Essentials For Hiring A Law Firm Online Marketing Agency

2 Essentials For Hiring An Online Marketing Agency For Your Law Firm

When choosing an online marketing agency for your law firm, there is a level of trust needed that may often get overlooked without even thinking about it.

When building a website and marketing plan for your law firm, your ultimate goal is to generate more business from profitable clients. Unfortunately, there are some marketing agencies for law firms out there that will mislead you to what needs to be done or do things that might have short term impact but end up hurting your law firm in due time.

How can you ensure that the online marketing agency you hire for your law firm will help your business’s bottom line without leaving you vulnerable for big time loss down the road?

Ask Your Law Firm’s Online Marketing Agency For A Clear Plan And SMART Goals

Before any actions are taken to start campaigning your law firm, a clear marketing plan needs to be put in place with realistic and measurable goals to strive for.

The goals that are set for your law firm’s website should be (according to Marketing Automation Software Company Hubspot):

Specific – Do set real numbers with real deadlines. Don’t say “I want more visitors.”
Measurable – Do make sure that you can track your goal. Don’t hide behind buzz words like “brand engagement” or “social influence.”
Attainable – Do work towards a goal that is challenging but possible. Don’t try to take over the world in one night.
Realistic – Do be honest with yourself, because you know what you and your team are capable of. Don’t forget any hurdles you may have to overcome.
Timebound – Do give yourself a deadline. Don’t keep pushing towards a goal you might hit “someday.”

After your goals are set, it’s time to put a marketing plan together for your law firm. This plan should consistently align with your business goals and be transparent to your firm before getting started with execution. While you may not understand all of the specifics of how things are done, it’s important to know what’s happening and why, at least at a high level.

We have had clients in the past that have hired an online marketing company to help them rank for certain keywords. The marketing company helped them rank in the top 3 for those keywords and the client was happy seeing those search rankings improve. Happy ending right? Wrong.

If the client was ranking for their desired keywords, what was the problem?

Make Sure Your Law Firm’s Keywords Have Business Potential

The keywords that they were ranking for didn’t have anyone searching for them! Because of the lack of potential business, there was no competition on Google for these keywords and the marketing company had an easy job in front of them. Too bad for the client they never had any idea that there was no business potential and they ended up spending a year’s worth of their marketing budget on something with zero impact on their business.

The moral of the story is that when you are working with a marketing agency to help build your online presence, make sure there is potential for a return on your investment with the plan that is put together for you before heading into execution.

Clarify That Your Firm’s Marketing Agency Is Planning For Short And Long Term Impact

Another issue that law firm marketing agencies have is that they try and cheat the system to get to the top of Google’s search rankings. Real search marketing takes research, planning, strategy, patience and persistence. Those aren’t always things that a law firm is equipped with so they go for the marketing agency that promises the quickest impact.

The problem comes when Google penalizes your law firm’s website for using these SEO loopholes and you lose all of your search engine traffic.

When you are hiring a marketing agency, make sure that they are keeping up with best practices that will help your business grow consistently without a high risk of being hit with a Google penalty and losing everything that you thought you had earned.