attorney marketing

The Best Website Page Your Law Firm’s Listings Should Link To

Can Lawyers Get Clients From Live Events and Trade Shows

The question:

What do you think about setting up a booth at a trade show or an event? How can I get clients from the table to my sales funnel?

My answer:

I think the trade shows and events are good. But a lot of law firms set up an event and have some sort of signage with them. They’ll have a big banner with basically just the name of the law firm.

The biggest mistake law firms make at tradeshows

It just says, “Mike Smith, Law Firm,” and it doesn’t really say what the firm actually does. And it’s not just lawyers. Businesses do this all the time. They basically just display their branding.

There are things that work a lot better than that for getting attention at an event. That’s because nobody really cares about your branding. Your branding is not going to help you that much.

What to do instead

Instead, you can put in really big, bold letters what you help people do. I don’t know the type of law firm you have. But if you’re an estate planning attorney, you could say, “I help families have peace of mind if the worst should happen.”

Or if you’re a bankruptcy attorney, you can say, “Eliminate your debt and get peace of mind, and buy a house within seven years. I can help you do that.”

These aren’t really great examples but they’re something that people are actually going to look at and they’re going to think, “Oh wow! That’s something that I definitely want. I can see the benefit.”

What I would do at events

If I was to go to a law firm marketing event with a table, I wouldn’t put Social Firestarter on my signs, which is the name of my agency. I wouldn’t put that really big in the background. Instead I would do the same thing I always do.

I’d use my standard line, which is, “I can help you get more law firm clients,” or, “I can help your law firm get more clients without wasting any more time, money, or energy, and without getting screwed by a marketing company.”

What you should do to get better results

If you go to a live event, a trade show, or something like that, make sure that your signage just talks about the benefit to the actual consumer, the actual potential client. Do that rather than advertising yourself, your branding, or your firm.

That’s going to get you a lot more people to start conversations with you. And it’s probably going to get you a lot more clients as well.

This is a subject that comes up often. People will ask me if buying reviews is okay, adding that they know someone who they are sure does this.

The Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO Debate

When I began, I wanted to do everything 100% white hat SEO. I wanted to stay well across any line of question and clearly away from Google radar. As I grew in the industry and my relationships grew in the industry, people I knew and respected pointed something out to me.  You can always be 100% right and you will be 100% beaten by those who bend or break the rules. In my eight years of business. I can report, this is absolutely true.

What Can You Do?

A lot of people ask if they should report these “people” they know to Google.  I will tell you point-blank, I would not report them. I have never reported them and it is not my plan. So, yes you can. But I don’t advise it. That is their decision and it is between them and Google.

What I do advise is that you get more reviews for yourself.

Ways To Get More Reviews For Yourself

• Incentive reviews

I like to offer my clients or future clients an incentive in exchange for their review. Sometimes I will offer them a gift card, or a card for dinner at a popular restaurant, or some other gift for their time. This is what I call walking in the gray area. It allows me to compete without crossing the line.

• Colleague reviews

Your people do not have to be a current client to leave a review. Here are a few examples of colleague reviews:

“If I ever get arrested for DUI, Bob Johnson would be the first attorney I would call. Bob is a great guy and a hard worker. I know he would get the job done.”

“Brenda Greene handled my co-worker’s personal injury case. If I ever need an attorney, I will hire her.”

These are quality reviews and they are perfectly legal.

This Is A Case Of Quantity Over Quality

This may be the only case you will see where quantity takes the prize over quality. You may have 20 reviews on your site. Perhaps only 2 of these reviews are pulling in 4.2 stars, It doesn’t matter. The fact that you have 20 reviews gets you the calls you need.  Think of it this way. The last time you were shopping on Amazon and were narrowing down your search did you look down at the search numbers? Sure you did. Now if one seller had 20 reviews and the other only had 3, you probably went straight to the one with 20, right? Of course. You probably assumed if they sold enough of them that 20 people took time to write, they are the ones. I doubt you stopped to read the 20 reviews. This is something I have been saying for 10-years and recently, Search Engine Journal has published a report saying the same thing.

