Law Firm Transparency Yields Greater Understanding - SEO Results

In the age of search engine optimization and internet marketing, it is even more critical to your plaintiff law firm’s marketing program to collaborate and share as much data about your firm’s results as possible with your marketing partners.

/CEPACLaw.com/Kevin Quinlan/ 04/03/2009

In the age of search engine optimization and internet marketing, it is even more critical to your plaintiff law firm's marketing program to collaborate and share as much data about your firm's results as possible with your marketing partners.  

When we begin our search marketing efforts for our clients, we install proprietary analytics on their websites; recommend the use of a website-dedicated phone number for tracking web based calls and we collect the data provided by users completing the contact forms.  From this array of tools we are able to make adjustments to our program and provide very detailed reports to our legal clients about where leads come from, what key words are successful, and potential flaws in their websites.  While these statistical reports may be able to clearly show successful results and point to areas that can be improved, it would be significantly more beneficial for law firms to have reports that indicate the cost per lead (CPL), conversion rates and the actual ROI to their firm.

That said, reporting on these metrics is entirely dependent on the attorneys being more transparent and providing accurate information regarding the total number of leads, the number of leads converted to cases and preferably the total value of those cases to the law firm.  Even an estimate of what the potential future value of a case may be would be helpful for reporting at the beginning of an Internet marketing campaign prior to the cases being litigated.

Unfortunately, many law firms are wont to keep that type of information close to the vest.  The only way that marketers can provide reports that demonstrate the true value of the success of their efforts, for their own benefit and that of the firm, is to have access to information that can only be provided by their clients.  That is especially true for SEO where the reporting can be filled with jargon and highly technical details.

Although the same data is valuable in reporting for all media, whether it is TV, targeted referral mailings or a print ad campaign, many legal clients are hesitant to provide more detail than the number of calls received.  While the job of a professional lawyer-marketing firm is ultimately to do just that - make the phone ring - our clients and we share a vested interest in raising both the quantity and the quality of calls for their law firms.

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