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Top 5 Ways to Better Capture & Convert Web Leads for Your Law Firm

12/10/2018

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Top 5 Ways to Better Capture & Convert Web Leads for Your Law Firm

Guest Author

Maddy Martin, Smith.ai

Many attorneys grow their law practices through referrals. Typically, referrals come from individuals (non-competing attorneys, financial advisors, friends, family, and other community or networking group members) who know you well, so the lead quality is very high, and whether an engagement begins is largely a matter of cost and availability, rather than fit. The problem is, referrals are unpredictable, and don’t offer a path to consistent growth for your firm.

To drive more reliable growth, attorneys now know they need to tap other marketing and advertising channels, like paid search ads and high-quality content that drives organic website visitors.

But even the best marketing agency only delivers leads; conversion is still on you. In order to convert leads, you need to make contact with them — and quickly. According to the 2017 Clio Legal Trends Report, 2 out of 3 potential clients say their decision to hire is most influenced by an attorney’s response time to their first call or email. Wait to respond, and they’re likely to have already engaged another attorney.

The problem here — especially if you’re in a solo or small firm — is your day is booked up with meetings, court appearances, billing tasks, and admin chores. You’re lawyering and you’re laboring. There’s no time for interruptions from new clients. Most lawyers already only spend 1.9 hours on billable work each day — there’s no room to cut that even shorter.

The way to consistently grow your client base and achieve better marketing return on investment (ROI) is to outsource and automate your responsiveness and lead capture.

Here are my top 5 recommendations to do so:

1. Engage Web Leads Via Live Chat

There’s no better way to initiate contact with a website visitor than with live web chat. U.S.-based receptionists can passively or proactively engage visitors, answer basic questions, and ask screening questions to separate the good leads from the bad. Once a good lead is identified based on your criteria, that person can immediately be offered a call-back or scheduled consultation to help secure that conversion. Being responsive directly on your website directly reduces cold calls and emails, and reduces the number of new “contact form” completions that come through without any prior screening. You’ll waste less time when you do get on that first phone call with these pre-screened leads.
Pro Tip: Add an FAQ page on your website with answers to common questions about your law practice, so chat agents aren’t spending extra time answering the same questions “by hand” every time, and can instead link to content on your site that provides more in-depth information on certain topics important to that person.
You can even add in a searchable knowledge base on your website instead of listing all FAQ on one long page. Take a look at Kim Bennett’s approach for her law firm, K Bennett Law at http://educate.kbennettlaw.com.
K Bennet Law FAQ Example

2. Screen Potential Clients with Online "Intake" Forms

Whether or not you have live chat on your site, you absolutely must have a built-in contact form so people don’t have to call or email to reach you. It’s far easier to type a message in the same browser window than open a new window with your email account or pick up the phone. However, not all contact forms are set up to optimally capture and filter leads.

The best online “intake” forms include only the most essential 5 to 10 questions, including:

  • Basic contact information
  • Physical location (address, ZIP code, etc.), if relevant to your ability to serve them
  • How they heard about you
  • Which practice area they need help in (offer a list to choose from, don’t leave it open-ended for write-ins)
  • Time-sensitive information that can be used to prioritize responses, like whether there’s a court hearing scheduled

See how Cooper Law handles these last two components:
Cooper Law Intake Form Example
Not only do these fields help leads self-qualify themselves (if they don’t see a matching practice area in your provided list, they’ll understand your firm isn’t the right fit and move on), they also facilitate conflict checks and document generation. Think of these fields as your first point of data collection -- data you can auto-insert into a client engagement letter, for example
Pro Tip: ​Typeform ​and Gravity Forms both offer cheap, Zapier-friendly forms that are easy to customize, embed on your website, and sync with your practice management, marketing automation, and other firm software.

3. Book Consultations with "Gated" Online Scheduling

If a web visitor completes the intake form and has a strong feeling after learning more about your firm that their needs match your practice areas, the next critical action is to schedule a consultation, which is typically a phone call.

Online scheduling apps like Acuity, Appointy, and ScheduleOnce make it easy to book consultations, but my main advice here is to not make it too easy, because the last thing you want is lots of calls booked without your involvement that result in wasted time with bad leads.

