If you don't have the time to click-through 26 slides, here's the tl;dr version:
Many lawyers have this "gut instinct" that they need to have a website (or they were told by a website designer that they need one). I'm not going to debate whether or not you "need" to have an online presence here. You can waste someone else's time waxing prophetically about whether this internet thing is a fad and whether it has any practical applications for your firm.
If you have decided to launch a new website, blog or any other online profile, you will be well-served spending some time brainstorming and planning.
From what I've seen, lawyers, or their in-house marketing folks, have a tendency to rush into chucking something against the internet wall to see what sticks.
I know, lawyers don't have time for lunch, let alone, to be intimately involved in the design and development of their firm's online marketing assets. And that is likely, at least in part, the reason that so many websites just don't do what they're supposed to do.
I also think that there are many do-it-yourself legal websites that look, well, like do-it-yourself websites (mine included). And that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on who your audiences are and what messages you're trying to communicate.
Once you accept the premise that people are going to look you up online, and that what they see when they find you matters to some degree as to whether they decide to call you, it's worth spending a little more time actually thinking about what you're going to show them. And perhaps, even making some minimal investments in putting something forward that demonstrates that you might just be a good candidate to handle their legal matter.
Unless you have technical, marketing, design and writing skills, you probably ought to consider getting some assistance.
You simply can't count the number of potential clients that you lose that didn't contact you because of something they found (or didn't find) out about you online.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
