Andrew Stickel

“I give away pens and pillboxes with my law firm’s contact info. What is the most useful and effective giveaway for law firms aside from these two items?”

Someone just asked me this:

“I give away pens and pillboxes with my law firm’s contact info. What is the most useful and effective giveaway for law firms aside from these two items?”

If you’re thinking about the most effective law firm giveaways, you have to consider what people will actually hold on to. Because there are all kinds of really cool items that you can give away. But the problem is that people think, “That’s cool!” when they get one of them. And then they just throw it in a drawer and never use it again.

One Of My Favorite Promotional Items

I really don’t know how well pillboxes work. I’ve never tested those out. But here’s something that worked really well for us, specifically for criminal defense attorneys… We got these lighters and I’ve actually filmed a video about this because this was one of my favorite ideas that I’ve ever had.

I used to play in a rock band. Some of you know that. And here’s what we used to do to build our email lists. Yes, this was a long time ago when you were trying to build email lists.

We went out and bought a bunch of lighters and we got our band’s logo on them.  And we’d go to bars where we were playing and we would trade everybody a lighter for their email address.

Cigarette Lighters For DUI Attorneys

So I told a DUI attorney to do the same thing. I told him to go get some promotional lighters made that basically had his name and his contact information printed on them. They said, Bill Smith, DUI attorney, and then his phone number on the back.

It’s not expensive. It’s about 300 bucks for a thousand lighters. And he took them to bars in downtown Denver and just kept giving boxes of them to the bartenders. Because the cool thing is that a lot of people that go to bars will want free lighters. And basically, he’d say, here, these are for you guys.

Just pass them out whenever someone needs a lighter. Just give them to the patrons. So the theory is that it’s impossible to not lose a lighter. So we’re thinking that every lighter would hit one and a half people.

The idea is that it’s something that especially smokers want. And in Denver, recreational marijuana is legal. This means there’s a lot of demand for lighters and especially free lighters. So here you’ve got something that someone has in their pocket and they’re always taking it out and holding it up to their face, and it has your name on it.

And then it’s in their pockets when they get arrested and they’re at a bar, so they’re drinking. So it just worked out really well. It was a really good promotional item. And I know he got cases, out of that. I don’t know how many, but I know he got cases. I’m not sure if he’s still doing it. I don’t know why he wouldn’t be doing it. He probably isn’t, but he should be.

What Will People Find Useful?

So promotional lighters are really good. You just have to think of the things that people are going to find useful. For example, I’ve been telling personal injury attorneys for a year now to start giving out promotional cell phone holders. That’s cell phone holders that go in your car’s air vent.

Cell Phone Holders

Get your name and your phone number screen-printed on the inside behind where the phone goes. You can get them on Ali Express for like two bucks apiece probably. And then what you do is you screen-print your name and your phone number on it. For example, Bill Smith, Car Accident Attorney, and the phone number.

And then, every time somebody gets in their car, they see your name and your phone number over and over again in the exact place where they would get into a car accident.

Credit Card Bottle Openers

So that’s an interesting idea. I’m trying to think about some other ones. It’s really just about what people are going to hold on to. DUI attorneys could use is these credit card bottle openers.

I’ve also seen credit card pocketknives, which is interesting. I don’t know if you want to give that away, but there are all kinds of small little promotional items you can give away.

I have a credit card bottle opener and I use it. It’s a bottle opener the size of a credit card. If you’re a DUI attorney, give those things away. They are around 75 cents apiece. You get your information put on them and people think they’re really cool. So there are all kinds of things that you can give away. Just think about what people find useful and give that away. That’s what I would do.

We just got off the phone with a client. We were looking at his call logs, and it was phone call after phone call after phone call, and all of them were only one minute long. What that means is that every single time, his calls were going to voicemail.

The Problem With Voicemail

Sure enough, we looked at the times, and they were when either the office was at lunch or after 5:00 PM when their office was closed. He pays us a lot of money on marketing and spends a lot of money on advertising. In an effort to help, we told him to get an answering service because people do not leave voice messages.

People Want Help Now

Picture this: Let’s say your toilet is overflowing and you call a plumber. Are you going to leave a message or are you going to hang up and dial the next plumber?

Odds are you’re going to hang up and dial the next plumber. That’s how people are when they’re searching for a lawyer. If they need an attorney and they know who you are, then they’re more likely to leave a voicemail.

Remember Where Your Potential Clients Come From

However, most of the time, the clients that we’re dealing with come to us through pay per click, search engine optimization, social media, etc. People are not willing to leave a message. They are just going to hang up and call your competitor. Once that happens, they are gone.

What You Need To Do

You need to either make sure your phones are staffed 24 hours a day, or you need to hire an answering service. We have two that we recommend. I do not have any affiliation with either of them, but one is Voice Nation, and the other is Answer First. We’ve worked with both of them with our clients, and they have both done a good job.

It always amazes me when a lawyer spent so much money, this client spends $2,500 a month with us every single month, and he lets calls go to voicemail.

What One Missed Call Could Be Worth

One of those missed calls could have paid for our entire marketing campaign, and he’s just letting it go to voicemail. An answering service is not expensive. It’s only a few hundred dollars a month. That pales in comparison to what you are losing, and it also pales in comparison to what you’re typically spending on marketing.

I just wanted to share this quick little PSA. I talk to lawyers all the time where this is an issue, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s a really simple problem to solve. All you have to do is call Voice Nation, Answer First, or another service. Just make sure that your calls do not go to voicemail.

In this post, I want to show you something that you can check on your own website to make sure that your search engine optimization is at least going in the right direction. It’s a problem that I see over and over again.

