Blogging and social media – who does it well ?

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Legal blogs and social media accounts have enjoyed explosive growth in the last year, as many lawyers finally wake up to the importance of the internet.

This is fantastic news except with perhaps one caveat – some may be too late to the party. The fact is that the value of blogging and social media effort depends on the size and loyalty of the audience. Put simply, if no-one is reading what you’re writing, there isn’t huge value in that.

Some in the legal sector realised the value of developing a great following and making great connections some time ago, and in our view, foremost among these is Gavin ward whose main website is wardblawg.com.

Gavin is an all round nice guy and posts lots of interesting material on his site, which is also very well structured. More than this, he is very active on twitter and other social media sites and has built up a very strong and loyal following running into the thousands.

As a consequence of the hard work Gavin has put in, he is now able to leverage his contacts by setting up a number of other blogs such as a property law blog, a personal injury blog and a number of others, which attract interest, visitors and guest posts from others in the legal community. this creates value in that google and the other search engines see that sites are linking to Gavin’s sites and visitor numbers are rising, with a loyal readership. The consequence of this ? Gavin’s sites are increasingly ranking well for search terms in the search engines, which makes those sites valuable assets as well as valuable resources.

We say good luck and well done to Gavin, he deserves all the success he has got and will get in the future.

 

 

 

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Local personal injury services – important for clients ?

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We all know that of all the legal niches, the most competitive, and where the fight is almost all about marketing, is personal injury. The personal injury firms spend big on marketing, both on tv, radio and the web, and that’s without incentives such as free gifts or cashbacks.

Most of the personal injury practices focus on the 100% compensation message and offer a nationwide service. Smaller personal injury firms in most cases get outmuscled and instead rely currently (although things are about to change in a big way) on referrals from claims management companies and other sources.

So, is there another way ? Is there perhaps a market on a more localised basis ? Do personal injury clients want to use lawyers they can meet and who offer a local service ? well, on established firm, Lloyd Green Solicitors, believe they do and have launched a new brand, for the people, aimed specifically at the personal injury and legal services market in Essex, with a radio advertising campaign designed to push the 2for the people” aspect.

this is an interesting concept and one we will monitor closely. we say good luck to anyone who differentiates themselves and tries something new – it’s a bold new legal world out there !

 

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Is author authority the new domain or page authority ?

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As you may or may not know, rankings in the all important google serps have traditionally been based on google’s measurement of the relevance, trust and authority of the overall website (known as domain authority) and at a page level (page authority).

these metrics in turn have been fundamentally based on the quality, relevance and number of links from other websites. Think of these as votes. If other rusted sites mention and link to yours (links being the important bit) your site has been seen as trusted by google and whoosh, up the rankings you go. rankings means traffic and visitor may mean enquiries and work.

But things are changing – there are huge ructions going on at the moment with google blitzing the manipulation of links, which has been going on on an industrial scale for the last decade. In short, links are still important, but the agenda is shifting and 3 things are becoming ever more important :-

1. your own personal profile and trustworthiness online

2. the quality of your content

3. your social media activity and footprint

All of the above are interlinked. It seems that google may very soon favour author authority over anything else. In some niches, particularly law, this may well be a critical metric. who are you, what are you doing online, are you well received, is your content “sticky” (liked). These may well start to effect your profill in the all important search engines and that of your firm.

Big changes indeed. Any thoughts ?

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2 more new websites

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Darlingtons Solicitors, a firm in London which prioritises and understands the value of a strong online presence, is continuing to roll out further online legal resources following the highly successful recent revamp of their main website.

A number of other savvy firms such as Bishops law also have a strategy which encompasses topic microsites and there are many advantages of this. Google dominates the search market, and as we have stated many times on this blog before, there are still a majority of law firms who have a sense that there is a lot of work to be had online, but still don’t really get it or are unwilling or unable to resource their own efforts.

The trend is for google and other search engines to look for ever more specific results to meet a searchers needs, and have a site which only deals with, say family law or employment law is generally an advantage, especially if it is a good keyword domain on the niche or even better geographically located, which will assist with google places. the more sites you have, the more google places entries you can have, which is also a big factor either with local searches or on niche topic areas. Directory or general type sites simply don’t compete with a highly focused and targeted site.

The 2 sites in question, London employment lawyers and family law solicitors both tick all the boxes and are likely to bring more online success to Darlingtons. For a relatively small but fast growing firm, their commitment to invest is reaping great dividends. whilst quality Solicitors have a huge budget now and are doing some quite slick stuff, Darlingtons are outranking QS on many high competition search terms, so it can be done without giving up your brand, your goodwill or making yourself beholden to an intermediary. However, things are only going to get more competitive, so law firms which haven’t resourced their online efforts are going to find it increasingly difficult.