Employ one or more of these three tactics to reduce no-shows and cancellations, and better ensure your time will be spent with qualified potential clients:

  • Charge for consultations. You can make your online calendar highly visible on your website if you gate it with a required payment. This doesn’t have to result in an extra fee for the client, if you credit it back to their balance upon hiring you for legal work.
  • Outsource calendaring to remote receptionists. Live receptionists can book appointments on your behalf. Just give them a link to your online calendaring page, which you’ve hidden on your website on a page that’s not accessible through the main site navigation. After they screen the lead, receptionists can be instructed to book a consult only if they meet your criteria for a good potential client. This way, consultations can be free or paid, because the receptionists act as the “gatekeeper.” (If you’re using a live web chat service, the same tactic can be applied via chat as by phone.)
  • Require leads to complete an intake form before sharing your calendar link. Web visitors who first complete a detailed basic questionnaire about their case can then be given access to your calendar link (for a free or paid consultation). Leads who have taken the time to answer questions about their case are far less likely to cancel or miss their first appointment.

Justie Nicol of Nicol Law Offices makes it crystal clear what you need to do to get on her calendar, successfully “gatekeeping” her free 30-minute consultations:
Nicol Law Offices Practice Areas Example
Pro Tip: While most online scheduling apps are very inexpensive, often just $5-30/month, check out Calendly for a free solution. It only supports one calendar type at a time, but that’s often sufficient for a solo attorney who’s just getting started or on a tight budget.

4. Follow Up with High-Conversion Emails

Not every web lead will be convinced enough that your firm is the right fit to book a consultation on the spot, so increase the likelihood they will convert soon by following up via phone and also high-conversion emails. These emails, often called “lead nurturing” emails can be set up in your email or marketing automation software to “drip” into their inbox at a set cadence, and can include content that builds trust and interest in your firm, aimed at converting them to a client.

You can include basic FAQ, client testimonials, links to schedule a consultation, and advice pertinent to the practice area they best match with (which you will know from their selection on your “contact us” form or the receptionist’s notes from their initial phone call).

In every email, make sure you include a call to action (CTA) that prompts them to take the desired action. If possible, highlight this CTA by making it a phrase on a button-looking image, such as “book a free consultation” or “schedule a call with me,” like this:
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5. Refer & Monetize Your Bad Leads

Now, what about the leads who aren’t qualified? We all know web visitors don’t always read before reaching out. Maybe someone needs a criminal defense attorney but reached your family law office’s website. Don’t just hang up or disconnect the web chat. You can refer them to other firms you recommend and earn a sizeable fee (based on your local bar association’s rules). At the very least, even if there’s no money in it, you build good will for yourself and your firm.

Based on your directions and custom referral list, your phone staff or virtual receptionists can provide contact information for lawyers you recommend who are better suited to serving that potential client’s needs, with no involvement required from you after the initial process is set up.

Improve Web Lead Conversion with Smith.ai Phone & Chat Receptionists 

Not all live receptionist and web chat services offer the range and quality law firms require. Smith.ai offers remote, U.S.-based professional receptionists for inbound and outbound calls, as well as website chat, powered by AI technology that enables remarkable accuracy and efficiency.

RyTech readers get $50 off their first month of either phone or web chat service with code RYTECH50. To learn more and sign up, visit  https://smith.ai, call (650) 727-6484, or email hello@smith.ai.

About Maddy Martin

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Maddy Martin is the head of growth and education for Smith.ai, which  provides integrated phone and web chat services for small businesses, including their virtual receptionist & intake service, live web Chat service, and Keypad cloud phone system. She has spent the last decade growing tech startups from New York to California, and has expertise in digital marketing, small business communications, lead conversion, email marketing, SEO, and content marketing. Maddy can be reached at maddy@smith.ai, and you can also connect with her on LinkedIn.

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7 Tips for Optimized Social Media Posts

12/4/2018

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Social media is everywhere nowadays, and it is hard to stand apart from the competition. Here are 7 quick tips to increase your following and engagement with current and potential customers.

1. Utilize a Social Media Content Calendar

The best way to keep social media posts organized is on a social media content calendar that lists the dates and times at which you will publish types of content on each channel. By planning out your posts a week or month at a time, you can make sure you do not forget important events or post duplicate content. It may seem like a large time investment upfront; however, it will save you a significant amount of time on a monthly basis, while also making it easier to coordinate campaigns and grow your reach.

