The Future of Legal Marketing is Online

“Plaintiff Firms: Gain More Clients Through Strategic Digital Marketing" is a 2 hour Deep Dive at LMA 2020.

Over one thousand legal marketers will soon be converging on the Mile High City to attend the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference. The event promises an elevated experience with three days packed with over 40 sessions ranging from business development to technology management. 

Saving the best for the last, you don’t want to miss the 2-hour deep dive: “Plaintiff Firms: Gain More Clients Through Strategic Digital Marketing. It will be held Friday, March 27 at 1:15 pm. The session will arm plaintiff marketers with proven strategies to gain more clients for their firms in a highly competitive market. Consumers looking for legal advice are increasingly using the internet to “shop” for lawyers, so adopting a B2C strategy to reach potential clients is become a necessity.  

I will be chairing this workshop, joined by Alex DiSebastian from PaperStreet Web Design and Jacob Eidinger at Wigdor LLP, providing agency and inhouse perspectives, respectively.

Do I have to be from a Plaintiff Firm to get value?

All attendees will find the session of value regardless of their type of practice:

• Significant investment in digital marketing has become more common in Plaintiff firms so there is an opportunity for B2B marketers to learn from their experiences.
• Plaintiff marketers are champions at quickly building trust relationships between the public and their firm through well thought out SEO strategies.
• Discussions around managing agency relationships will be of particular value to all inhouse marketers tasked with upping their SEO/SEM game. 

Why should I Stay until the End?

As one of the last sessions of the Conference, we understand that many attendees will not have much energy left to sit through a 2-hour lecture. That is why our session will be in an interactive workshop format which we plan to make it fun.  

As a bonus, there will be some good spot prizes—i.e Google and Alexa devices--throughout the session.

What topics will be covered? 

The interactive workshop will be broken into three themes as we following a lead through the proverbial sales funnel:

How to Maximize your on-page SEO 

In a highly competitive marketplace, it is critical that potential clients find your firm. Alex will lead the discussion around the high-level SEO tips that all marketers need to know and then share deeper SEO strategies for more advanced marketers. He will also provide a quick update on the most recent Google algorithm updates.

What will be of interest to all legal marketers is the conversation around understanding what agencies can do for your firm and how to use them most efficiently. You should think of your digital marketing agency as a strategic advisor, utilizing their expertise.

Effective Conversion Tools and Calls-To-Action (CTA)

Once you have an SEO plan in place, building an effective onsite conversion strategy is the next step.  Jacob will highlight successful strategies that trigger the CTA and the best approach to managing ROI.   

Jacob will address the agency relationship from the inhouse marketer's point of view. What does a good relationship with your digital marketing supplier look like and how do you address issues or terminate a bad relationship.

Converting Leads to Files

Arguably the most important piece is ensuring that your online leads result in file openings for your firm. As marketers, we often feel that our job ends at conversion to leads. Your partners, however, are more interested in being retained. Unless your firm has a business development team, it’s in your best interest to help improve your intake process, giving your attorneys the best opportunity to gain new clients.

I will demonstrate the importance of Intake for your firm and why marketing should be involved. It will help to initially create a flow chart to map the existing process to see how quickly inquiries are handled.  It does not matter how skilled your attorneys are; missed calls opens opportunities for competitors to swoop in.

A more robust Intake process will allow you to measure ROI in new ways, calculating digital marketing cost per lead and cost per file. You will also be able to track how file openings from the internet stack up against other sources over time. This measurement will prove the value of the investment you are making in this area.

How Do I Know How Our Intake Process is Doing?

I have created a short online survey that asks questions about the Intake process at your firm You should find that the questions will give you an idea of best practices in the industry. Click Intake Evaluation to take you to the survey. I am happy to provide you with initial feedback to help focus your efforts.

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Be sure to attend “Plaintiff Firms: Gain More Clients Through Strategic Digital Marketing” which will be held Friday, March 27 at 1:15 pm at the 2020 Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference in Denver March 25-27th. Click here to register for the Conference.

Join me, Alex DiSebastian, Internet Marketing Director PaperStreet Web Design, and Jacob  Marketing Coordinator Wigdor LLP for an informative and entertaining session.