We have a large number of pre-optimised domains and websites, many topic or location related, so if you are interested, please get in touch.

 

 

 

 

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Darlingtons solicitors new website

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We are delighted to have been retained, in addition to web designers Conscious Solutions, in the design and launch of Darlingtons Solicitors new website. Personally, we love the site, which we think is clean, slick, easy to navigate and offers a great combination of a corporate and personal law look and feel.

The site took 4 months to develop and represents a big improvement on the already successful previous site. The most important areas in which we were involved were :-

  • the overall look and feel of the site
  • creating a home page which offers a less cluttered gateway feel
  • increased emphasis on social media
  • vastly improved personal pages for staff giving visitors an opportunity to see the team better and find out more about them
  • a larger and cleaner font, making the content much easier to use
  • simplifying navigation generally
  • making the contact and call to action areas of the site far more prominent and very much “above the fold”.
  • overall giving Darlingtons a site which shows far better the personality and ethos of this dynamic and progressive firm.

Our thanks to Conscious Solutions and the excellent team headed by David Gilroy. Darlingtons has a very successful online presence and the continued and ongoing investment the firm makes on the web demonstrates that investment of time and finance on the web pays off for law firms.

 

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Forget tesco, it’s the accountants you should worry about ?

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The legal press is awash with scary stories about the threats from tesco law etc etc when ABS becomes the reality. Whilst this is undoubtedly a threat, is a bigger threat being overlooked ?

Legal futures reports this week on proposed entry to the legal market in a fully fledged way by a regional firm of accountants. This is likely to be the first of may accountancy competitors and in many ways, they are better placed to threaten the legal status quo than businesses not already in the professional services space.

The thing about many accountancy firms which interests us is that many are far more aware and attuned to marketing than law firms. This should be a worry for many law firms. We can cite numerous examples of accountants being progressive, but as just one quick example of this, Westburys are particularly “ahead of the game”.

This firm seems to understand very well what we call the funnel effect. In many types of work solicitors are somewhere near the bottom of the funnel – the client has already got a trusted advisor and the solicitor is either dependent on the favour of the trusted advisor (often more than the client themselves) or the solicitor must displace the incumbent advisor. These advisors may be brokers or other professionals who have accessed the client at an earlier stage.

Let’s take a new business as an example. Millions of new businesses are started each year by company formation. Few solicitors seek to sell company formation services. Why ? Because it’s a cheap service requiring little advice. But …. if you get that work, you have a shot at becoming the trusted advisor, of developing a relationship, of up-selling.

Many accountants understand this. returning to Westburys, they have a successful and highly marketed company formations website – thereason why should be obvious !

 

 

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Pick a sector, any sector

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With the looming challenges for the legal profession, the majority of whom are in the smaller law firms of 10 partners or less, thought is clearly needed about how to respond to the challenge of big brands muscling in on areas like will writing, conveyancing and such like.

One area where the non-lawyer brands will inherently struggle is in specialist advice for different industries and sectors. Research repeatedly shows that when it comes to commercial law, clients like their lawyers to have an understanding of their business, it’s challenges, it’s industry nuances, aggravations and risks.

We spend a fair chunk of our time looking at lawyers websites. Not many have a “sectors” or “industry” section.

We believe that specialisation will become increasingly important, and it will no longer just be enough to be an employment lawyer or a commercial lawyer. Instead, it may be better to pick a sector, any sector, and find out as much as you can about that sector or industry from a blank sheet and with a non-legal focus. Think of it as ground zero for small law firms, and of course the fantastic thing is that, via the web, social media and other resources, you can become an expert far more easily than 10 years ago, and quickly.

Take just 2 of the more obvious examples, not strictly sector based. Did you know that there are some 5 million family owned businesses in the UK, yet very few lawyers specifically target that market ? What about the charity or not-for-profit sector ? This is heavily regulated and a big sector of the economy now.

Can you think of any interesting untapped niches or sectors ? We’d love to hear from you, if you’re willing to share……

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We rest our case

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We only planned on 1 blog post today, but someone on twitter kindly drew our attention to 2 interesting blog posts.

Firstly, in relation to our final comment in the last post that whilst we get a lot out of social media, we have our doubts about it’s financial ROI. We then saw this post which tends to agree with us, stating :-

“It’s clear that companies are using social networks to connect with customers. Less clear, though, is what success means in this new media and how businesses can achieve it.

That was a hot topic at the recent Seattle Interactive Conference.

