on Twitter.
“Partnering with Accelerate Now was the best thing I ever did. They have been very professional, and have lived up to their word to keep me at the top of the Google rankings. I couldn’t have asked for better results, and it was pretty quick! Accelerate now is very responsive to my needs. I can pick up the phone and speak to someone directly, and they handle any concerns that I have. I would highly recommend them.”
Download The Attorney Marketing Guide
Tracking Leads & Measuring Your Website’s Return on Investment
If you don’t have a good handle on how much money your website is making or costing you, it can be frustrating. To understand your web marketing program’s return on investment, you need a robust lead tracking system. Your tracking system should show you where your top cases are coming from, and how much money your program is making you.
You Need Reporting Portal To Show You: - How many phone calls, live chats, and online form submissions your website generates each month.
- Which clients came from your website and internet marketing program.
- Where your clients are originating from online (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.)
- How your paid online advertising (PPC) program performing.
- How your search engine optimization (SEO) program is performing.
Pricing: If you would like help setting up and managing a stand-alone system, pricing starts at $99/Month. Paid Online Advertising (PPC)
The key benefit of paid online advertising (PPC) is that your firm is able to attract a good number of cases quickly and can cover any geographic area with ads, driving interested people directly to educational practice area resources on your website. You may have tried online paid advertising (PPC) unsuccessfully in the past and are apprehensive about trying it again. There are many reasons for this. That said, you shouldn’t let bad past experiences deter you. This is a very profitable legal advertising strategy that should be leveraged as much as possible. The key is to use a PPC partner that has a lot of documented success managing local legal marketing campaigns. An experienced legal PPC manager will ensure your success and save you a lot of valuable time and money. Our PPC managers will continually optimize your program and get you the best return on investment. Over the years, we have learned the best ways to set up and optimize legal marketing PPC campaigns and our success is documented. We highly recommend driving targeted traffic directly to your educational practice area content. Allow us to show you why.
Pricing: A strong PPC program requires a minimum monthly budget of $1000 to start. We typically start clients on a 3-month flight. “The program we have with Accelerate Now is working very well. I really wanted a program that would bring qualified leads into my office, and that has happened for sure. The work that has been done on behalf of my firm has been professional and exceptional. I’m very happy with the services provided.”
Informational Practice Area Content Is Key To SEO and Your Future Success!
It all starts with your website. If your website produces high quality informational practice area content, you will win with SEO and get more quality cases online. To get consistent top search engine (SEO) rankings, you need to have a high quality website that provides a lot of useful information to visitors. Google actually assigns a quality score to your website. When your website’s quality score exceeds your competition, you out-rank them online and increase your firms visibility, thereby attracting more cases.
Google looks at the following metrics to determine your website’s quality: 1.How long do visitors stay on your site? 2.How many pages do visitors view per visit? 3.Do visitors come back to view different pieces of information? 4.Do visitors interact with your content? Your law firm website must be built with these things in mind. This might sound difficult, but all you really need is the right web marketing partner. The next step is to download this guide (there is a special gift inside).
Download The Attorney Marketing Guide
