An early adopter is a person who uses a product, service, technology, technique, etc. before it is adopted by the masses. Early adopters are the first 16% of people who use a new idea or service and help make them household names.

How Does Early Adoption Apply to Legal Marketing?

The cost of early adoption is usually more expensive when it comes to buying a technology or a product. Companies will usually knock off a technology or a product and sell it at a cheaper cost a few years after the original came out.

However, this does not apply in the advertising industry. For the most part, early adopters are rewarded with lower costs since advertising pricing is determined by demand for a particular platform and not so much the supply. After all, there is only one Google and it accounts for over 70% of search queries on the Internet.

In 2017, almost every attorney is aware that running pay per click (PPC) ads is a good way to acquire new clients. This demand is reflected in the cost for attorneys to run PPC Ads. A 2016 WordStream study showed that the legal industry pays on average $5.88 per click on Google, making it 40% more expensive for lawyers to advertise on Google than for any other industry.

Whether you run a law firm or any other business, it’s critical to keep your cost of customer acquisition as low as possible. Attorneys who find other forms of marketing that work well, but are not yet popular in the legal industry, will likely be rewarded with lower marketing expenses and thus a lower overall cost per case.

If your Social Security law firm takes on 50 cases per month and pays $400 to acquire each case, lowering your cost per case by 25% could save you $60,000 per year in marketing costs. This savings likely cannot be achieved by doing the same old; you have to be willing to try new marketing methods.

The Risk of Early Adoption

A lot of demand is proof that a marketing service or platform works. Thus, trying new legal marketing avenues that are not yet popular comes at a risk of them not working or being unprofitable. You will likely fail a few times before finding the new marketing channel that works well for your law firm. However, if you do find one that works, the risk would be worth the reward.

So, the next time a marketer presents a new idea to you, don’t be so quick to dismiss it. Remember, if you haven’t heard of it, a lot of people probably haven’t heard of it either. It could be a lot cheaper than your current marketing options.

At eGen we are constantly testing new online marketing techniques to deliver high quality Social Security disability, personal injury, workers’ compensation and employment law leads to law firms at a low cost. Call us at 617.800.0089 to see how we can help your firm acquire cases at an attractive cost per case.