Attorney Marketing & Advertising.com

Are you an attorney or a lawyer?

by Kathy

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It seems like a silly question really – are you an attorney or a lawyer? Both terms accurately describe your profession so it really doesn’t matter WHICH term you use when you or your agency creates your online marketing strategy for your law practice - does it? Let’s find out.

When it comes to local search – the search engines – like Google – know that both of these terms are interchangeable and deliver identical Local Search 7 Packs:

For example, a search for an attorney in Miami (first image thumbnail – click to open)

yields an identical result as a search for a lawyer in Miami (second image thumbnail – click to open):
Notice however, the results returned in organic search results below the local search box. While the super directory site Lawyers.com holds the number 1 organic “natural” search position for the term “miami attorneys” – the Superpages directory holds it for the term “miami lawyers”

So it’s obvious that when it comes to NATURAL or “unpaid” search – the two terms are not identically interchangeable.

What happens with paid search? Well a recent keyword analysis reveals that bidding for the term “miami attorneys” reveals you can expect to pay about $13 per click – with 18,100 local searches for the term. Meanwhile, the term “miami lawyers” showed 27,100 local searches – with an expected CPC of less than $11 per click.

Of course, the REAL question at hand is not whether you think you’re an attorney or a lawyer – but rather what terms do your best prospective legal clients use when they’re searching for you and your practice.

There are almost 10,000 attorneys listed in the yellow pages who practice in Miami Florida alone. However, the internet doesn’t WORK like the soon to be obsolete yellow pages. Those were the good old days – when an attorney could count on a Miami resident in need of a lawyer to simply pick up the yellow pages and “let their fingers do the walking.” Even if you couldn’t secure the back cover – or any other prime spot in any of the multiple local yellow page directories – you could still count on a fair shot once your prospective client opened up the yellow pages and turned to “attorneys”.

Now – the paths to finding your practice are as varied as the number of pages on the internet (currently estimated to be in the TRILLIONS.) For example, if you’re a personal injury lawyer – your prospective clients may not begin their official “search” for a lawyer by typing in the terms “best auto accident lawyer“. Instead, they may find an auto accident victim forum where they begin to converse with other car accident victims. Before you know it – they’re at a new auto accident lawyer directory making a decision about which attorney to choose to represent them.

In my work with clients – I use the term “bread crumb trails” to describe these hidden – yet profitable – paths for attracting clients. While this tiny directory may not rank in the top ten for any search term today – the leads a listing there could send may well be the most profitable for your practice to pursue.

In the end, what’s more important than trying to decide whether you define yourself as an “attorney” or a “lawyer” – but rather how do your best prospective CLIENTS define you and what you do.

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What do prospective clients need to know in order to hire you?

by Kathy

in Attorney Marketing

What do prospective clients need to know before they hire you? If you haven’t asked yourself this question lately – or ever – it is essential to ask and answer that question before you begin crafting a marketing strategy for your legal practice.

When you’re getting ready to draft a marketing message – it is not the time to go deep and reflect on your credentials or your personal strengths/weaknesses. Instead, this is the time to step outside of yourself and try to see the process of hiring legal representation through the eyes of your prospective clients.

Stepping outside yourself and into your prospective client’s shoes is exceedingly hard – especially when you’ve spent YEARS in law school – training yourself to THINK differently than the average person. However, the ability to step outside yourself and into your clients shoes is an essential step in creating successful attorney marketing strategies especially now as the average person shifts from using the yellow pages to find legal representation to the internet.

When people use the internet to find information, they often don’t use the same “rules” which ruled the printed yellow page directories. When people do search the internet in the same manner they used the yellow pages – the search engines have responded by creating what is known as “local search” directories. These local search directories operate in a VERY similar manner to the yellow pages – meaning when someone enters “accident attorney” followed by their location – the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing will return a nifty little map with markers showing all the prospective attorneys available in the area.

If you’ve maintained a business listing in the yellow pages, chances are you already have just such a listing – all you need to do is claim your free local search listing.

However, what if a prospective client doesn’t search for terms which trigger a local search listing? What if prospective clients are still trying to decide IF they need a lawyer?

This is why it is critical to get inside the heads of these prospective clients and try to see the world through their eyes. What information are they seeking? What words are they using to find this information?

Getting your name and information in front of prospective clients as they determine WHETHER they need a lawyer is one of the best practice building marketing strategies you can implement. When you know what prospective clients need to know before they hire you, it gives you a SIGNIFICANT advantage when it comes to using the internet to get find new clients online.

When you know what prospective clients need to know in order to hire you – you can answer those questions on your blog. You can use those questions as blog post titles – which helps blog visitors know immediately that they’re in the right place for the answers they seek.

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Internet Marketing Blog for Lawyers

Are you an attorney or a lawyer?

What do prospective clients need to know in order to hire you?

Attorney Marketing Strategies

Claim Your Local Search Listings

Secrets to Attorney Marketing: Sell without selling

Attorney Phone Book Advertising Obsolete

The phone book -vs- the Internet

The “New” Yellow Page Directory – The Internet

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