Making the most of web enquiry sources
As an independent business working on marketing with solicitors around the country, we have to be careful to remain independent. This independence allows us to assess marketing and promotional opportunities for each firm, given their aims, objectives and resources available, choosing only those that will provide a return on the investment.
Having got my mitigation in first, I want to highlight the problem of web referral businesses attempting to sell either legal service listings or enquiries to solicitors. I’m not going to name any, but I think it is useful to share the collective experience of Marketlaw. There are some good services and some that are not so good. As part of the seminars Marketlaw delivers, we have a projector slide that is covered in website brands that present contacts for legal services to the public on the web. A solicitor that saw our presentation, contacted many of them and had a go with a few. Her experience backs up our usual view that often it’s not worth it. That’s not to say ‘don’t do it’ just be aware that you may not get the results you anticipated.
The problem is you can’t tell if they are any good unless you pay to have a go, which costs money. Even then you may get a few ‘pearlers’ in the first few weeks, then not much after that. It’s not much different from buying advertising space in print publications. Tracking the enquiries becomes important and is often a problem with firms that don’t do it rigorously enough to tell if the firm made any profit.
As an alternative I would suggest a much safer bet. Use the money to write to your existing and past clients, explaining the benefits of the services your firm offers. Then, every time you are contacted by another web enquiry service, use that as a prompt to write to your current and past clients again with another set of benefits. It does mean you have to do the work but it’ll be worth it.
Comments
Online referral sources
Alastair, we have had similar feedback from our clients.
Also, mentioning no names, one of the problems that a number of firms have mentioned regarding the new networks is the quality of the referrals that they are receiving, in terms of whether they are properly qualified leads, in the right geographic area, and whether the potential clients are willing to pay market rates.
To have the best chance of converting a web-based lead to a new client, the enquiry needs to be followed up by email, and possibly by phone. The response needs to be tailored, particularly in the networks where the enquiry is forwarded to more than one firm and there is a race to respond. One managing partner in a seven-partner firm commented that it was getting up to 30 referrals per month, and this was taking up a vast amount of time and effort, while leading to very low conversion rates.
Another common problem is that people enquiring via a website are often looking for free information and are not inclined to pay. Some referral networks do not make information on costs easy to find on their website.
Such leads often tend to be 'stone cold' and price-driven, whereas leads generated from a firm's own client base, referral contacts and good networking produces warmer leads with less price sensitivity.
Online referral sources
Perhaps surprisingly for the Chief Executive of an organisation that many would assume is a "web referrals" based one, I share much of the opinion expressed above. In our experience whilst the web is an increasingly important medium for people searching for legal advice/representation, the typical quality of lead produced through classic "lead generation" sites online is poor. This high quantity/low quality issue can be overcome through proper and effective qualification; we employ LPC students/graduates as case handlers to try and achieve this. Nevertheless the problem remains that people browsing the net tend to be in "price comparison" mode and as a result leads generated by "find a solicitor" services online are, not always but often, excessively price-sensitive.
As a result, QualitySolicitors (note - no longer QualitySolicitors.com!) has moved to be much more focused on developing a recognised legal brand of quality. Our marketing is increasingly focused offline - we currently have a national radio advert featuring Nigel Havers and our national television advert is in the final stages of production. We find that driving people to our website through offline brand based marketing produces a much higher quality of enquiry than those that stumble across us when "shopping around" for a lawyer. Of course, most smaller web-based enquiry sites do not have the resources to be able to have a national television advert or celebrity endorsed radio advert and hence they never overcome the problem of low quality leads. To that extent therefore I would endorse Alastair's views.
As an aside, and very briefly so as not to try and turn this post into an advert for QS (!), our membership is based on much more than referrals - web sourced or otherwise. Referrals are simply one, almost ancillary, benefit to membership which is much more based on growing the first real national consumer legal brand shared by all of our members who display it prominently alongside their own at their premises, on their website etc. This, as a means to differentiate one's firm in the local area and to combat the powerful brands who are entering the market, Co-op et al, is the raison d'etre of QualitySolicitors, not, as I think some in the legal market mistakenly believe to be simply yet another referral organisation.
Referrals From Websites
Creating your own like Boyes Turner who
have industrialdiseaselawyer.com
Just a shame personalinjurylawyer.co.uk is in
sleep mode...Pannone why aren't you using it?
