The Lawyer's Ultimate Guide to Online Leads

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2 The Lawyer's Ultimate Guide to Online Leads

3 2015 by Ken Matejka, Esq. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photo copying, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder. First Printing 2015 Printed in the United States of America ISBN: ii

4 Updates To get updates to this book, to access new videos and to speak directly with the author, Ken Matejka, please contact us. Phone: (415) Website: iii

5 The Lawyer's Ultimate Guide to Online Leads Getting More Online Clients into Your Law Practice, Step-By-Step Ken Matejka, J.D., LL.M. iv

6 Table of Contents About the Author...1 Introduction...3 Chapter 1. A Quick Look at Google...7 Google s Sponsored Listings...8 Google s Organic Results...9 Google vs. Bing/Yahoo...10 Google vs. Personal Referrals...12 Chapter 2. Knowing the Online Legal Consumer...14 Who Searches for a Lawyer Online?...14 When Do People Search?...17 What Do They Want to Know About You?...18 How Long Will They Wait for Your Response?...19 Chapter 3. Legal Services as a Thin Market...20 What is a "Thin Market"?...20 Branding in a Thin Market...21 Chapter 4. Your Online Leads Ecosystem...23 What Is Your Online Leads Ecosystem?...23 How Your Ecosystem Helps...25 How Much Traffic Do You Need?...27 Chapter 5. Evaluating Your Ecosystem...32 Figuring Out What Is Working...32 How Effective Is Your Website?...34 v

7 How do we know if your website is good?...34 What is the anecdotal information saying?...34 What is your Google Analytics data saying?...35 Measuring with Google AdWords...40 How Much Traffic Do You Have Currently?...43 Where is your traffic coming from?...44 How Good Are You at Closing the Deal?...46 Chapter 6. Entry Points, Points of Engagement, and Supporting Elements...47 Entry Points...48 Points of Engagement...51 Supporting Elements...53 Chapter 7. Your Website and Its Supporting Elements...56 The Two Types of Law Firm Websites...56 The Core: Your Law Firm s Website...58 Components of a successful website...58 Modern design...59 Limited navigational choices...59 Emotive, easy-to-read content...60 Appealing photography...62 Practice area-specific content...64 Testimonials...64 Case results...65 Conspicuous calls to action...66 Versions of your website for all devices...66 vi

8 Chat software...68 Elements in Support of Your Website...68 Maintaining an active blog...68 More practice area-specific pages...69 Your YouTube channel...69 Your social media platforms...70 Your Yelp listing...72 Chapter 8. Social Media...73 Chapter 9. YouTube...77 Chapter 10. Yelp and Online Reviews...80 Why Positive Reviews Are Important...80 Yelp User Behavior and Expectations...81 Taking Control of Your Listing alerts...84 If you have more than one listing on Yelp...85 What if you have no listing at all on Yelp?...86 What To Do with Negative Reviews...87 Challenge the review...88 Respond to the client...89 Posting a public reply...90 Bury the review...90 Bury the search result...90 Getting Positive Reviews...91 Yelp's filters...92 Chapter 11. Getting More Traffic to Your Website 95 Traffic Through Google...95 vii

9 Google advertising...96 Google Remarketing...97 Google s organic results...99 Due diligence to outsource SEO Google My Business and maps results Creating content A few final notes on SEO Traffic Through Yelp Yelp advertising Traffic Through Social Media Advertising Facebook advertising LinkedIn advertising Twitter advertising Traffic Through YouTube YouTube advertising Paid Directory Listings What is the directory listing worth? Other Opportunities for Traffic Chapter 12. Google Advertising Optimal Placement of Your Google Search Ads121 Where in should your ad be visible? When should you be visible? Landing Pages Core Principles of Google Advertising Factors that go into "Ad Rank" Setting up a Google advertising account viii

10 Managing your Google account Keep your advertising budget in accord with your expected return on investment Outsourcing Your Google Advertising? Chapter 13. Closing the Deal The Golden 5 Minutes Tips to Get That Consumer into Your Office Chapter 14. Networking with Colleagues Online Chapter 15. Ethics and Your Online Content Ethics and Your Website Content Disclaimers Required disclaimers Contingency fees disclaimers Other locally mandated disclaimers Use of the word Specialist Use of testimonials and comparisons Privacy Policies Chapter 16. Putting It in Action Get Your Website Ready Getting a website if you don t have one Evaluating Your Website Your website to-do list What is your Analytics data telling you? Google AdWords Advertising Google Remarketing Bing/Yahoo Advertising ix

