Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) August 31, 2012
Attorney marketing in the past few decades has been conducted on a “contract for service” basis versus a “pay for performance” basis. In other words, most advertising strategies require payment of a fixed fee for services rendered even if those services result in zero prospects.
Traditional advertising strategies, many still used by attorneys, include ads in yellow pages, on bus benches, on billboards and over television and radio. What you buy with these advertising strategies is the display. Whether you generate prospects or not only matters when your advertisement is up for renewal.
Modern internet advertising is priced much the same as traditional advertising. Website design companies and search engine optimization experts are paid for their work regardless of the effectiveness of their work. Pay-per-click and display advertisements on various search engines (PPC and CPM respectively) may sound more performance-based, but even those strategies don’t ensure interested prospects. The cost of a PPC campaign is based on clicks, but anyone who finds your PPC ad can click on it, whether they’re interested, “just looking” or simply trying to deplete your marketing budget (yes, competitors do that).
Pay-for-performance advertising, also known as lead-buying, has been around for many years and has helped business owners in other industries thrive. Legal leads, however, have not been readily available due to ethics restrictions on lawyer advertising. States have their own required disclaimers for legal advertising. Referral services require approval. And fee-sharing with non-lawyers is prohibited. Once those ethics restrictions are addressed, legal leads can be the smartest advertising strategy available.
Credible service providers find prospects (leads) actively searching for legal assistance. When an attorney buys the lead, the attorney is buying an opportunity to talk to an interested prospect. Fees are assessed on a per-lead basis and are not dependent on the lead becoming a client or the amount of fees generated by the attorney. While a yellow pages ad may or may not ever generate an interested prospect (and you pay for it regardless), when you buy leads you only pay for leads you receive. Pay-for-performance increases your changes of talking to interested prospects. No leads? No fee.
To help attorneys assess their potential or actual return on investment (ROI), http://www.attorneyboost.com has two calculators available in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, along with a very simple explanation of how to use the calculators. Attorneys are welcome to request a copy of the calculators by tweeting to @attorneyboost, emailing info(at)attorneyboost.com or by visiting the company’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/attorneyboost.