Online Reviews Versus Personal Recommendations

Gyi Tsakalakis
April 28, 2014

Think people don't trust online reviews? Don't be so sure.

Last week, I had the honor of sharing a stage with Nifty Law President Mike Ramsey.

Mike is one of a very few people I would trust to market my own law practice online.

The image at the top of this post comes from the deck we presented at Avvo's Lawyernomics conference.

The slide references BrightLocal's 2013 Local Consumer Review Survey.

If you market a law practice online, you should spend some time reviewing their findings.

A lot of attorneys I speak with dismiss online reviews. The typical objections tend to go something like this:

“When people make important decisions, like hiring a lawyer, they don’t use things like search; they rely on people they trust.”

I have seen plenty of analytics and CRM data that demonstrates this to be false for a lot of people. Nonetheless, I'm sure there are many people in many legal contexts for which it is at least partially true.

In fact, I would encourage anyone who is looking for an attorney to turn to people they trust. However, I'd also encourage them to research the attorney online and assign what they find its proper weight in making their decision.

I anticipate that some of you are thinking:

"Well that might be true for consumer electronics and plumbers, but attorneys are different."

And in many ways, you would be right. The search for attorneys is (should be) different.

But if you think that what people say about you online doesn't matter to anyone, well then, you are a fool.

Now look, if BrightLocal were to conduct this same study solely of legal services consumers, it's quite likely that online reviews wouldn't be assigned the same level of trust as personal recommendations.

But it's even more likely that they would be assigned at least some level of trust.

Also, notice how steeply the number of people who answered "no" has dropped. I would expect this number to continue to decline.

Still not convinced that people are using online directories, communities, ratings and reviews in legal? Take a look at some of these numbers from Avvo:

avvo-numbers

Avvo

So, what's the takeaway?

Provide great service to your clients. Build a strong word of mouth referral network.

But also encourage the people who would personally recommend you to review online.

Make encouraging reviews a regular part of your client communication process.

Remember, reviews don't have to include superlatives about the outcomes you get for clients.

Sure, people want to feel that you are competent to handle their situation. But reviews can also speak to your compassion, patience and understanding. These are also things that people who are considering hiring you care about.

Don't know where to send happy folks who want to sing your praises? Start with these:

  • Google Places (Google Plus Local Pages)
  • Yelp!
  • Avvo

Looking to spread the love around? Check out Nifty's Local Search Directories and Moz Local's Top Citation Sources for Attorneys.

Finally, if permissible in your state, use reviews on your own pages. Don't forget to include structured data markup for reviews.

Gyi Tsakalakis
Co-Founder of AttorneySync
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
myles anderson
myles anderson
10 years ago

Nice piece Gyi - good to see a well structured argument which furthers the message that online reviews are important & should be baked into local search strategies for all (most) businesses

Gyi Tsakalakis
10 years ago
Reply to  myles anderson

Thanks for stopping in Myles. And thanks for all your great work.

Bill Bean
10 years ago

Why is this such an uphill battle with attorneys? Or is it just the ones I work with...which, of course, means I might be the problem.

Gyi Tsakalakis
10 years ago
Reply to  Bill Bean

It's not just the ones you work with...

Review Monitoring
Review Monitoring
10 years ago

Gyi, great points!

Let's Discuss Your Growth

Helping law firms grow profitably with digital marketing and can prove it.

Barry Conybeare

We are so impressed with AttorneySync and their digital marketing services. We started with an audit of our digital presence and hired them thereafter. Fixes to the website and other platforms quickly followed and we have seen a substantial increase in online traffic, new client calls, and new client contracts. Strongly recommend AttorneySync!

Let's Talk

How can we help?

More From Our Blog

June 8, 2023
On Local Law Firm SEO Rank Tracking and Reporting

Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]

Read More
June 7, 2023
On Attribution

John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]

Read More
March 22, 2023
I asked ChatGPT to Recommend a Personal Injury Law Firm

I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]

Read More
February 17, 2023
My Take on Google Search's Guidance on AI-Generated Content & Law Firm SEO

If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]

Read More
February 16, 2023
Google Adds New SEO Best Practices for Links

If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]

Read More
February 1, 2023
Authenticity & Engagement

The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]

Read More
January 19, 2023
ChatGPT for Legal Marketing

The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]

Read More
May 26, 2022
SEO Expectations for Law Firms

How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]

Read More
May 6, 2022
Who Should Do Marketing?

And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]

Read More

Let's Discuss

Questions or comments? Let's discuss on social!
envelope
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram