Are Hoverboards the next big mass tort lawsuit for 2016?

The now famous hoverboard, one of 2015's hottest Christmas gifts has just become even hotter...in legal circles. As linked below, a growing number of accidents ranging from personal injuries to house-fires are linked back to this new device and many attorneys are now taking note. Is this the next big mass tort of 2016?


http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/30/technology/hoverboard-lawsuits/index.html

http://kxan.com/2016/01/01/hoverboard-injuries-spike-after-christmas/

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Hoverboard-Crashes-Send-Injured-Riders-to-Texas-Hospital-364031401.html

Other breaking new on Hoverboard injuries...

#hoverboard  #hoverboardaccidents #hoverboardlawsuit #miketyson

72% OF CONSUMERS RETAIN THE FIRST ATTORNEY THEY CONTACT

There is a good deal of discussion these days about client/case conversion but what attorneys often fail to realize is something that the insurance companies learned a long time ago: most people buy from the first responder. Geico, who has literally spent billions of dollars on their brand name alone, found in their own studies that most people will only get one insurance quote and then buy from that firm. When it comes to attorneys, people’s buying habits are no different.

In FindLaw’s recently released 2014 consumer legal needs survey they found that fully 72% of respondents indicated that they only contacted one attorney before selecting them. The remaining 15% contacted two attorneys and 13% three attorneys. In short, nearly ¾ of consumers do not continue to shop around after initially contacting an attorney.

SO WHAT CAN ATTORNEYS LEARN FROM THIS?

We know from previous studies that people will on average look at 4.8 attorney websites before they contact a firm – so they ARE shopping around. The issue here is that the shopping process for attorneys ends 72% of the time after the initial contact is made.

So what can be done to help improve this process BEFORE the initial contact is made…

IMPROVE YOUR BRAND & REPUTATION ONLINE

Online consumer opinions were the backbone to building such websites as Amazon.com, ebay, Yelp and others. Why? Because 79% of consumers now indicate that they trust online opinions about you. This is important for attorneys because many page-one search results for attorneys and/or law firms include consumer opinion sites like Yelp, AVVO, Google local and others. So have you created a strategy to manage your brand reputation online? Remember: if you do not proactively define your brand, others will define it for you. Since most referrals are given out in numbers, write down the names of your top 3-5 referrals competitors. Next, Google their names and firm names and look at the results – compare them to yours. Finally, look at their websites and also compare them to yours. If you were an objective consumer who has never used an attorney before, which search results impress you the most? If it is not you, you have work to do here.

IMPROVE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE

Is your online presence an accurate reflection of what you want people to think of your firm (your brand)? As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Most attorneys today already have a website so the question is moving beyond “IF” you need a website to now “HOW” you need a website. Most of your new and referral clients are looking at your website and formulating an opinion about you BEFORE they ever contact you. They are also increasing looking beyond your website alone to look for more information about you from other resources.  In a growing number of instances, we are seeing these “delayed conversions” in excess of 60% of the time.

INCREASE YOUR VISIBILITY

Most attorneys limit their brand and online presence to a website alone and in most cases; their websites fail to provide high visibility in Google for anything beyond their own names. As we have previously discussed, a website is like a book and in order for search engines like Google to be able to properly index and display your website for desired searches, you have to structure the website optimally to do so.  Additionally, your brand footprint should extend well beyond just your website alone so you can create additional citations to support your brand. People who don’t know you won’t always trust what you tell them on your website alone – they want citations to support it. These can come from videos, rating & accreditation websites, news, social media and others. Want a great example of how this can look? Try this one:  https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=tom+girardi

INCREASE YOUR QUALITY OF YOUR CONTACTS

We know from the same FindLaw survey that 74% of contacts attorneys receive are by phone while only 7% are by email and 2% by online contact form.  We also know from other surveys that 80% of callers will hang-up when they get a voicemail. I am still amazed at how many times I will call a law firm on hours and off hours and receive a voicemail or no answer within 5-7 rings. If a caller receives and voicemail and/or if they hear 5-7 rings or more, you are sending them a message (intentional or not) that your contact is not of high importance to them.  If you do not have a live body answering the phone quickly 24/7 you are losing client and cases – period!