11 Marketing to the Spanish-Speaking Community 197 Social Media The setup Get posting Build connections Content Creation Paid Directory Listings Free Directory Listings YouTube Video Creation Make a video Set up your law firm YouTube channel Stream a video to your law firm website Post about the video periodically Link to the video in your signature Advertise the video in YouTube Online Review Management Get Positive Reviews Damage Control Create an e-newsletter Appendix A Marketing Plan Appendix B Privacy Policy Appendix C Disclaimer Appendix D Your Online Leads Ecosystem Appendix E Google Remarketing Ads Appendix F List of Attorney Directories End Notes x

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13 About the Author Ken Matejka (J.D., LL.M in Taxation) has been a California attorney for 26 years and is a formermember of the American Bar Association s Standing Committee on Lawyer Referral and Information Services. For 17 years, he worked at the Lawyer Referral and Information Service of the Bar Association of San Francisco and for many years there, as LRIS Operations Manager, he was chiefly responsible for advertising the LRIS, including actively managing its Google advertising. In 2007, he left the Bar Association of San Francisco to found a search engine advertising company dedicated to helping lawyers and lawyer referral services get more clients through Google advertising. After seven years there as its president and CEO, he moved on to launch the more specialized Matejka Marketing, Inc. 1

14 Ken has overseen the creation of numerous Google advertising and social media campaigns for law firms and bar associations, including the delivery of over 1 billion law-related ads in Google. As a CLE presenter, Ken has given many seminars and webinars for about 20 bar associations in six states on the topics of website lead-generation for lawyers and related ethical issues. Ken grew up in Rockford, Illinois and graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1985 before relocating to San Francisco. He has since attended University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and the masters in taxation program at New York University. 2

15 Introduction When it comes to acquiring more clients, the current economy presents lawyers with significant challenges and amazing opportunities. There are 40,000 people graduating from law school each year. These new lawyers compete with more established and experienced law firms for a shrinking pool of clients, as many legal consumers choose selfhelp websites like LegalZoom and RocketLawyer. Yet the Internet brings unprecedented opportunities as new marketing channels become available, allowing small law firms to compete for cases along with the well-funded marketing campaigns of the largest law firms in their communities at least for short bursts of time. 3

16 Figure 1. The shrinking San Francisco Yellow Pages, 2010 (bottom) through 2013 (top). Gone are the days when a lawyer bought a Yellow Page ad for a 12-month span and hoped for the best. Now Google, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube give a lawyer the opportunity to display ads only when he or she needs to and to suspend or change ads as the whim or need strikes. The time is now to make 2015 your most lucrative year ever. You may be better than your competitors, but online success hinges on visibility alone. This book is intended to help lawyers attract as many clients as possible into their law practices from the Internet through what I call your Online Leads Ecosystem. The book attempts to present a comprehensive look at what the Internet looks like for lawyers, what works for lead generation and what doesn t, and what a lawyer can do in-house to land more clients into his or her law practice. While it is primarily intended for lawyers who represent individuals and small businesses, a lot of what is covered here applies equally to lawyers who 4

17 represent medium-sized businesses. However, if your law practice is oriented towards insurance defense or major mergers and acquisitions, there is probably very little in this book that will help you generate the kinds of leads you re looking for. As I will discuss later in this book, the effectiveness of your website as a lead generator depends fundamentally on two factors: (1) how many visitors can be brought to your website and (2) how effective your website is in getting its visitors to make contact with your law firm. This book addresses the first factor by showing how to amass a large number of visitors to your website. I also go into detail about elements of a successful law firm website, including the role of other online elements like social media that support your website. Lead generation is important, but if you don t turn those leads into clients, it won t help with the growth of your law practice. Consequently, I will spend some time discussing how closing a deal is different now than it may have been 20 years ago when it was harder for consumers to contact lawyers. Finally I will address some of the ethical issues relating to your online content. Much of the material in this book describes the various elements of your lead-generating online presence as well as offers an explanation of what the particular medium is used for and why it s important. I make frequent reference to your Online Leads Ecosystem which I will explain more fully in Chapter 4. In Chapter 16 there is a step-by-step guide to direct you towards the development of the optimal online 5

18 lead-generating machine, and you are encouraged to skip right to that chapter at anytime, using the rest of the book for reference. It may be evident that no solo practitioner would have the time or energy to do everything I recommend in this book. After all, you probably prefer practicing law to posting to social media. However, in developing the step-by-step guide, I was very aware of the possible limitations of your time, energy, and resources, so I ve ensured the guide focuses on only the essentials for creating an optimal system. The material in this book is supported by nearly 30 years of data that I have gathered through my marketing efforts as Operations Manager of the Bar Association of San Francisco Lawyer Referral and Information Service, as well as over eight years of Internet marketing for lawyers and bar associations, during which time I have had the opportunity to display over 1 billion ads to people actively searching for legal help in Google. My company, Matejka Marketing, Inc., (matejkamarketing.com) provides comprehensive online marketing services for solo practitioners and small law firms and can help create a marketing plan for even the most modest of advertising budgets. If you have any questions about the contents of this book or if you would like to talk with us about whether our marketing services are a good fit for your specific needs, please call us at (415) or write to us at info@matejkamarketing.com. 6

