Law Firm Direct Response Marketing Overview
Attorneys are taught about the law but many were not trained in lead generation or direct response marketing for law firms. However, that is not to imply that attorneys are not skilled in persuasion. They most definitely can be. Besides, attending law school necessitates taking research and writing classes. That gives a framework to persuade judges that an attorney's point of view is correct, appropriate, and reasonable. However, here is where many attorneys overlook the disconnect.
You see, even if someone has extensive training in persuasion and has won multimillion-dollar wins in the courtroom, it doesn't mean they'll be able to accomplish the same thing with a new client or a litigant. In reality, they often fall short in capturing or understanding the target audience.
The Difference Between a Claimant and a Judge
There is a distinct difference between a claimant and a judge. A claimant is not likely to have the mindset of a judge, a legal educational background, be conversant with case law, or be skilled at judicial writing. It's important to note that claimants often think emotionally first and logically second. And that is often the opposite of how judges think and what they learn in law school.
Richard James' Arizona law firm management company has created a step-by-step system for building and executing automated legal marketing and business systems. Such systems establish your law firm on a bedrock of predictable and strong growth, rather than the gimmicks and tactics you hope may pay off eventually in small law firm growth.
In his 20+ years in business in various industries, he has discovered that when systems are optimized, success is almost guaranteed. The good news is that regardless of where your practice is today, you can change it into one that is predictable, successful, and rewarding.
You can enjoy real vacations once again. You can get paid what you're worth. You can help the people you want to help. Call Richard James right now if you want to build a law firm that enhances rather than undermines your quality of life. Learn the best way to implement direct response marketing for law firms.
Direct Response Marketing: What is it?
The term “direct response marketing” is advertising designed to elicit an instant response from the target audience. In other words, it’s a lead generation strategy with a call-to-action (CTA) primary component.
Numerous marketing agencies believe the three elements listed below are essential for direct response marketing and advertising.
- A value proposition or offer
- Information that is relevant
- A clear call-to-action
Let's take a closer look at each of the following components.
The Value Proposition or Offer
The offer or value proposition is the first statement about the products or services being introduced. It comprises broad features that speak to the emotions of the customer, like what the products or services accomplish for the client. Consider the following example:
“Have you been injured or involved in an accident? Get your fair compensation”.
Setting the premise through an inquiry
The offer here starts with the inquiry. It sets the premise to which the reader may relate. And then, it provides the offer about the subject introduced. That serves as the initial step in the sales process.
Additionally, the offer – compensation – is further qualified by the word “fair.” It is centered on the reader’s emotions – fear, distrust, desire for justice, etc. – and the possibility of unfair compensation. Such implies that a personal injury victim should hire an attorney to receive the right compensation.
Legal marketers design the offer to capture the attention of potential claimants and get them to take the next step. That step may include calling, writing an email, providing their information, or asking for a demo.
Relevant Information
In general, you must catch a potential client's or claimant's attention within 7 seconds. If you don’t, they could ignore your direct response advertisement. Therefore, your Arizona attorney's website information must be clear and concise. That allows a claimant or a client to make an informed choice and take action.
Consider the following tips:
- You will probably need more information about a product or a service that is not well-known;
- The message should be compelling and convincing;
- The message should either address the client's problem or inspire a desire or a need in the client;
- The message should speak to the client's emotions to solve an issue or create a need for it;
- A client given an overload of information could get overwhelmed, confused, and end up walking away; and
- Very little information may cause a client to lose interest in continuing.
Numerous factors need consideration here. After examining them, evaluate if the best option for your landing page is comprehensive or brief information.
Oftentimes, products or services with a higher asking price need a longer copy to support their benefit to the claimant. In contrast, a free service or trial would need less description to convince a client to avail.
Call-to-Action
A call-to-action is a significant aspect of every direct response marketing campaign. Call-to-action (CTA) is a prompt that motivates a potential claimant to proceed to the subsequent step. An unclear action request can confuse the visitor, causing them to leave the website and result in a failure in conversion.
The “click here” icon is a typical example. Here are some more examples:
- Add to shopping cart
- Add to wishlist
- Contact a representative
- Download now
- Get help right now
- Order immediately
- Share on Facebook
- Sign up today
- Subscribe now
As you can see, the phrases “now”, “today”, and “immediately” are often used to highlight the urgency. A time-sensitive call-to-action is an essential component. Remember that direct response marketing aims to elicit a quick reaction.
When creating a successful call-to-action, there are several options to consider.
Location
The majority of online-marketing specialists advocate placing a call-to-action at the top fold. It has to stand out as one of the page's most visible and prominent features.
