As we consult and work with law firms on their law firm marketing strategy, one synonymous issue always rears its head. Conversions! It normally goes like this. A firm hasn’t defined what a “conversion” is, isn’t seriously recording them from marketing touch points, or if they are, aren’t sure what to do with them next.
OK. Lead generation is fundamentally important to any business, including your law firm. We know from experience that when a person is enmeshed in a legal conundrum they do not always contact a lawyer immediately. They often will try themselves to put their issue into context and invariably, as search engine results reveal, increasingly will go to the internet to source such information.
In the cycle of a consumer, they’re often simply not at the stage of commitment yet. In other words, they are navigating for information to fulfill their specific needs. Should it be the case that they arrive at your law firm’s website design, is there a likelihood that you will give them the information they require? Let’s say you do, what happens next? Invariably they read the information and if it’s written ultimately to encourage the potential client to contact the firm, they just might, they may not too. Let’s deal with the former scenario first.
After reading your excellent copy, the client calls your firm. Are they calling a unique number that is different from your main number? If they aren’t, what are you relying on to ascertain that this is a website enquiry. Having reception, or your lawyer at the first consult ask the question is prone to error. Research on this has shown that people don’t always offer an accurate response, or if there is a lapse of time between first contact and first consult, they can forget. We highly recommend a 1300 number. Not only will it sharpen your judgement on what is working from a marketing point of view in your firm, but if your web design company is worth their salt, they would want to be crawling all over this to encourage a better optimised site.
Now, in the case of the latter, that being the potential client who has gathered up the content from your site and gone away, what strategy do you have to further encourage contact? Probably none. Having content on your site wrapped up as a ebook or PDF which your firm offers in return for an email address is a great way to maintain engagement with the inquisitive prospect. That’s not to say that your website becomes a barren ground with only ebooks and PDFs (definitely not good from a SEO perspective) but ascertaining pockets of content that could be compiled and put together is a great way to start preparing for lead generation with a prospective client and of course begin the next step, engagement.
Finally, at what point does a conversion become a conversion? There’s something about the psychology of treating a conversion as not necessarily a person who is eyeballing you across the desk after they’ve signed the client agreement. If a conversion in your firm was a person who had made contact with your firm as a result of any marketing touchpoint, it may be likely just by the language that you will treat this person differently. In other words, if a person is engaged with your firm despite the depth of that engagement, the role of your firm is to shift the person from luke warm, to warmer to hot. Accordingly, this person needs to be engaged at different levels during the transformation and has to be respected and taken care of with kid gloves.
So to wrap up, think seriously about all your firm’s touchpoints and whether by their nature they are encouraging flight, as opposed to engagement. What can you package up that may be a useful resource (often your Google Analytics is a great tool in defining how people are finding you anyway)? How will your firm record contact? What is your law firm marketing strategy in moving a potential client from warm to hot? Last but no least, is it worth thinking differently about what a conversion is at your place?