19 Chapter 1. A Quick Look at Google Any book about online lead generation for lawyers must begin with recognition that an overwhelming majority of law-related searches in the United States begins in a Google search box. With Google s over 240 million law-related searches each month, eclipsing Bing and Yahoo, being visible on the web means being visible in Google. Your website traffic data should show that most of your website s traffic is coming from Google. If this is not the case, then your website is not visible enough. Admittedly, this book may seem Google-centric, and at times, it may appear that I have some economic stake in Google s success. This is not so. It s merely that when it comes to reaching people who are seeking legal help online, Google is the only show in town. As such, we must embrace it to get as much law-related traffic to your website as we can. Throughout this book, I make reference to Google s Sponsored Listings and other times to Google s organic results. Here is an explanation of the difference between the two. 7

20 Google s Sponsored Listings The Sponsored Listings are text advertisements, 95 characters in length, that Google displays as part of its search results. The advertiser tells Google that it is willing to pay them a certain amount of money (the advertiser s bid ) if a Google user types in a predefined search and clicks on one of the advertiser s ads that is tied to that particular phrase. In Figure 2, the Sponsored Listings ads are highlighted and are the results for the search injury lawyers. Each of the advertisers listed in the Sponsored Listings in this figure have told Google that they are willing to pay Google up to a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on one of the ads. Figure 2: Google s Sponsored Listings highlighted. There is much more discussion on the topic of Google s Sponsored Listings in Chapter 12. 8

21 Google s Organic Results The lower left part of Google s search results are known as its organic results. The area where these results appear is highlighted below in Figure 3. These results are drawn from Google s index. They are not paid results but instead are Google s best guesses about which websites are most relevant to the user s search. In this example, for the search injury lawyers, Google displays the top ten pages that it perceives as containing the most valuable information for this user s search. Figure 3. Google s organic results highlighted. 9

22 Google vs. Bing/Yahoo Figure 4 is a segment of a Google Analytics report from a high-volume, Midwestern legal service provider's website for one month in It must be noted that this website is equally visible in the organic search results of all 3 search engines. In this chart, google/cpc refers to the legal service provider s Google advertising in the Sponsored Listing, and google/organic refers to visitors to this website through Google s organic results. This Analytics snapshot is included here to show Google's enormous market share for law-related search in the United States. As the figure shows, for this particular website, Google s Sponsored Listings (paid advertising) and Google's organic results (Google's index) account for about 59.4% of the legal website's overall traffic. While 59.4% may sound like a lot, it doesn t sound overwhelming. However, let s take away some of the data and compare only the organic traffic from the 3 search engines. We first remove the (direct)/(none) traffic showing at 19.4%. Direct/none traffic refers to when someone arrives at a site by directly typing its URL or when Google doesn t know where they came from. For this particular legal services provider, the majority of this direct traffic was likely from the firm s staff. 10

23 Figure 4: Traffic sources for a high-volume, Midwestern legal website. Now we have 456 visitors from Google s organic results and 83 from Bing/Yahoo. We can see that Google s share of the search engine traffic is 84.6% with Yahoo at 8.3% and Bing at 7%. This finding is very typical of the scores of law firms Analytics reports to which I have access and this helps me prioritize and focus on what s important when my company is helping small law firms and solo 11

24 practitioners who have a limited amount of capital to invest in their online visibility. Our takeaway here is this: if you have first page visibility in Google for certain searches, you ll probably be reaching about 85% of the people on the web performing those searches. If you have first page visibility in Bing for the same searches, you ll be reaching about 7% of the people performing those searches Google vs. Personal Referrals Someone who needs a lawyer is going to first ask a friend or relative for a personal referral, right? Historically, the answer to this question was yes, of course. Not anymore. As the Operations Manager of the Lawyer Referral & Information Service (LRIS) of the Bar Association of San Francisco, I had the opportunity to examine referral source data dating back to 1983, which was the year LRIS got its first digital database. From 1983 until about 2005, the top three referral sources were as follows, usually in this order: Friend, relative, or colleague Other attorney Yellow Pages Around 2005, Google supplanted the Yellow Pages as the number 3 referral source, and since 2013, for the first time since 1983 Friend, relative, or colleague and Other attorney have been displaced from the first and second positions with Google being the top referral source. 12