Color and design
Colors that stand out from the background are preferable. The negative space around the design must be viewed as part of the design. Negative space, commonly called “white space,” adds prominence. It can also result in higher conversion rates for the next step.
Options
Remember that some people prefer to talk with someone right away. Others want to provide their personal information online simply. Additionally, certain services and products need a subscription or a demo. Giving options can help cater to a dynamic crowd.
Short in length
The CTA is a command; therefore, it must be clear and concise. The maximum number of words is often three. They also may state a specific benefit to be gained as a result of the action.
Urgency
Direct response marketing for law firms is different from other types of marketing. It focuses on getting a quick response. Remember the phrases “now” and “today” in the CTA. The possibility of a client or claimant converting into a lead falls dramatically over time. As a result, time-bound offers and CTAs can work when based on the fear of missing out on an opportunity.
Each audience reacts differently to different information, offers, and calls to action. Marketers often recommend A/B testing to identify what elicits the highest conversion rate. The pursuit of new approaches to offers makes them more responsive to customers and potential clients. It can also help retain existing clients.
Direct Response Strategies
When conducting direct response marketing campaigns, attorneys can use several strategies and platforms.
Email and Online Marketing
Email and digital marketing have helped businesses in almost every industry flourish throughout the years. With the emergence of the internet, small businesses like boutique legal offices have overcome the competitive obstacles presented by traditional media such as radio and television. Direct mail marketing has been a trend in law firm marketing.
Pay-per-click advertising (both search and display) and search engine optimization (SEO) are popular in the field of law. These two are both notorious for being either costly or time-consuming.
Nonetheless, law firm online marketing has grown in popularity through the years, leveling the playing field. Higher retention rates and a quicker turnaround can offset marketing costs.
- Internet Marketing. Pay-per-click (PPC) refers to an online advertisement where a “pay” or fee is given for every “click” or engagement on an ad. You may do such tactics via search engines like Google and social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. It is a common internet marketing strategy. Such is also possible via social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.
- Audience targeting. Audience targeting gives digital marketers greater control over which people view their advertisements. That works particularly well when “remarketing” to people who have already visited the landing page of a law firm. Attorneys may consider gender, age, and device used (e.g., desktop versus mobile). To avoid spending money to reach those who do not want or need legal help, it is a good idea to think about who you're not marketing to.
- Geographic targeting. Adwords allows you to get users' IP addresses. These IP addresses are dependent on their geographical area. This area can be as broad as the whole country or as specific as cities or zip codes. You can narrow down the target audience or your marketing efforts to even be within a mile of you. Generally, there are many geotargeting optimization strategies that attorneys can consider.
However, you should note that pay-per-click may be costly. Look at the Top 100 Most Expensive Keywords for Google AdWords, provided by WordStream. Significantly, the terms “lawyer” and “attorney” are placed fourth and sixth in rank, respectively.
Think about the following considerations when using Google Adwords:
- Quality Score. This metric considers the speed of the page and relevancy. The more targeted the keywords are, the easier you can go after your intended market.
- Negative keyword phrases. Remove words that have little relevance to target your audience more accurately.
- Optimized landing pages. Increase your rankings by including appropriate content, pictures, and relevant content.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO, also known as Search engine optimization, is another popular strategy for attorney lead-generation, particularly with personal injury attorneys. There are two kinds of SEO markets for search engines, notably Google. You can pursue both national and local search engine optimization strategies.
Google My Business
Most personal injury lawyers have preferred geographic targets based in the county or city. Google My Business (GMB) is most likely the popular and well-known option. The best thing is you can start using this strategy for free. The disadvantage is that pursuing this lead-generation strategy takes time.
Nonetheless, the response can be fantastic. Globe My Business offers great benefits, such as:
- Display of pertinent information;
- Interaction with clients;
- The location of the law firm;
- Monitoring of traffic flow and audience; and
- Obtain client insight.
Direct Response Email Marketing
Email marketing is usually regarded as one of the top effective digital marketing strategies. It can be incredibly cost-efficient and targeted while allowing repeat business and referrals. It has progressed light years since its start. Many people associate this direct marketing strategy with mass email broadcasting which became popular during the 1990s and 2000s. Normally, this included collecting and reselling people's email addresses from databases.
In reality, the earliest email blast was sent in 1978 and resulted in sales of computer equipment worth $13 million. Gary Theurk, the marketing manager of Digital Equipment Corp., sent it and has been dubbed the “Father of Spam” ever since.
Emailing, unlike direct mail, could be a better way to generate referrals because it helps you to stay relevant and at the forefront of your client's minds. To succeed in today's digital environment, you must grasp three critical elements that make an email campaign successful:
Enticing Subject Line
The most significant aspect of email marketing is the subject line. This is crucial in persuading your target market to read the email.