It’s essentially SEO 101. I try not to get too technical with search engine optimization because I know it’s going to be over most people’s heads, but there are some very basic SEO tactics that you should know.

Some Basic SEO Principles

These are the first things that I learned when I started doing SEO many years ago. It still is applicable today, but so many companies and websites don’t have the basics correct. I want to show this to you, just so you can spot check your own website.

If these elements aren’t done correctly, then it’s probably why you’re not ranking. Or perhaps you don’t have these elements handled correctly, and you have an SEO company. If so, then you really need to start thinking about whether this is the right SEO company for you because this is very basic stuff.

The 3 Key Elements

In SEO, there are three elements that are the most important on any website or any page of a website. Now, every single page on the website is going to have these three elements. This is where your main keywords should appear. There is some variation in terms of how frequently they should appear, and I’ll get into that in a few minutes. I just want to show you what they are.

The Page Title

The first thing is going to be your page title. Now, the page title is what appears right at the top. Now, if I hover over it, you will see that it says Baltimore DUI + DWI Defense Lawyer – Rice Law Firm. Now, I’m not going to get into a strategy in terms of how you should actually word this, but you do want to make sure that you have at least your main keyword in there.

This law firm, they’re in Baltimore, Maryland, and they have Baltimore DUI, DWI defense lawyers. They’ve got DUI, DWI lawyers which is good. They also have Rice Law Firm.

A lot of times, I see lawyers that will have their brand name there. If they have Rice Lawyers and nothing else, then that’s not an effective thing. The page title is arguably the most important place to have your main keyword, and it should be first. It shouldn’t be Rice Lawyers.

By the way, I don’t know who this guy is. I just picked his website at random. Actually, he was ranked number one when I searched organically for Baltimore DUI lawyers. So, good work to whoever is doing his website. Anyway, you want to make sure that you got the keyword first. He’s got Baltimore DUI and DWI defense lawyers.

I probably wouldn’t do it that way, but you can see that sometimes it works. As long as you got the main idea there: Baltimore DUI, DWI defense lawyers. It’s working for him.

The Page URL

The second most important element is going to be your page URL. Now, take a look at this. He’s got Baltimore DUI attorney in his page URL.

Let’s see, he does criminal defense. Google has said that they think the closer to the root domain your keyword is, the better. If I was doing this website, I would probably get rid of criminal defense, and I would probably have the URL look like that: RiceLawMD.com/Baltimore-DUI-Attorney.

But, he does have Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer up top here as the page title, and Baltimore DUI Attorney here as the URL. This is probably the second most important place to have a keyword. Again, we want a keyword. If you notice, he’s got an attorney in one place, and he’s got a lawyer in the other. Actually, he’s got lawyers, plural, there.

H1 Header

Now about the third most important place to have a keyword, and actually, it’s kind of a toss-up between the URL and this next one that we’re going to talk about. Which one is two, and which one is three? Honestly, they’re both important. The third is going to be your H1 header. Now, an H1 header is not as obvious as your page title or your URL.

NOTE: You may want to watch the video to follow along.

An H1 header is actually what’s known as the page tab. Often, the H1 header is going to be down here. However, this H1 header happens to be right here. The way that I know that is because I have a tool on my computer that tells me that. It’s called Open SEO Stats which is a free plugin for Chrome.

I go here, and I click page info, and you could see right here, H1 is Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer. You can also see the page title and URL. If you want to look at this in one piece, you can do that. You can see right here, the URL is Baltimore DUI Attorney, the title is Baltimore DUI DWI Defense Lawyers, and the H1 header is Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer.

Should You Use Variations?

Now, if you notice, he’s got an attorney, lawyers, and lawyer. So, he’s got a nice variation of a lawyer, lawyers, attorney, and law firm all that type of stuff. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to do the same thing every time. You don’t want to have Baltimore DUI Lawyer, Baltimore DUI Lawyer, Baltimore DUI Lawyer. You want to switch it up a little bit.

If you don’t have this plugin, you can click on what you think is the H1 header and right click on it, hit specs, and then on the side, you’re just going to see it’s highlighted, and it says H1 Class. That means it’s the H1 header. That’s a little more technical.

There are a couple of variations to this rule. Now, I do things a little differently. I typically try to make the H1 header a little bit more conversational. You don’t have to, but that’s what I try to do. I try to do something like Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer Fighting for the Accused since 1984.

How Optimized Should You Make Your Website?

Some people might say this is over-optimized and it typically depends on the search and competition. Sometimes, you may have a two-thirds rule. This is something that we do quite often where we’ll have the page title with the keyword, and then either the URL or the H1 header has your main keyword in it, but not both. So, you have two out of three.

What We Do For Our Clients

Now, as I said, this guy is number one, and he’s got three out of three. So, it’s not an absolute rule. Typically, what you want to do is search for your main keyword. If you’re trying to rank for Baltimore DUI Lawyer, we look at what the other pages on the first page of Google are doing, and then we pretty much kind of follow that.

I thought this was important because I looked at so many websites for lawyers that say they have a marketing company or they have a search engine optimization company and this basic principle is not even taken care of.

We’ve had new clients come to us, and their websites are not optimized, even like this. Even after paying SEO companies for years and years, and then all we do is make a couple of tweaks to their page title, their H1, maybe change the URL if necessary. They get an instant ranking to boost and typically get cases out of it.

It’s crazy that this basic thing is ignored so often. If you pay attention to this, if you want to check your own website, there are also some other variations where you can try to work in Google my business categories. Those are more advanced, and we’re not even really doing it that much anymore except for special circumstances.

If you have any questions about your own website or if you think something looks a little weird, just shoot me a message or leave me a comment. I’ll take a look at it, and we’ll see if I can figure out what’s going on for you.