2. Choose the Best Time of Day for Your Channel & Audience

The best time to post for more impressions and engagements all depends on your specific audience, but there are time slots that tend to work better depending on the social media channel. For instance, posting in the morning and late afternoon (before and after work) are great times to post on LinkedIn, whereas around noon, and in the evenings work best for Facebook. If you are on more than one social media network, remember to schedule posts at different times across each platform, so there is a greater chance of the posts being seen by a larger audience.

3. Determine the Optimum Frequency 

It is important to remember to post less frequently on networks where the newsfeed is controlled by an algorithm such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and more frequently where it is more “real time” such as Twitter. Posting regularly across all channels is another important component when it comes to getting your company in front of your followers. If you post five times one week and only once the next week, your followers will forget about you in the off weeks. Moreover, inconsistent posting shows your audience that social media is not a priority and building a trusting relationship with them becomes that much more difficult.

4. Incorporate Visual Content

When you use a visual, you make it more likely that your target audience will stop and consume your content. In fact, visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared than non-visual content. ​
These visuals could include:
  • Infographic
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  • Photos
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  • Videos
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Although creating quality visuals is a time-consuming task for most businesses, the outcome is well worth the effort.

5. Maintain a Consistent Tone

Sticking with the same tone will help make your brand that much stronger as long as it matches your overall marketing efforts. However, make sure it is appropriate for the social channels you are on. It may be perfectly fine for your business to be fun and spunky on Facebook or Twitter, but if you are on LinkedIn, you need to make sure you maintain a professional appearance. The main theme to remember is to keep the same tone on each specific channel.

6. Stick to the 80/20 Content Rule

Don’t be overly promotional. Another important thing to remember is that you need to post content other than promotional material. The majority of people logging on to their social media accounts do not want to look at marketing material and will consequently get annoyed if they constantly have marketing messages in their newsfeed.

Try using the 80-20 rule as a general rule of thumb. 80% of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience (while still being relevant to your brand) and Twenty percent can directly promote your brand. This shows your followers that you see them as friends and not just customers, making them more likely to engage with your content and less likely to unfollow your page.

7. Analyze & Compare Data Regularly

As with any marketing effort, you need to analyze your results constantly. Measure how effective your efforts are by looking at impressions and engagements for each post and for each social media channel. See which posts are receiving the most interaction and create similar content for future posting.

For posts that have little interaction, either cut back on similar posts or switch up the message entirely. Testing different messages is key to crafting a strong social media campaign. If you are having a hard time gaining traction with your social media marketing efforts, create a revised strategy to determine if you should switch channels or messaging to reach the audience you want to target.

Regardless of how many of these tips you follow for an optimizing a social media post, remember, the main purpose for social media is to have a one-on-one relationship with your customers...It’s about being social!
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Matching Keywords to User Intent

11/13/2018

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In search marketing, keyword intent is everything. Whether we're making a content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) strategy or setting up a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign—if we can’t identify keyword intent, a ton of time and money can go down the drain. More specifically, knowing a users intent can mean a conversion rate of 1% v. 5%, or a page 1 ranking v. a page 5 ranking.

After all, Google obviously knows a users intent (or at least pretends to). It's part of our job to learn from them, and make sure we plan accordingly.

Keyword Research

After identifying target markets, goals and other key performance indicators (KPI), one of the initial steps to any search campaign is keyword research. This can be done manually or with Google Keyword Planner (if you want biased results), but in my opinion, this is the #1 function that paid SEO tools have going for them.

We use Ahrefs on a regular basis, but additional free tools we sometimes use include:

  • Answer the Public
  • UberSuggest
  • Moz Keyword Planner (10 free searches/day)
  • Keywords Everywhere

Pay Attention to These Keyword Metrics

Many of these tools make the automation of keyword research a bit simpler, and have metrics associated with keywords that can give us an insight into search intent. For example, Ahrefs tells us an average cost-per-click (CPC) as well as organic clicks-per-search (CPS).
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Only 4 out of 100 searches end with a click through to a website for the search term "James Van Der Beek age". That's because this is easy information for Google to display, without needing someone to visit a website.

The alternative is a keyword that can contain multiple clicks to websites per search.
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'Custom t shirts' averages 1.2 CPS, or 120 website visits per 100 searches. This is because it's a transactional keyword—someone is shopping or possibly price browsing trying to find the best quality and price for custom t shirts.

