Dec
My feeling is that the most cost effective means of marketing a law firm is to get your website into the top 10 for Google. The processes of making your website number one in search engines is called “Search engine optimization” or SEO. Adwords gives you quick traffic, but SEO is much better over the long term. The only potential problem is that there can be a lag from 3-6 months from the start to the SEO to when you see significant results. This lag can present cash flow challenges.
My own research at http://www.bergstrom-seo.com indicates that you can expect 1.5% of the people that come to your law firms website via a relevant Google search will become clients. This might not seem too impressive, but remember that the average bill for a contested divorce is over $15,000. Thus, the average client that visits your website generates $15,000 x 1.5% = $225.
I always have to do the calculation a few times because it seems too unbelievable. Even if you want to have a ROI on your marketing investment of $10 in revenue for every dollar spent, you can still spend $22.50 on every visitor. So, let’s back up once more…. If you spent $2,250/month on Google SEO, then you only need to get 100/month to get an acceptable ROI on your investment. I generally find that clients who have a monthly SEO budget of 2,000 can expect to see an additional 2,000 visitors/month after about one year. This works out
to an additional (2000 x 1.5%) = 30 clients/month. It’s almost too good to be true.
If you’d looking for a good how-to document that describes almost everything you need to know, then check out this PDF.: http://www.bergstrom-seo.com/resources/google-search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It’s a pretty long document (22 pages) but it tells you everything that you need to know about SEO. Good luck!