Legal marketing is challenging for any firm, especially those in competitive areas of law like personal injury or workers’ compensation. While there’s no clear-cut method for securing as many clients as you need, there are some common pitfalls among law firms. Here are some marketing mistakes your firm should avoid:

A Huge Contact Form

You’ll definitely need a “contact us” form somewhere on your website, whether it’s a banner, sidebar option, or a designated page. It’s also a good idea to have multiple ways to contact your firm for people who’d rather use the phone over email and vice versa. What you don’t want is every page on your website to look like one big document for visitors to fill out.

Google wants content to be informative and engaging, so it emphasizes the importance of having high-quality content “above the fold,” or immediately visible when a page loads. If a user has to scroll past a large contact form to find the meat of your website’s content, your site may not perform well on search results. Content above the fold is especially important for Social Security disability attorneys to keep in mind, as their claimants are older and may not realize that there’s even an article underneath a contact form.

Pop-Up Ads/Auto Play Videos

Pop-ups and auto play videos are all too common among attorneys. While it may seem tempting to lure consumers in with an article and later hit them with a contact form or video highlighting your services, most digital users hate pop-up ads.

A good way to tell if your automatic videos or popup ads are negatively affecting your website is through Google Analytics. The metric you’ll want to look for specifically is your bounce rate. A bounce rate is the percentage of users who exit your website without interacting with the page at all. If you have a high bounce rate on pages with popup ads, users may be frustrated with your marketing and taking their business elsewhere.

Using Only Billboards or Commercials

Billboards and commercials are effective marketing tools because the claimants your firm signs from these platforms are proactive and took the time to reach out to your firm specifically regarding their case. Unfortunately, traditional marketing options are expensive. According to Lamar Advertising, a single billboard can set your firm back $8,000 or more per month. One billboard is never enough to create brand awareness, so a year-long campaign in a major city may cost upwards of $300,000.

Not Focusing on Overall Costs

One mistake many attorneys make is focusing on a campaign’s conversion rate instead of overall costs. For example, you may be very pleased with a TV commercial that converts calls to clients 25% of the time. How profitable is a high conversion rate when you’re paying an arm and a leg for a commercial in the first place? Evaluating a marketing channel’s cost per case, or money spent to sign one new client, is a much more effective method of evaluating your marketing.

Lead generation is a cost-effective marketing option that connects claimants with attorneys in their area. When you work with a lead generation company you’re guaranteed contact information from claimants who’ve expressed interest in legal help—no more crossing your fingers and waiting at the phone after a commercial airs.

We currently offer Social Security disability, personal injury, workers’ compensation, and employment law leads for clients across the country at a competitive cost per case. To learn more about our lead availability and pricing, give our office a call at (617) 800-0089.