Monday, July 24, 2006

How do I know my law firm website is working?

This question is asked early and often from my lawyer website clients. Here are some basic criteria to gauge how your website is doing:
1. If I search for my name (and lawyer or attorney or firm name) does my website come up on the first page of Google and Yahoo? This is critical, because if someone searches for you by name, that is most likely a referral from one of your existing clients or another attorney. You want these referrals to find you quickly, otherwise they may go to one of your competitors
2. Do your clients comment that you have a nice website. This may seem a little trivial, but impressing clients via your website helps give you practice validation.
3. Look at your web traffic. Unlike the Yellow Pages, you can see exactly how many people visit your website, how they got to your site, how long they stayed, and even what the most popular pages were. If your current provider does not give web metrics, you may want to find a new web vendor.
4. Have you obtained any business from your website? This is often a tough one to measure. I recommend you ask your new clients if they saw your website and was it influential in choosing to hire you.

There are many more criteria to measure your website and overall internet marketing strategy, but these four checks should give you a baseline of how your website is doing.

Until next time,

Donald
www.targetlaw.com


You can check out a recent website we released at www.elktonattorney.com

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Email Marketing for Law Firms?

I am often asked should attorneys send out emails for marketing purposes. Email can be a great way to market. There are some things to consider:
1. Do I have the time and expertise to create a nice, professional email message?
2. Do I have a lot of email addresses to make it worth sending?
3. Do I have permission to send to these emails (very important)
4. Is the email going to be a newsletter, announcement
5. Will I be able to send out an email at least 1 month?
6. Do I have a website where people can find out more about me.
7. Should I hire someone to help? - probably a "yes". A good firm to use is Blue Sky Factory www.blueskyfactory.com
8. The response rate is not dissimilar to direct mail. So you may only get about 2-5% actually "do something" from your email.

Until next time.

Donald
www.targetlaw.com

Monday, July 10, 2006

Websites for Transactional, Corporate, and Defense Law Firms

This is a very interested survey conducted by Alyn-Weiss & Associates (http://www.prdenver.com/). The gist of the article is that these types of firms do obtain business from their websites. Most defense/corporate firms I speak with have a hard time believing that a website will bring them business. Maybe more surveys like this will help them "see the light"

FIRM WEBSITES ARE BEST BUSINESS-DEVELOPMENT SOURCE Eighty-two percent of corporate, transactional and defense law firms received work through their websites, according to a recently released survey by Alyn-Weiss & Associates that asked firms nationwide about their marketing strategies. That’s a hefty increase over the 51 percent rate reported in the biannual survey in 2004

Donald Imm
www.targetlaw.com