25 Figure 5. Bar Association of San Francisco top referral sources (2013). This is a significant development that speaks to the changing habits of online consumers, which you will learn more about in Chapter 2. 13

26 Chapter 2. Knowing the Online Legal Consumer Who Searches for a Lawyer Online? If someone needs a lawyer, they have a lot of options available to help with their search. If they know a lawyer, they could get a personal referral. If they don t know a lawyer but they know someone who knows a lawyer, then they might use that channel to get a personal referral. Historically, if either of the above scenarios were the case, then the consumer would usually seek out the personal referral. This is why your referral network of other attorneys has always been and maybe always will be your best source of clients. The personal referral serves as a recommendation, making the consumer more comfortable contacting the lawyer who has been prescreened (maybe) by the referral source. 14

27 Middle-income people unconnected to the legal community What if someone needs a lawyer, but neither have they had contact with the legal community before, nor do they know anyone who has? This is a much larger group of legal consumers than one would think, especially for areas of law like personal injury. Much of this group consists of middle-income people, trades-people, schoolteachers, and the like. These consumers can afford a lawyer and often have serious legal matters. Even the lowest income people of this group get injured in auto accidents or can raise enough money to pay attorneys fees for a DUI that threatens their ability to drive their car. People who prefer deciding for themselves What about people who know lawyers but would rather not get a personal referral? In this group are people who may not want to involve friends or relatives in the search for personal reasons. For example, if someone needs a divorce lawyer, they may not want to ask their father-in-law for a referral. Regardless of how personal or embarrassing a person s legal issue may be, there is also a growing number of people who would rather do the research and choose a lawyer based on their own criteria. A recent study found that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. 1 This point is further supported by LRIS referral source data showing Google s displacement of Friend, relative, or colleague and Other attorney 15

28 as top referral sources (see Chapter 1 for more on this). Businesses and high net-worth individuals Many lawyers believe that Google visibility is important for law firms that represent individual consumers but that it won t generate leads for law firms targeting businesses with commercial legal issues. The business attorney may find that their main referral source is their network of colleagues and that the Internet has not been a significant source of leads. One might conclude that the Internet, therefore, is not a good source for gaining commercial clients. This is not the case, and I know several successful business attorneys getting good clients from Google. While it may be true that the Internet has not been a significant source of leads for some business law practices, it is possibly due to their websites not being visible enough in Google s search results, their websites aren t bringing in inquiries, or a combination of these two factors. Small mom-and-pop businesses would fall within one of the consumer categories above, but larger businesses indeed often use Google. Among these business owners are those who would rather choose for themselves. Other instances may include company managers who are given the task by higher-ups to find counsel for some specific matter. A third type may be a law firm outside of your community that needs local counsel in your jurisdiction and simply doesn t have a referral source. 16

29 When Do People Search? Our data clearly shows that online search engine users are task-oriented in the morning when searching for legal help, and by the afternoon, their law-related search activity drops off significantly. Most and telephone inquiries from legal consumers to the law firms we help happen between the hours of 10 AM and 1 PM. Figure 6, below, shows the volume of law-related searches in Google by time of day in one of our typical accounts. The data shows that the most productive time of day is between 10 AM and 1 PM, and the most productive days of the week are Mondays and Tuesdays. Figure 6. Search activity by time of day. 17

30 This data is consistent for most all practice areas and communities that I have examined, with a few areas of law showing more extreme search behavior, such as family and divorce-type searches. Personal injury is less extreme but still in accord with these findings. For DUI, I have found a slight increase in dinnertime search activity. In sum, late mornings early during the workweek are the most important times to be visible to reach online legal consumers. I will discuss this more in Chapter 12. What Do They Want to Know About You? Your advertising and website must be tailored to meet the needs and expectations of the modern Internet user. Once your ideal client has arrived on your website, you need to tell them what they want to know about you. People who have never had to hire a lawyer before sometimes are intimidated by lawyers and by the hiring process. It s important to keep in mind that your message should exude a certain friendliness and approachability, especially for areas like elder law and family law. This is also true for criminal defense, personal injury law, and most other practice areas. While your website should show you to be engaging and approachable, your message should speak to the desires of the specific user. For example, someone who needs a criminal defense lawyer may be drawn to the message that you are tough as nails, and if you are a personal injury lawyer, they may respond best to millions recovered for our clients. An elder law 18