Want to sell the domain?
If you track every lead you will know exactly
what is working and what is not.
One thing not mentioned is Adwords. Many
personal injury lawyers are using Adword to
get traffic to their websites. And they are paying
anything from £5-£25 per click.
So big hefty bills for these online referrals.
But how many are tracking the number of
these clicks that turn into calls? It is easy to
do nowadays and absolutely vital to do it.
Because from my research there is a difference
between adwords clickers who cost a firm money
and those that click and call - these are more likely
to convert.
(should also be tracking keywords in this way).
Never pay up front for leads. Always get a free sample
of enough leads to make a decision on quality.
One company I know is generating leads for personal
injury and then qualifies the calls it gets before sending them
on. It charges £250 per qualified call.
This qualification process is crucial in providing
quality leads. Another client of mine, in the internet
design area pays for leads which are also qualified
on the phone.
Quite simply, he has had excellent leads
in this way (with the speed to lead follow up process we
devised) because he gets leads at a lower rate
than he can get them himself.
It all starts with knowing how much you can invest
to get a prospect. This depends on lifetime value,
conversion rates and costs associated with
doing the job.
But how many law firms can state categorically that
their allowable investment per lead in personal injury
law is £197.97?
Provide as much information as possible whether yourself or
via the lead provider to qualify the prospect and it will
cut down on poor leads and deliver high value clients.
Online Work Referral
We dipped our toe in this pond – notice I didn’t say sea ! - when we launched LawNetsolicitors.co.uk to test the water for online work referrals for our member firms.
And yes, like the rest we weren’t awash with £1m enquiries, but that isn’t what we expected. We were trialling online work generation under our national brand as one part of our mix of member services, to see if it could generate the right sort of low to mid range work. It was different to most of the models around, as whether win or lose, our members weren’t going to incur any charges with it.
We did all the right things around search engine optimisation, we got the hits, but having established that the calls we were receiving were consistently low value and did not fit with our firms’ client attraction strategies, we’ve adapted our strategy for our online presence.
High value, quality referrals do not come from the internet, they are far more likely to come from golf course conversations and firms being integrated into their local community and offering a quality service, value for money service.
The public buy on trust, the best way to attract new work is to provide excellent service, through maintaining outstanding relations and ensuring the firm maximises on recommendations and cross selling activity. Firm money is far better spent in getting this right than paying £££’s on promised work referral from an aggregated route.
I know our member firms would say there is a merit in a national brand approach, and not just in today’s markets. It ’s been proven over the past 20 years for LawNet firms. But not just for work referrals. It’s a deeper level of collaboration and cooperation, it’s about shared values and standards. It’s also about having joint benefits in cost savings and economy of scale, like CPD training or PII.
Here is a thought...
Good Morning all,
Back in the old days when I used to own an accident management company (yes, I was an evil and ghastly referrer) I used to send out 1.3 million e-mails a month to "opted in" e-mail recipients. That's right. ONE POINT THREE MILLION!
It cost £30,000 each time to do it.
But what of the quality?
Bee stings, the drunken handling of a bar stool that fell apart in a claimant's hand, hundreds of intoxicated assaults, countless grievances about police brutality, exploding christmas tree lights, falls in potholes in the middle of the Pennines, countless hit and runs and even child support agenciy enquiries.
And two or three RTA's.
Of course qualifying a lead is paramount. A quick look at what I like to call the PI sieve illustrates how many potential punters have to be put to one side:
Accident must have occured last three years? tick the box
GP or Doctor visit? tick the box
Identifiable third party?
Causation? tick the box
Actually attend the medical? tick the box
Actually willing to claim or merely enquiring? tick the box
Not going to run away upon the sight of a CFA? tick the box
Not going to emigrate to Australia mid claim? tick the box
This process removes so many would be claimants from the process. Moreover, you have already paid for the benefit of this. The argument for using an online referral portal is that each should come accross qualified - but it does narrow the numbers.
Pi needs PR.
Insurers swallow all the RTA's and of the majority who are still slightly interested in claiming may go online, they may go elsewhere. Why are we settling for the scraps left at the table.
Let's go in - house. Lets look at our existing clients and turn them into little cash cows.
Oliver Jones
The Legal Marketer
www.legalmarketer.co.uk
DUI
High value, quality referrals do not come from the internet, they are far more likely to come from golf course conversations and firms being integrated into their local community and offering a quality service, value for money service.
