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The very best way -- bar none -- to quickly drive qualified clients to your website... is to use offline marketing.
Let's take a look at the following deceptively simple case study to understand why.
For the last few years, I've seen the following advertisement:
Looks too simple to be effective, right?
And, who in the heck uses classified advertising?
Well, here's some background on the newspaper this ad appeared in: it's an "alternative" free weekly, filled with ads for transsexual prostitutes, ads for UFO enthusiasts, and... ads for lawyers.
Perfect place to find tenants who want to fight their landlord.
And, the beauty of this classified ad is that it's placed on the back cover of the "newspaper" -- so many, many people see it.
So far, we've discovered the following:
(1) A good place to find clients for this particular practice.
(2) A good place to find lots of clients.
And, of course... we have a catchy headline: WWW.TENANTLAWYER.COM
That catches your eye, right?
So, the first lesson here is this:
The most important part of the website is the NAME of the website. You can certainly have www.Samuel&Covington.com as your main website... but you should also have another catchy, easy-to-remember website address, with which to advertise.
This advice is based on dozens of tests that I've conducted using a tracking software called HyperTracker.
Also, this advertisement uses the name of the website as its headline. Of course, this is not the only way to do things... but I've seen this attorney use this tactic for many years.
In the beginning, the entire ad was... just the name of website. WWW.TENANTLAWYER.COM -- that was the entire ad!
Then, recently -- the attorney added in his name, and his contact information (ostensibly, to comply with the advertising regulations promulgated by the ethics committee).
It still seems to work.
To really understand the power of this ad, let's contrast it with another lawyer ad... in the same newspaper, on the same page, a few inches down:
Quick quiz:
Let's suppose that you wanted to hire a landlord-tenant attorney. And, after perusing the transsexual prostitute advertisements... you mosey on over to the classified ad section... and see the two lawyer ads above.
Who would you hire?
The answer is so self-evident, that I am not going to discuss it. Seriously.
I will point out, however -- that the bottom ad ("Need a Lawyer?") makes the following mistakes:
(1) He advertises too many areas of law at once... of course, you may practice in as many areas as you like, but you should advertise each area independently. If you're not convinced of this, compare the two ads again... would you seriously choose "The Law Offices of Thomas" if you were a tenant, and wanted to sue the pants off your landlord? You'd at least check out the website WWW.TENANTLAWYER.COM , wouldn't you?
(2) He includes a 917 telephone number, which is widely known to be a cellular telephone number. There's nothing wrong with giving a cell number to current clients... but advertising it makes you seem... always ready to take on a new case... which makes you seem... like you don't have enough clients... which makes you seem... like you're desperate... and nobody likes a desperate lawyer.
(3) The attorney uses an AOL.com e-mail address in his advertisement. Nothing spells "cheap" like not having your own vanity e-mail address. A website and a "law firm" e-mail address is a necessity these days... it builds your credibility.
An Important "Side-Benefit"
of Advertising
This Way
Having an easy-to-remember, descriptive website name also means... that you get more referrals.
I remember the first time a client needed a referral for a landlord/tenant attorney. You know who I called? Not my buddy from law school... and not the legal referral service. Instead, I remembered the WWW.TENANTLAWYER.COM website... and I went there.
NOTE: I did not check Martindale-Hubble, I did not go to FindLaw.com, I did not search on Google or any other search engine. And if I didn't... do you seriously think that a client would?
Heck, no. So, you see -- you can build an IRON CAGE around your clients, if you advertise offline... and drive clients (and potential referral sources) to your website... because you get to "short circuit" the whole "Internet search" process. No "search engine optimization" required, no "pay per click" needed.
Plus, everyone likes to research their attorney choices, before making a hiring decision. And, if you present an easy way to get more information about you... (which, by the way, is published under your complete control)... what do you think is going to happen? Clients are going to visit your website, and they'll read every last shred of your website.
And, there's more -- you can drive a horde of people to your website... within 24 hours in some cases! Depending on the publishing turnaround of the newspaper or magazine... you can very rapidly get a ton of potential clients visiting your website -- no waiting for "search engine indexing" or waiting for "banner ad clicks" from an online lawyer directory.
Just make sure that (1) the newspaper or magazine has a large enough circulation, and (2) the newspaper or magazine has readers that are in your target demographic.
Anyway, guess what? I ended up referring several cases to that attorney. Not because I knew him (I never even met him in person), not because I knew of his "reputation," and not because I owed him any favors.
It's because:
(1) I remembered his website,
(2) I visited it,
(3) I decided that he would be a good person to call, because it appeared that he had special expertise in that area, and
(4) I spoke with him for a few minutes, to gauge whether or not he really was an expert in landlord/tenant law (by the way, Eric is a very excellent landlord/tenant attorney -- and if you ever need to refer a case to an attorney in New York, I highly recommend him).
So, there are many benefits to using a carefully-chosen website address... and using offline advertising to drive more qualified visitors to your website.
Try it. It works.
Warmly,
Attorney at Law
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