31 attorney should convey the message that he or she is caring and compassionate. It s been found that many online consumers are less concerned about where you went to law school or how long you ve been practicing law than they are about why you became a lawyer and what you do in service to the community. How Long Will They Wait for Your Response? Legal services is a thin market, meaning that people who are at a crisis point and need to hire a lawyer are likely to make their decision fairly quickly. There may be practice-area specific exceptions to this like elder law and business, where consumers are possibly more thoughtful in their decision-making process. There is more on this in the following chapter in the section, Branding in a Thin Market. It has been found that people grow very impatient when waiting for a response from an online inquiry. Google makes it easy for someone to make contact with more than one law firm, thus it becomes a race. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter

32 Chapter 3. Legal Services as a Thin Market What is a "Thin Market"? A "thin market" is a term used to describe a marketplace where there are few consumers who are buying something that they need maybe only once or twice in their lifetimes about which they make the decision fairly quickly. A classic example is when someone's refrigerator breaks. That person perhaps has never been in a situation where they needed to buy a refrigerator before, but they need to do so today so that their food doesn't spoil. Considerations such as "Can it be delivered today?" and "Will it fit within the dimensions of my kitchen cabinets?" take precedence over cost and brand. And once the consumer decides upon the refrigerator, they are not back in the market for a refrigerator for perhaps another 20 years. For most areas of law, legal services are like this. Many consumers have never had to hire a lawyer before yet find themselves at a crisis point where they feel that they must hire a lawyer as soon as possible to deal with the legal matter at hand. In this case, millions of times a day, such people open a Google search box and start looking. After making contact 20

33 with several law firms by phone or , soon they will have had a good conversation with one or two of the law firms and have one or more in-office consultations set up for the following day. In marketing to a thin market, it is essential to get your message in front of the potential client at the moment that the person decides that it is time to hire a lawyer. A billboard is not likely to help much unless the client is driving past the billboard at the time that he or she comes to the conclusion that it is time to lawyer-up and then makes the decision to stop the car and write down the attorney's information for future use. Advertising on the radio and in newspapers can be thought of similarly. Online advertising has made reaching people easy because when they are actively searching for help, you can show your ads and pursue other courses to make your law firm visible in their search results. Branding in a Thin Market Branding is one of those concepts that can be very valuable in certain industries but a waste of marketing resources in thin markets where brand considerations are secondary to other more immediate concerns. For example, in the soft drink market, all colas are basically the same. However, through extensive and costly branding efforts, Coca-Cola tries to convince consumers that drinking Coke is better than drinking Pepsi. Their message is not that it tastes better but that it is better to associate with their brand. However, when consumers are seldom in the marketplace for your service and they tend to decide fairly quickly, it's much more important to deliver 21

34 your message exactly when they need it rather than spend marketing resources trying to drive your law firm s name in their minds through some type of branding. As proof, ask any non-lawyer to name three personal injury law firms in your community. They will not be able to do so despite the thousand of dollars spent each month in your community on personal injury billboards, bus placards, and newspaper ads. I ask this question at my Continuing Legal Education seminars and often only the personal injury lawyers in attendance can name three personal injury law firms. This is not to say that branding is without value. If there is a general perception in the marketplace that your law firm is better than any other law firm and if your listing is among many in Google s search results, they may choose your law firm first. Assuming your law firm has less than an unlimited amount of money to invest in marketing, your resources would be much more productive in direct advertising, getting your message in front of consumers while they are actively searching for legal help. 22

35 Chapter 4. Your Online Leads Ecosystem What Is Your Online Leads Ecosystem? Your Online Leads Ecosystem is a term used in this book to describe the online infrastructure and processes you have in place to get clients into your law practice. Your Ecosystem is the growing infrastructure of your online content and activities and includes your website, social media, YouTube, blog, podcasts, and anything else you may do online to boost your visibility among people who may need your services. It's helpful to compare it to what you have been doing off of the web for what may be many years and how it translates to your Online Leads Ecosystem. Figure 7 shows what you probably do currently to get more clients into your law practice all of which is completely unrelated to the Internet. As you see, your Analog Leads Ecosystem is an assortment of activities that you use to get your name into the community. At the core of your Analog Ecosystem would be your telephone and business card. 23

36 Figure 7. The components of your Analog Leads Ecosystem. By comparison, Figure 8 shows the digital equivalents of your analog activities. It is worth noting at this point that while you are developing your Online Leads Ecosystem, your Analog Leads Ecosystem will continue to be critically important and will always be so. 24

37 Figure 8. The components of your Online Leads Ecosystem. How Your Online Leads Ecosystem Helps Your Law Practice Your optimal Online Leads Ecosystem (hereinafter, your "Ecosystem") will bring the traffic to one or more of your online properties, whether it's your 25