Types of Search & User Intent

The difference between the two keywords is the user intent. When it comes to intent, in the search world, we typically separate keywords into three categories—informational, branded/navigational, and transactional. While each of these categories can come in handy depending on the goals of a specific campaign, we need to know what to look for when finding a keyword to target.

Informational Keywords

Informational keywords typically take up the majority of an SEO content creator's time. These are keywords where the main goal of a user is to acquire a piece of knowledge—whether that's as easy as the age of their favorite Dawson's Creek character or as challenging as a recipe for paella, the goal is the transfer of information.
We can see informational queries coming in a variety of types, such as:

  • When is Labor Day
  • Where is the closest cafe
  • What is a Puli
  • Tips for staying hydrated in the heat
  • How to stay warm in Milwaukee in December

The common theme for informational keywords? They are typically questions or at least can be rephrased to become a question. 'Best Paella Recipe' for example can (and commonly is) turned into 'How Do I Make Paella'.

Optimizing for Informational Keywords

If these three buckets weren’t enough to determine user intent we typically break informational keywords down a little further into 'Clicks' and 'No Clicks'—which is as straightforward as it sounds.

'No Click' informational keywords: Questions that Google can answer with a simple knowledge graph or featured snippet are becoming more and more extinct in content marketing strategies. If only 4 out of 100 searchers actually click through to a result, why would we invest time and energy building content and links just to lose clicks to a search result?
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On top of that, with Google testing out no-result search results by only showing featured snippets for certain searches, these are almost inevitably going to be a lost cause.
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'Click' informational keywords: Keywords that don't have a concrete answer often times elicit one or more CPC, and these are keywords worth targeting. While they may not be as well converting as a transactional keyword, informational keywords can play a huge role in content marketing and brand awareness.

Sticking with the keyword 'best paella recipe'—if a restaurant can draw traffic to their website based on this keyword, think about what it can tell them about users. They're interested in spanish cuisine, cooking, and finding quality dishes. Wouldn't it be great if we could filter that by location and advertise to that exact group of people? Spoiler alert, we can!

What search marketers have to do is watch out for queries that seem informational, but are actually more navigational.

If a brand is owning the entire first page of Google search results for a search query, it's more likely than not that Google is viewing that result as navigational/branded, meaning we'll have a very hard time gaining any traffic for that content.

Optimizing for Branded & Navigational User Intent

Navigational user intent is a bit more straightforward. We also refer to this as branded intent, because most of the time a user will know exactly where they want to go.

Examples of branded navigational intent include:

  • UW Credit Union Login
  • Facebook
  • City of Milwaukee Website

The majority of the time, users already have a location online they know they want to get to, they just don't know (or are too lazy) to type in the URL.

When navigational keywords get interesting...

From an SEO standpoint, unless your brand is being typed in the search bar, you're probably not going to rank on the first page of Google. There are times that Indeed or Glassdoor may come in the organic results, but a competitor will have a hard time ranking for those types of keywords at all.

A fun and interesting way to steal some high-intent traffic is by bidding on competitors branded search terms. Of course, you have to be careful and think through this strategy—if a social media startup starts bidding on the search term 'Facebook', users who click on a page that isn't Facebook aren't going to stay on that site, meaning you just paid for a user to immediately leave your website. On the other hand, if you're seeing conversions coming in and have a positive return on investment (ROI), go for it!
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Transactional Intent Keywords

The final type of keyword we see have transactional intent. These keywords are great for anyone in PPC because they show a user is either in the shopping phase, or ready to purchase.

Transactional intent keywords often include words such as:

  • Buy
  • Compare
  • Sale
  • Coupon
  • Cheap

At this point, a user has moved down the purchase funnel and is closer to checking out than any other keyword category.

During this phase, we should still give users information, it just needs to be the information they're truly searching for. Shipping information, return policy, a comparison document highlighting benefits, or whatever a user is looking for to help them make their decision.

If you're ever curious if a keyword is considered transactional, just let Google guide your decision. If all you're seeing are organic results and possibly a featured snippet, it's more than likely informational. If on the other hand you're seeing an over abundance of ads (see below), it's likely considered transactional.
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Make Sure Content Matches Your Search Intent

In the end, we need to make sure the content we're trying to get in front of users is actually matching user and search intent.