In summary, people shop around for attorneys but 72% of the shopping stops at the first attorney they contact. Since the majority of the decisions the consumers and referrals make about you comes from their research online BEFORE they contact you, you need to be smart, proactive and competitive in your evaluations of how you can become the first attorney they chose to contact. You also need to make sure that they way the majority of them prefer to contact you (PHONE) leads to a conversion and not a hang-up. 

#lawyermarketing  #attorneymarketing #sales #business #law #attorney  #lawyer #sales manager

Organic Search & Google + Lead The Way on ROI (Return On Investment)

So how does the Return On Investment (ROI) for Organic Search compare to PPC (Pay Per Click or Google Adwords) advertising?  This is a question I receive on almost a daily basis from attorneys.

A recent survey by BrightLocal was conducted to determine the highest levels of ROI -  and the results may be surprising to some. We often think in the context of organic search versus PPC but what this surveys shows is that we may be missing one of the most important and fasting growing tools of all: Google + / Google Local.

Since 2009, we have been posting countless articles on the importance of local search for attorneys  as well as the recent emergence and importance of Google +. Google, who is now in effect the traffic cop of the internet, has made it abundantly clear that Google + will be integral to the use of their other services - including Google Local which is a must for attorneys.

So the next time you are debating whether your search strategy should include organic or PPC, make sure you are not missing out on #2: Google+ / Local. Additionally, a lot of attorneys today are  spending heavy on social media and most do nothing to feed their Google + strategy beyond a simple setup. These results should also question that thinking as well...


#lawyermarketing #attorney #lawyer

Building An Effective Frequency Marketing Plan For Your Law Firm #lawyermarketing

One of the biggest mistakes I commonly see lawyers make is in creating ineffective marketing plans. The actions I frequently see are sporadic mailings, setup and infrequent use (or no use at all) of social media, and one-time media buys. My favorite comments from attorneys are when they will start a social media / media / mailing strategy and then stop it saying that they “didn’t see any results” and/or they “are not getting new cases” in continuing these efforts. The genesis of this problem typically emanates from too much focus on the “what” of marketing while lacking a true understanding for the “why” they are marketing to begin with.   

THE RULE OF 7

There is an old saying in marketing that your prospective clients need to see and/or hear you many times before they will buy from you. This is why you still see Coca Cola and Ford ads during the Super bowl. Did you not know what these brands were? Of course not. What they wanted to reinforce through these ads was the repetition in which you see them. The “Rule of 7” was adopted decades ago to provide a baseline for how many times (7) this needs to typically happen in a given year. The problem is that this was before the advent of the digital marketing age. With the increasing barrage of information we receive today, I typically recommend that attorneys be in front of their prospective clients and referrals at least 7-12 times a year in order to maximize this effect. The problem is that most attorneys are not.

FREQUENCY VERUS REACH

With the advent of social media, attorneys are now hearing the word “reach” which is used as a measure of the effectiveness of their social media advertising. REACH is nothing more than the total number of people who are exposed to your message. Conversely, FREQUENCY is the total number of times you reach them. To illustrate the difference, imagine you had $10,000 to spend on marketing in one year. Your first option is to create great content on your blog once a year that reaches 1000 people once. Your second option is to create good content eight times a year that reached only 125 of the same people. Which would be more effective? According to the Rule of 7, the eight content pieces to the same 125 people eight times would typically be 5X more effective when it comes to potentially converting them to clients. But what do most attorneys do today? They create high levels of reach over frequency.  

BUILDING YOUR BRAND

There are two types of marketing for attorneys: Branded and Non-Branded Marketing. The difference between the two is simple: BRANDING is what you are (Your Attorney & Firm Name) whereas Non-Branded Marketing is what you do (Your Practice Area/s). Most attorneys go to market today with a heavy imbalance between these principles and as a result, fail to improve conversions and their Return-On-Investment (ROI). The reality today is that there is a heavy convergence between these two types of marketing for attorneys and by forsaking one, you lose with the other. Let’s use an example. Say you have a heavy web presence in Dallas for white collar criminal defense lawyer searches. If you have high visibility for these searches online (Non-Branded) but have little/no name recognition or citations (Branded), what are you chances of that prospective client bringing their case to you? If the average person typically receives 2-3 referrals and looks at 4.8 attorney websites before contacting the firm, then how are you going to be able to convert that (Non-Branded) search into a case?