Look at the following statistics:
- According to Coschedule and HubSpot, subject lines create open rates of 33% – 35% of the time.
The subject line determines whether an email is spam 69% of the time. - The subject line's length is also critical. Using three words yields the highest open rate (21.2%), as opposed to seven words (15.8%), the most often utilized amount.
- “Subscription,” “Report,” and “Journal” are the poorest performing words in subject lines.
One of the most vital tips for writing subject lines is to use emotions. Fear and greed are two of the most powerful emotions. Consider playing on fear by saying that claimants have a limited time to act before their claim’s expiration owing to the statute of limitations.
On the other hand, you can evoke greed when highlighting the amount of compensation a person may receive from a claim. Lastly, a sense of urgency can push a person further to act and decide, eliciting a quick response.
Consider these subject lines:
- Don't Jeopardize Your Claim!
- The Time You Have to File and Settle Claims is Limited.
- Keep an Eye On These Five Common Mistakes
- Don't Accept Anything Less
- Allow Us to Maximize Your Claim
- We Are Able To Help
The bottom line is that if you're an accident lawyer or anyone else using email marketing to get new clients, give the most importance to the subject line.
Personalization
The person's name is the most popular approach to customizing an email. You may additionally customize depending on the user's or claimant's location, the product or the service utilized, the landing page where you gave the information, and the law firm responding to the user or claimant (such as when the landing page originates from a third-party company).
Look at these statistics:
- Personalizing an email is believed to improve performance by 96% of law firms.
- Whenever an email isn’t personalized, 52% of clients say they would go elsewhere.
- The open rate for a personalized message is 18.8%, as opposed to 13.1% in the absence of personalization.
Personalizing an email, as you have just seen, has an impact. You should start now if your law firm does not have options to incorporate the name of prospects and other information. Now is a good time to emphasize that including personalization in the subject line is beneficial too. Direct response marketing for law firms in Arizona matters.
Design and Layout
When evaluating your emails’ style and appearance, keep the following three points in mind:
- Keep it brief, sweet, and straight to the point.
- Make use of visuals that convey a story, requests, and actions and offer a benefit.
- Try to elicit an emotion.
White space and negative space are both used in page layout. Furthermore, anyone may ignore your email if you are overly stuffy and long.
A brief message is one of the most effective at evoking a response. That is critical for pursuing negligence claims. Many injury claims feel they have no time limits; in contrast to people seeking help with tax concerns and are going through wage garnishment.
Call-to-Action
The goal of direct response marketing and lead generation is to elicit a response. As previously mentioned, this stems from the call to action.
Examine certain data points. You should not neglect this factor.
- Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%. (Wordstream)
- First-person language in calls-to-action increases click-through rates by 90%. (ContentVerve)
- Red calls to action get 21% conversions, while orange ones get 32.5%. (QuickSprout)
Structure in General
Here are some things to consider when you put this all together.
- Emails should be sent by a person. People may communicate with and relate to one another. They don't interact with artificial entities like organizations and LLCs. Have staff members be the source of the “from” line.
- The subject line should be customized. When visitors hit the submit button on a landing page, they expect confirmation that their information has been received. Consider something like, “Hi Robert – We'll Be Calling Soon.”
- Preview. The paragraph that follows the subject line should provide further information about the cause of the email. Use this space to convince them to read further by inserting an unfinished sentence beginning with advice related to the respondents' emotions.
- The top fold. This area should contain an eye-catching image with a logo and, ideally, an attorney's face.
- Body. There should only be one or two sentences in each paragraph. That is particularly true for the initial email response to a landing page submission. As previously said, keep it brief and sweet. Otherwise, your message may go unnoticed.
- A call-to-action. Within the content, a message should prompt the recipient to phone or respond at least once. However, the last statement, or perhaps the final picture, should include another prompt asking for an action.
Get the Most of Attorney Lead Generation
Richard James wants to collaborate with as many other entrepreneurial attorneys as possible who are ready to use his tried-and-true strategies. Such will produce tangible, quantifiable outcomes, especially on direct response marketing for law firms in Arizona. You can trust that Richard will follow through on his promises if you decide to work with him.
When you're ready, you can start working toward what you want – your freedom.
You can transform your practice, no matter where it is today, into one that is predictable, successful, and rewarding. You can enjoy the real holidays once again. You can get paid what you're worth. You can help those you wish to help. You can even plan to retire from your practice.
If you work with Richard, you will set goals together, and if he agrees to get anything done, you can be certain that it will be done. Reach the right prospects and grow your clients quickly.
Richard James is the kind of person who wants to do things right, having full accountability and backing it up with action that actually gets results. Call us now for a breakthrough schedule with Richard James!