If our target keyword is "Increase My SEO Rankings"—while we do see ads at the top of the page, every organic result on the first page of Google is blog posts, this tells us that it is a keyword with informational intent. We're going to have an extremely hard time ranking an SEO service page for a term like this.

‘SEO Services in Milwaukee’, on the other hand, shows all local businesses either featuring their homepage or their SEO service page. This is closer to a transactional keyword, and we should target this keyword with a service page.

In the end, making sure the way you plan and write your content to write the intent of a particular keyword is going to save you time, energy and money.
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How Community Can Help Drive Your Business Online

10/29/2018

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Translating your business' value, voice and personality into cyberspace can present hurdles when it comes to promoting your business online, but people often forget the thing that helps drive business both online and in real life: community. Online marketing isn't merely a way to promote your goods and services. It's a place to engage in further conversation with people around you considering doing business with you. It's a way to get yourself heard, get involved with local initiatives, advertise what you may have to offer, and connect with that which matters most: people. By being more deeply involved in your community, you'll help your reputation, your online presence and your business. And the best ways to get started is by practicing local search engine optimization (SEO), and more specifically, local link building.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is a practice used in the SEO world that identifies ways to increase the number of inbound links to your website from other websites. The reason this is so important: when search engines recognize that numerous and reputable websites repeatedly link to a certain page, that search engine will 'see' that page as a credible, relevant and desired web page with useful information. This, in turn, makes that page, and your site, more reputable in the eyes of the search engines, making your page more likely to show up first in search engine results pages (SERPs).

For instance, let's say you run a hypothetical tapas restaurant in Chicago called On Tapas The World. You fill your website with valuable, credible and desirable information that customers and other people enjoy reading, and other authoritative sites link to your page as an information source. Because search engines see so many people utilizing you as an information source, your website will then be seen as more authoritative and valuable, thus improving your page's rankings in Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc.

So, What Is "Local" Link Building?

Well, local link building is exactly what it sounds like: link building, but targeted to a strictly local level. There is one key difference between local and national link building, which will be discussed momentarily, but right now it's important to explain its significance and how it affects businesses.

Local link building is an essential practice, especially when it comes to brick-and-mortar stores.

  • It builds trust for your brand within the surrounding community that is most likely to frequent your business.
  • It makes you more discoverable locally, which positively affects your national brand identity if you have multiple locations.
  • It helps you rank better in local packs on Google.
  • It establishes your voice and your values as a business.

The main reason why local link building is important is this: you can optimize your website to have the most pertinent information in the world, sure. But the fact remains that On Tapas The World in Chicago is going to see Chicagoland customers on a daily basis; who is more likely to search "tapas restaurant Chicago" or similar keywords? It's not people in Dallas or Denver or wherever else. It's hungry Chicagoans looking for a tasty local meal. And that's why discoverability on a local level is so important.

So, how do you start your local link building campaign?

Connecting with Community: The Beginning of Local Link Building

There are many ways to begin a local link building campaign. But before you begin, there's one key factor, mentioned previously, to keep in mind: in national link building, the quality of the sites that link back to you matters more than the quantity. 15 spammy, low-tier backlinks are not nearly as valuable as 15 highly authoritative backlinks from large news organizations or other reputable sources. However, when it comes to local link building, the authority of the sites that provide the backlinks does not matter. What matters is their proximity to your business.

The more links you have from organizations in your vicinity, the better.

Here are some great ways to get the ball rolling:

  • Organize a free local event: people love to link local events on their website
  • Hold a local contest with prizes from your store
  • Do outreach to local directories to get listed
  • Sponsor well-known local events
  • Give discounts and other promotions for local students
  • Propose a joint-effort blog post to other local business owners
  • Create meaningful content (written, video, podcast, whatever!) that is locally-oriented
  • Reach out to local resource organizations
  • Give links as much (or more) than you get them -- people will notice

Practice Local SEO to Connect with Your Community

All in all, the goal of local SEO and local link building is to connect with community. It's more about developing real-world relationships in a tight-knit community and gearing your web content accordingly -- it's something that large, nationwide companies might not understand as well. By building trust among the community most likely to support your business and seeking out those local backlinks, your reputation in the real world AND online will start to improve, making you more discoverable in the future.

Are you currently investing time and resources into fostering connections within your community? We’d love to hear about it. You can also get in touch with our team if you have any questions about local SEO strategies.
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