When people buy, they go through three psychological stages in the process: Need, Proof and Risk. Following the example above, the prospective client had a NEED so he/she searched. When they found your web properties, they found part of the PROOF for the search. The problem now is how does this person really know you’re the best option and mitigate their RISK by choosing you over another attorney? Is your BRAND strong enough to convey this proof and mitigate the risk?

An effective branding strategy is necessary for ANY attorney to establish the following criteria in a prospective client’s mind:

Does your BRAND confirm credibility?

Does your BRAND connect clearly with your target clients?

Does your BRAND emotionally motivate your target clients?

Does your BRAND convey value and loyalty?

Your branding strategy must address each of these areas to be fully effective in your attorney marketing. Here are questions / issues / actions I commonly see dealing with each…

Confirm Credibility: If you want the best cases / clients, what are you telling them about you that makes them want you? Most people today do not stop their search after they find you for a Non-branded search. If they find you but don’t know you (Your Brand), their next search is commonly your attorney and/or firm name to see what comes up about you. Just because YOU might say good things about yourself (on your website) doesn’t mean that your prospective clients aren’t looking elsewhere (Yelp, Google Reviews, Super Lawyers, LinkedIn, AVVO, etc.) to confirm the same. They are and the internet is now enabling this!

Connect Clearly: I cannot tell you how many times I have had attorneys who target consumers asking me if they should maintain their AV Rating and promote it. My answer is simple: does your target audience understand what an AV Rating means? Think about WHO your target client profile is and what they do and don’t know first before you assume they know anything about attorneys, the law, your profession and you.

Emotionally Motivate: Most people are not happy when they have to seek out an attorney. Because of this, they are both logically and emotionally driven in their search and evaluation. If I am getting a divorce, being sued by a business partner or arrested for a DUI, how do you think I feel when I need legal help and most likely have never worked with an attorney before? How do you best connect to that emotion and convert them to a client? The good news is that most of your competition fails at this – you do not have to.

Convey Value & Loyalty: The third most active page on an attorney website is typically the case results and testimonials pages. Why? Simple; people need to satisfy the PROOF of what you can provide them and mitigate the RISK they take in choosing you over another attorney. Both of these factors are increasingly confirmed off of your website as well so just telling them on your website alone is no longer good enough. Did you know that 70% of people now indicate that they trust online consumer opinions about you? What should that tell you…

BUILDING AND EFFECTIVE FREQUENCY MARKETING PROGRAM

Effective frequency marketing for lawyers incorporates all of the elements above into one coordinated and cohesive strategy. It gives symmetrical balance to both your BRANDED and Non-Branded marketing elements as well as your marketing REACH and FREQUENCY. Here are some steps to help achieve this for your law firm:

• DIVERSIFY YOUR REACH: Referrals and prospects all respond differently based on the target audience and individuals so maximize your reach by diversifying your marketing mediums. Find out where their eye-time is by percentage and break down your marketing accordingly. This should be an ONGOING process and never assume that what is working today will work tomorrow. A lot of buggy whip and AOL stock owners learned this the hard way.

• BUILD FREQUENCY: Identify your target audience and make it a goal to have them see or hear from you 7-12X a year. If you have a limited budget, YOU MUST balance your reach and frequency to support the Rule of 7. Say for example you have two options: 1.) you can only afford one TV commercial (large audience) compared to 2.) being able to blog twice a week, build your social media and send out one mailing a month (smaller audience), which one is a better option? The best options are always balance of Reach and Frequency – DO NOT neglect one for the other.

• BUILD YOUR BRAND: If you have historically invested heavily in non-branded marketing (most attorney can raise their hands now), it is time to start balancing the scales. Do you have a system to get your happy clients saying good things about you on review sites? Have you created a profile on Super Lawyers to help get nominated? How good if your LinkedIn profile and network? Did you know that nearly 93% of all attorneys are on LinkedIn?