I don’t encourage anyone to go crazy breaking rules and doing anything they want to. But sometimes you have to skate close to the line if you are to compete with those who do. You have to be smart and understand the rules in order to navigate SEO waters.

We all know how important online reviews are. It has become the norm when we are going to use a business or service to grab our phones and pull up their reviews. We want to know what other customers or clients have to say about this company or service. But, what happens when the business you are looking up has a lot of reviews and they are all from a small time-period? It generally means that the company was asking people for reviews.

Google

Google does not have a problem with websites asking for reviews. What they do take issue with is a bunch of reviews coming from a single IP address. Especially if that IP address is your work IP address or home IP address. This would indicate that someone was sitting at your business or in your home, reviewing your place of business. Further, you do not want a lot of reviews coming from your office WiFi address. This would indicate that you are asking for reviews and clients are taking care of the request while they are waiting. This is the type of problem Google will act upon. So, as long as the reviews are unique, the time frame is not an issue for Google.

Examples

We have had clients that have gotten 20 or 25 reviews in a short period of time. About 5-years ago, we had a personal injury attorney in Pasadena, California that got 47 reviews in 2-weeks. To this day he still gets a ton of calls just because he has all these reviews. Google has never had a problem with it.

Yelp

Yelp is very careful about the reviews posted on their sites. They watch it closely. If your site normally gets a few reviews at a time and suddenly you get 10 or 15, Yelp is going to filter every one of them. If you are not familiar with Yelp, that means they are going to take them down and put them up as they feel they are related.

We had a personal injury lawyer in Orange County, California that we were working with. The entire time we worked with him, he had failed to do a single thing we had asked of him. We would give him detailed instructions and they just did not do them. I had mentioned to him that we would need some Yelp reviews. I did not go into detail (like telling him that we would need to post them over a year) because he had never given me anything I had asked for and I was not expecting this to be any different. I was shocked when he delivered 12 Yelp reviews in a three-day time. He was just as shocked when Yelp filtered them just as quickly. He is probably still hot about that one.

So, if you are going to gather reviews, be sure you know where to put them. As important as reviews are fake reviews or reviews that do not really tell you anything are worse than worthless. If a client reads a review and does not come away with some knowledge about your service, and merit, he is left frustrated This is usually enough to send him to the next attorney. They are looking to see if you have the personality, work ethic, and drive they want to work with. If your review leaves them dry, they may leave you too.

8 Things to know before leaving findlaw

Moz Local and Yext are automatic citation services. I am often asked if I would use these services. I have explained that I have used Yext in the past. In fact, we used to use them for all of our clients. However, I would not use them now, nor do I plan on using them in the future. As for Moz Local, I have never used any of their paid services. I have used them to search for listings to see what is out there, but nothing more.

Why Did We Stop Using Yext?

When we first used Yext, we were impressed. Yext was impressive. What Yext does is Yext allows you to update all of your business citations so that you just basically have one dashboard and all of your listings get updated in one place. It’s really convenient but the problem is that when things are too convenient typically it doesn’t work out, especially in marketing.

Soon, we noticed a problem. The problem is that they all use the exact same business description. When that happens you end up with a duplicate content issue and Google ends up not counting it, it just ends. The reason you’re doing it is so you can rank in Google and if Google’s not counting it then it doesn’t work. Basically what you have to do is you have to do it manually, unfortunately.

Moz Local

I have never used Moz local other than to search for a listing and see what’s out there. I’ve used it a lot for that but I’ve never actually paid for Moz local so I cannot say either way. I would imagine that they probably run into the same issues with Yext just because Yext isn’t really the problem. The way that Google indexes pages is the problem. So unless Moz local allows you to add a different business description for each page you’re probably going to run into the same issue. Moz, I don’t know. I don’t have the answer but it probably is going to run in the same issue with Yext.

You can click here to compare Moz Local to Yext. You will see they both have pros and cons. For example, Moz Local is only available in English while Yext is available in many languages. Yext will only price you via a quote, while Moz Local has several price packages.

This is one of those things that you may want to try. You will need to keep a sharp eye on things and be sure you are not allowing a problem to build and grow out of control. My recommendation is to let this pass you by, but this is your call. You may want to look around a little, there are other companies making their way to the top too. Technology is ever-growing.