In The Art of War, Sun Tzu discusses strategy vs. tactics:
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
I often find myself speaking with attorneys about their online marketing only to become mired in discussions about tactics and logistics. Now don't get me wrong, understanding the tactics someone will use to market your firm is important. However, if you do so while ignoring your overall strategy than your odds for success are minimal.
You can evolve and change your tactics as you move along, but you need a sound strategy from the start. For example, simply getting your website to rank for a few keywords is a tactic, not a strategy. Unfortunately, I speak with lawyers everyday that treat this as if it's the entire marketing plan. Rankings mean nothing if those rankings don't produce traffic. The traffic means nothing if it isn't targeted and producing leads. The leads mean nothing if they aren't eventually turning into new clients and business for the firm.
Don't make the mistake of looking only at the tactics your competition uses. Think about how those tactics fit into an overall, web marketing strategy. Getting a ranking, starting a blog, creating a Facebook page, producing content, etc. are all tactics. These tactics, when executed with a clear strategy, can mean a lot of new business for your firm. Once a strategy is in place, the tactics you use can shift and adjust. You can figure out what's going on and how to make it better. But without a strategy, you will not have a cohesive effort....just a bunch of profiles online and a top ranking for the name of your firm.
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 […]
The above comment is right on the money. It used to be if you wanted a lawyer you would sift through the Yellow Pages. Now you can have a blog representing your company that is dynamic. It can be linked to Facebook or Twitter for Real Time Indexing (RTI).
Now you can have a blog that is connected to the world and your geo specific area. It is always changing and providing your clients with current and topical information.
Here is fallacy with all of this and those with websites on the 1st page of Google search ought to beware. A blog can over take an authority website on the 1st page. Using a blog like Blogger with a high PR can push its way to the top 5 searches via Google in a very short time. Google Black Hat World and you will see the competition is about 9,930,000. You will see our Hubpage in either the #2 or #3 position. You may also see our Facebook. In fact, on two pages for the keyword "black hat world" we have 7 positions for that client!
Some of you may think that having a blog on the blog on the 1st page is no big deal. Your wrong! Even if you have a website on the 1st page having a blog to compliment it is a very smart and strategic method of getting your competition "off" the 1st page. And that blog can drive traffic to your main site and give Google juice!
I created a Hubpage for a customer and in 4 months that Hubpage has a PR3 and ranks just below the main "authority" site of my customer! That customer is internet savvy and knows the value of creating blogs to compliment his website. In addition the Face book and Twitter accounts also show up on the 1st page frequently. So often he "dominates" the 1st page with 5 or more positions!
One last thing you have to be cognizant about is Google's new algorithm targeting Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Why? Well Google's new algorithm can blindside a website which is not following that them. And new website owners who pay attention to LSI can have their website catapulted not only to the 1st page, but in the top 5 of the Search Engine Results (SERPs), in a short time.
Do not under estimate the value of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 properties arsenal of Search Engine Optimization tools to dominate your competition and drive massive traffic to your website and business. And do not turn you back on Google's new LSI algorithm