Why most referral companies don't give guarantees
My firm's experience reflects that of the commentators above. What I find particularly interesting is that few referral companies are prepared to give any guarantees of the number of actual cases law firms will get for their money. I wonder why? Could it be that they realize the most firms actually get very few decent cases from them?
The real online opportunity
There are two fundamental problems with referral services. Firstly, the premise of many has been ‘let’s make money from solicitors by selling links to their websites which typically aren’t marketed or promoted properly’ but actually offer almost nothing as a worthwhile consumer service because they don’t help make informed choices, they’re just web links. Expecting something from these services is akin to pinning a business card on a notice board at a motorway services and expecting work from it.
The second type of referral scheme which involves people filling out forms or calling a phone number to ask which solicitor to use is only likely to attract a)those people who don’t have the wherewithal to either do their own research or ask for recommendation from friends, family or work colleagues b) businesses who have managed to remain so oblivious to what goes on in their area that they somehow don’t know even the names of the obvious local firms to approach or possibly c) those people who would have used the solicitor they used for something years ago if only they could find their details online because they don’t know where the phonebook is now.
What is missing from this discussion is that the internet has evolved and continues to at such a rate that in reality it presents a huge opportunity for law firms and the solicitor brand to promote itself in a way never possible before. The ability to target and engage with local communities which has traditionally been a tough and often expensive hurdle to overcome can now be achieved to a significant extent by making your firm, your lawyers, your services, details of your expertise and how to get in touch with you clearly visible online and feeding into the networks where your clients are. What’s more there are simple steps to take to enable you to track the return on every bit of effort you put into doing so.
The first phase of law firms getting online facilitated brought largely dormant websites, often impersonal and generally unhelpful to consumers looking for help – trawling them is a challenge and unrewarding. The next phase should see lawyers both concentrating on generating relevant and useful content and breaking out of the confines of their websites to explain across multiple channels to potential clients why they are worthy of instruction – effectively networking and presenting to an unlimited audience. Some have started doing this already and anyone can with a little instruction. Most firms with competent marketing departments will find their marketing teams more than happy to help publicise this sort of information – in fact they crave it – and there are a number of experienced legal marketing consultants and specialist web companies who can help firms get up to speed. Few can claim ignorance of how social networks are transforming the communications landscape and only the ignorant decry it. You can generate business online but a dormant webpage or reasonable Google ranking won’t do it for you on its own. If you want to build your brand identity and market yourself effectively, you need to join the conversation.
Online Referrers
As a proud panel manager with my company ActionMove and the ability to have my own solicitor's firm Clutton Cox on that panel, I have but briefly dipped my toes into the pool of online referrers.
My experience is similar to the views above, with poor, price conscious leads leading to virtually no business no matter how quick we were in “the speed to lead” contest.
A strategy to dominate our market, in our case localised market, with a strong web presence with a content rich website, fervent blogging and efficient SEO and SEM is producing real benefits.
Leads are being generated from our website and we have a high conversion rate.
Potential clients are deciding for themselves whether they like us, so when we make contact in response to their requests by either emails or telephone they already “know us” and have a greater confidence in instructing us.
The debate continues...
As the leading UK referral service, we thought it was time we added our view on this ongoing debate.
First of all, we whole-heartedly agree with the most recent post about solicitors needing to have a strong web presence because client enquiries are moving online at a rapid rate. This is why we now offer web site development, search engine optimisation and internet marketing solutions.
We understand that there are two types of people searching on the web for a solicitor; those who are happy to search out a local firm for themselves and those who would prefer a recommendation from a third-party. With our client referral service and our web development offering, we’re able to cater to ALL client enquiries and thus provide our member firms the tools to capture this potential business.
For those firms worried about the Legal Services Act and the changes that will bring, we’re heavily involved in working with some of the new entrants to the market. Which means that if you’re part of our network, you will actually benefit from the enquiries these mega-brands will generate.
Final point - from the referral service alone, our member firms are billing millions of pounds in fees from the clients we introduce to them, so believe us....clients using referral firms DO spend money! However, you do need to have scale to make this work, not least of all a large team of case handlers to screen out the enquiries that aren’t going anywhere – that’s why we have employed a team of 20 paralegals.