• FOCUS ON COVERSION ROI: Marketing is no longer linear for attorneys – there are simply too many points of citation to go with only one. It is no longer easy to simply track-back a lead source when they may have found you through a referral and/or online (website, blog, social media, Google Local, etc.) looked at your reviews on Google and Yelp, saw you on Super Lawyers, read your LinkedIn profile, etc. – all of which took place BEFORE they ever contact you. Now how do you calculate your Return-On-Investment (ROI) for just one of these contact points? You can’t anymore. The only true measurement you have now is the cases and clients you generate as a result of ALL of these mediums working as part of a unified approach.

• UTILIZE LEVERAGE POINTS: 10 years ago, attorney marketing was much easier than it is today. In most instances it was build a website and run yellow page ads and there you go. Fast forward to today and you will see that nearly EVERYTHING your referral and prospective clients do has an online component (PC, smart phones, iPads, etc.) to it and those piles of phone books sitting in the trash make great doorstops. The world is rapidly changing and becoming more complex – especially online. The bottom line: I would no more advise an attorney to handle all of their marketing any more than I would advise a patient to perform brain surgery on himself. The world of law and marketing is becoming increasing competitive and complex leading to specialization. If you want to succeed in growing your business of law, hire a lawyer marketing specialist who can help you achieve it. If you want to simply practice law, do the same. Either way, you can end up with the same result. 

#lawyermarketing #attorneysearch #brandmarketing #seo

Say Goodbye To #attorney Website Keyword Analysis

There is an old saying in business that you cannot manage what you cannot measure. If you are an attorney and look at your website analytics, you may have noticed something dramatically different over the past few months.  Over the years, most attorneys will do a quick read of their website analytics and look at things such as overall website traffic, search traffic, bounce rates, content page performance and keywords.  Keywords took a particular interest to many because it provided a simple insight as to what people where typing into the search engines when they landed on a website. The problem is what Google has changed the game …again.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING KEYWORD DATA

When reviewing search keyword performance, many #attorneys have noticed a trend over the past few years where (not provided) has continued to increase and now dwarf the other keywords listed. Google started by “hiding” this information in 2011 for signed-in search users and just a few months ago and now extended this to all users – even those who are not signed-in to Google.  What does this mean? According to Search Engine Land, upwards of 74% of all keyword data is now “Not Provided” by Google. I ran a similar test on a couple of my client sites (see example) and noticed that over the past year-over-year comparison, I have seen a roughly 75% increased in (not provided) traffic data. When I isolate this data down to just Google, I am seeing similar results as the study provided above.

GOOGLE CONTINUES TO CREATE AN UNEVEN PLAYING FIELD

As we have pointed out many times before, Google is not in the business to help anybody more than Google.  95+% of their revenues come from paid advertising, which you buy directly or indirectly from Google by the way. Google’s major competition is from organic search results which typically provide a higher ROI and they know it – that is why they are trying to shrink it down to oblivion.  The fact that they are now not providing keyword search data is yet another in a long line of trends to confuse and frustrate advertisers to a point where they end up buying more paid advertising…from Google of course.

WHAT YOU CAN DO FROM HERE

If you are active in #attorneymarketing online, there are a few things to consider moving forward:

1.) Stop relying on search keyword data to measure performance.  The 665 changes Google made to their search algorithm in 2012 should be a clear indicator that keyword chasing and ranking is heavily frowned upon and now can be severely penalized.  Attorneys would be much wiser to focus in on analyzing practice area entry page data, traffic sources, conversion rates, and overall ROI. After all, why advertise in the first place

without ROI? What does a keyword really do for you beyond measuring a tanker by staring at its wake?

2.) If you have to rely on keyword data, draw it from the places that continue to provide it such as from Yahoo and Bing. If you run PPC, make sure to connect it with your Google analytics because, surprise, Google WILL provide you with keyword data from advertising spending with Google. Isn’t that nice of them! Depending on the level of PPC spending you do, this data can be helpful but in not a complete answer for keyword performance in organic search.

