This firm greatly reduced its spending and increased the quality and volume of its leads by taking one big step. What was done and how.
Some businesses limit their marketing entirely to online efforts. There are plus sides to this—such as lower costs and greater reach—but there are also risks. Marketing your law practice entirely online requires a tight focus on driving organic traffic to your firm’s website using search engine optimization (SEO) and on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Unfortunately, the skills required to make these two efforts work well in competitive regions are outside the skillset of most lawyers. Which means success in this aspect of online marketing requires finding a vendor or person to help. This is when many firms turn to digital marketing companies. With outsourcing, however, you don’t always have the kind of control and attention that you need in order to feel like you’re getting value from the money you’re investing.
Jackson White Law Attorney, Jeremy Geigle, felt like he was losing control of his marketing efforts—and not seeing the results he wanted to be seeing. This case study will examine how Geigle took back control of his online marketing efforts to drive more traffic, more leads, and eventually, more clients, into his law firm.
The Challenge
With the massive growth of the internet, Arizona criminal defense attorney Jeremy Geigle has decided to market his law practice online, rather than spending money and effort on more traditional forms of marketing. For this reason, the firm’s website and all of its legal blogs need to consistently receive qualified traffic, which can be a major challenge. “I market my practice almost entirely on the Internet, so maintaining high Google organic rankings is vital,” he says. “Successful online marketing includes many time-consuming tasks that are outside of my core competencies and I lack time to complete myself, so I have always had to outsource the work.” While outsourcing digital marketing efforts is a common practice, it can also be a serious challenge. “When using external vendors, I continuously grew frustrated with the lack of accountability,” Geigle says. “While I pay these people tens of thousands of dollars every month, I have little concrete evidence to prove the work is being done.” On top of all that, Geigle has found, especially recently, that it’s difficult to attract the right people to his firm. “Attracting criminal offenders who can afford my services has proved challenging for many years, but most specifically the last two-three,” he says. Geigle and his firm needed to find a way to:
- Better-manage the digital marketing process
- Attract the right leads
1. Hired A Full-Time, In-House Digital Marketing Manager
Geigle was increasingly more disappointed with the results he was getting from his marketing outsourcing efforts, so he decided to meet with his firm’s marketing team. “After evaluating how much money I was spending on SEO/PPC per month,” he says, “and realizing that I was unhappy with the results I was receiving from our external digital marketing company, I discussed my frustrations with my firm’s in-house marketing team, who brought the idea of hiring a full-time Digital Marketing Manager to the table. It helped that several of my fellow attorneys were also experiencing similar frustrations.” Finding this Digital Marketing Manager proved a little more difficult than Geigle’s marketing team expected, but the results were worth all the effort. “Our firm’s marketing team took the lead on finding the right candidate,” he says. “Our [current]Digital Marketing Manager found our posting on Craigslist. The process of finding the right person for the job was more difficult than it had been hiring other, more traditional marketing professionals in the past.” If your firm wants to have more consistency and accountably when it comes to online marketing and driving leads to your firm, hiring a Digital Marketing Manager or someone similar can do wonders in keeping things organized, efficient and effective. “I am able to sit down with the Digital Marketing Manager monthly to see my results firsthand,” Geigle says. “I am now able to worry less about my marketing and focus more on assisting my clients.”
2. Daily Blogging and Social Media Posting
Geigle’s firm’s marketing team is now on top of consistency, especially when it comes to creating and sharing content with the firm’s fans and followers. “My marketing team blogs daily and promotes our content across multiple social media platforms [such as]Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn,” he says. “Our blogs drive consistent traffic to our site, with our most valuable posts being those in which we collaborated with an external source and were able to share links and cross-promote, a process often called co-creation.”
3. Co-Creating Content with Known Experts
it’s also about who you’re linking to and who’s linking back to you. When it comes to links, you have to be strategic if you want to increase your rankings. What has helped Geigle’s firm is a strategy called “co-creation.” “Co-creation is the process of creating completely unique and original content through collaborating with an external source,” he says. “For example, our marketing team recently wrote a criminal blog [post]based on shoplifting addiction and sought the expertise from a well-known rehabilitative expert.” Connecting with these experts, interviewing them, and then linking to them has been a major traffic booster for Geigle’s firm. Here’s how the process works: “Our team first finds a source with a high-authority website—shoot for any site with a domain authority over 50 on a specific topic—and then approaches the desired expert via email to see if they are open to an interview,” he says. “Our team then creates content based upon the provided information, which we link to the external source’s website and promote via social media. We also encourage the source to post the content to their site with a link to ours and to also promote it on their media channels. This process allows for publicity and link-building for both parties.” If you want to take your blogging to the next level, consider using the co-creation process to create articles on important topics related to your firm. Geigle insists, however, that if you do use this process, ensure you’re doing your research first before doing any connecting or writing. “It is important to check the domain authority [of the expert’s site]before wasting your time on content that will not provide value to your site,” he says. “Furthermore, it is wise to check that the [expert]source [you want to interview]is providing new content to their own site and that they are active on social media. These factors will help ensure the most valuable links.” As a final recommendation, Geigle says, “avoiding any sites that use SEO techniques in violation of Google standards is vital.”
The Results
1. Decreased Pay-Per-Click Spending
With all of his marketing efforts being focused online, Geigle spends a lot of money every month on pay-per-click campaigns, so he was pleasantly surprised how effective hiring a Digital Marketing Manager could be. “I have decreased my monthly PPC spending amount and have seen an enormous increase in my profit returns,” he says.
2. Higher Quality Leads and New Clients
The Digital Marketing Manager has made a huge impact on leads to the firm. “Having someone monitoring my campaigns full-time has led to more quality calls,” he says. “[Including] One twenty-thousand dollar up-front client in particular.” While this effort and focus have helped Geigle and his firm a lot, he has found that attracting the right clients is a battle he is always up against. “Even with increased success in my digital marketing efforts, I have still found it a challenge to attract clients who can afford my services,” he says.