We haven’t seen a lot of ‘R’ in the ROI,” said David Camp, head of marketing for AmazonWireless, Amazon’s site for sales of cellphones and service plans. He was referring specifically to financial returns.”

Then, we were referred to a new post in The Lawyer, which can be found here. The relevant section of this article is :-

“So what of the high street lawyer or ­student who may be questioning how the market will look once their studies are complete?

First, small firms must embrace ­technology and modern business methods. Clients are already starting to search for their will-­writing, conveyancing or family law advice online. High street firms can easily mirror their shop fronts on the ­internet, so if a client is looking for local legal services they need to be able to find you online as easily as they can by walking into town.

NatWest Bank recently stated that some of its clients’ modest investments in websites resulted in business worth four times the investment. The price of services is going to play a big part in consumer choice, but it is not the only factor in a consumer’s ­decision-making process. The same survey showed that, when purchasing legal advice, 35 per cent of consumers would choose a lawyer recommended by a friend, with cost coming second at 30 per cent.”

What do you think about these posts and opinions ?

 

 

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The 6% rule

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Readers may remember, and some may even participate still, in marketing techniques such as leaflet drops.

Based on a regular campaign of leafleting you can normally expect a small percentage of perhaps a few thousand leaflets to result in enquiries and business. However, a small number is still a number and with this type of campaign it is often noticeable how consistent the return is.

We comment regularly on this blog about our astonishment that so few solicitors seek to leverage their website properly on the web. It is one thing having a nice looking, professional website, but little use if that website is invisible to anyone who doesn’t know the firm already. There could be many reasons for the lack of search engine marketing by most firms, including :-

1. a lack of understanding of what seo is

2. a lack of uinderstandinhg of the size of the opportunity

3. unwillingness to invest

4. being burnt by the “page 1 of google on a budget” brigade

We have titled this post “the 6% rule”, because, in running a number of solicitor websites and having consulted with other legal marketeers who manage the back end analytics of over 100 law firms, we can confidently say that 6% is the average for visitors to a law firm’s contact page. Once the visitor goes to the contact page there is a fair chance they are there for a reason. However, around 1/3rd of that 6% leave without making contact. This means that roughly 4% of visitors, consistently, will actually contact by phone or email, on average. Yes, there are time wasters in that percentage, but a lot less than most law firms seem to think. people buy on the web now, including legal services. Fact.

We have clients who get over 5,000 visitors a month to their website through sustained and skillful investment and seo. Do the math, what’s 4% of 5,000 visitors per month ? It’s not a small number.

Finally, we are fans of social media, it’s great and it’s free, but how much work does it directly generate ? Can those who only market actively online via social media realistically say that 4% of their contacts by volume give them the chance to pitch for work every month ? We doubt it.

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Resistance to change – lawyers vs accountants

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We have had a very interesting debate with one of our law firm clients this week, surrounding shareholders agreements.

The debate, in very abridged form, went like this :-

Us : We should commoditise some business start up services, using technology like directlaw, as a way of generating some volume and cross selling opportunities

Them : you can’t commoditise business agreements, they are too complex, each one is different.

Us : Yes you can and others are already doing it

Them : It’s not possible, you will never get any quality work from that client and our reputation will be “pile em high, sell em cheap”

Us : This is the way the market is going and you can set up a separate microsite to provide chepaer services, expressly discounted for start ups and with suitable caveats regarding services

Them : we’ll be sued for negligence

Well, you probably get the picture now. This resistance and caution is to an extent understandable, but change is here and change is accelerating, like it or not. Lawyers do not control the legal market any more for the vast majority of work, and that includes work for sme’s. Clients are now in control and marketing is vital.

Accountants are also in general conservative types and are regulated. And yet, many firms of accountants are light years ahead of lawyers when it comes to embracing market reality and in cross selling.

Let’s take an example. These accountants are actively selling company formations on the net. There is a sizeable market for company formations, running into over 10,000 a month but it is competitive, both on the web and generally. It takes money and seo skill to be high enough ranking on the crucial search terms to get a piece of the volume. They are selling formations at less than £30.00. Why ?

Well they’re never going to get rich from company formations, but once they have the ear of the client, the email address, the relationship, they are in the box seat to sell other services and to contact that client again regularly.

So what if a proportion of those clients will always see them only as formation agents ? So what if some of their existing clients think this demeans them as accountants ? Clearly, it seems to be working in the overall scheme of things for a practice which is outside the top 100 and who have a certain image and profile to maintain. We can’t all be Clifford Chance after all. We should know our place and our target audience and take some calculated risks.

Be under no illusions, there is a “client and attention grab” going on out there, and it’s only going to get more competitive.

If accountants can do it, why can’t lawyers ?

Opinions ?

 

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