3.) Create more of a focus on localized and mobile search. The two most dramatic changes taking place online are the impacts that local optimization is having on attorney search and in what devices your clients are using to find you through.

4.) Create more and better content and win in the long-tail. Attorney search is becoming much more competitive and sophisticated and your website strategy needs to adjust to this new reality.

#attorneymarketing  #ppc  #lawyermarketing  #keywords

Successful Online #LawyerMarketing Requires #SocialMedia

Eight years ago many attorneys asked themselves if they needed a website. Today, similar questions now revolve around social media. I still conduct CLE classes at a number of bar associations dealing with online #lawyermarketing and social media and nothing fills the room like a social media CLE. Why? Because unlike a simple website, social media can be far more complex and difficult to understand for a typically attorney. Moreover, social media is best utilized as a much larger piece of an overall attorney marketing strategy.

SOCIAL MEDIA + SEO = SUPERIOR RESULTS

Until recently, most website authority producing measures had to do with the quality and quantity of inbound links generated to a website. In 2012, Google made 665 reported changes to their search algorithm with arguably the two most sweeping changes having to do with active content (Panda) and bad link building (Penguin).

As a result of these changes, we are seeing new sources of authority coming from content distribution points – namely #socialmedia. A recent study by Acend2 indicates that companies with the strongest social media / SEO strategies now produce the best results, and visa-versa. This was further picked up in Search Engine Land when they built on this analysis to point out the important of social media marketing and local SEO efforts. Since most attorney searches are local in nature, this should grab your attention.

 BUILDING AN ACTIVE CONTENT STRATEGY

At the heart of social media is unique content generation and the best place to generate new and fresh content is on a blog. When content is created on a blog, it can be automatically sent to content distribution points where people can more readily see, access, promote, share and act on it. The most effective content distribution points for attorney come from social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, etc.). This is what we refer to as an active content strategy – all of the necessary pieces from generation (blogs) to distribution (social media) to conversion (websites) working together.

MOVING BEYOND SIMPLE INBOUND #LINKBUILDING

As the search engines like Google are changing from static to a more dynamic content indexing, they face a number of new changes including which results should have the highest authority (and rank) in the SERP’s. Although inbound links (off-site SEO) still remain a critical component to success online, the search engines are finding new ways to create authority from social media. In short, if inbound links serve as “votes” from other websites, what does active content generation and distribution count as and how should it be measured?

The most effective way to measure social media content distribution is through “#reach.” Reach is nothing more than a simple measurement of the total number of people who see your social media updates. The more people “reached,” the better visibility and potential for new case / client generation you receive. Beyond reach, Google has added one more benefit: authority.

AUTHORITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Through optimal content flow and distribution of active content, the search engines should be able to source your social media information to a single point. Much like an author will cite their sources in a book, so too will the search engines try to cite the sources of content through citation flows. The more of these citation flows from blogs, news, post, tweets, retweets, Google +, etc., the more potential authority can be gained by the source. For most attorneys, the source is their blog which more often than not resides on their website. When properly executed with all of the pieces working together in an active content strategy, we are seeing around a 30% bump in overall traffic to websites that deploy this strategy compared to firms that do not. This would help reinforce the findings from Acend2 study listed above. In short, authority comes from both off-site SEO (inbound link building) and citation flow (active content strategies).

WHAT EVERY ATTORNEY SHOULD KNOW

Internet marketing has evolved beyond a simple website. In fact, the technology and market is evolving so fast that what was optimal yesterday may be obsolete today in this competitive framework. Due to the limitations of the search engine battlefield, everything online is a function of competition. If you are not consistently moving forward in action and strategy, you will fall behind – plain and simple. Successful attorneys online have evolved beyond simple products (websites) and now follow additional strategies (active content) in order to stay ahead of the game and maximize new case and client generation efforts.  

Successful attorney marketing is a journey, not a destination. How you chose to compete ultimately comes down to this simple philosophy.

#blogs  #socialmedia  #activecontent  #lawyermarketing  #seo