Lawyers.com Editor in Chief : Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, sales training, practice development, training, marketing consultant, legal consultant, individual lawyer coaching, business development, client team, practice development, business development, law firm coach

I was just on a webinar about the $50,000 Marketing Makeover that LexisNexis awarded to the 3-lawyer St. Louis firm of Case Rajnoha & Boudreau.  I was also a judge in the competition that named the winner in January. Work was still proceeding in March and now the wraps are finally off of the website.

And it's a beaut. By several measures, LexisNexis did a great job:

• The site features people and faces (including the ever-cute blond Meg Boudreau). There's not a trite gavel, column or blind justice in sight.
• The phone number is right at the top of the page, where it should be. Websites are supposed to generate leads.
• The site says callers get a free consultation. It's important to make this statement or else callers will think otherwise.
• I'm not a big fan of Flash, but theirs is pretty cool. The pictures of Sally Rajnoha, Joel Case and Meg remain stationary, while the blue background swishes by and changes. When you visit a lawyer bio, the picture of the person in question lights up brightly.
• The navigation is obvious, and you can immediately see what the firms three primary practices are.
• The site has videos, including one on divorce right on the home page. Videos help with search engine optimization and are one of the first things visitors look for. The video depicts typical clients, not the lawyers -- a smart move.
• The home page has a quick contact form, again, making it easy for visitors to contact the firm.
• There are social media links to Facebook and LinkedIn.
• The site has an FAQ page. This is always good, because you should answer common questions that your visitors have, so that all they need to do is call you. The info for clients continues in the "newsletters" section, which is actually a collection of articles.
• The firm has a blog, and clicking on the link to it brings up the latest posts on the home page.
• It has testimonials. A third-party endorsement is powerful marketing.
• The practice descriptions are written in plain English, not legalese, and explain the process involved in a criminal, divorce or other case.
• There's a sitemap, which also helps with search engines.
• As part of the makeover, Joel got his AV rating and Sally got her BV rating, and the site has a link to their Martindale-Hubbell bios.
• There are unique <title> and <meta> tags for each page, which helps with search engines.

And the site definitely works. During the webinar, Meg mentioned that she's been overwhelmed with all the leads the site produces. That's a problem every lawyer would love to have.

From my article in Law Technology News:

A lawyer hands her business card to a potential client at an industry conference. The prospective client, the CEO of a technology company, notices a square block of code on the back of her card. Impressed, he pulls out his smart phone and taps an app to take a picture of the code. The screen reveals all the information on the business card plus a detailed bio.

He'll be calling soon with an assignment for the lawyer.

The hottest trend in law firm marketing technology is Quick Response (QR) codes — digital records that can contain entire web pages, v-cards and marketing information. QR codes are a bridge from something on paper to digital information about lawyers and their services...

Click to read the entire article, Be Square.

If you see the headline “Social Media King: Facebook lost its Social Media crown” or “Data: StumbleUpon Beats Facebook As Top Social Referrer” – they are WRONG!  The news writers referred to data from StatCounter - http://bit.ly/flFAPk -- but set they the date parameters incorrectly.

The top social media sites are:

1. Facebook 63%
2. Stumbleupon 18%
3. YouTube 8%
4. Twitter 5.6%

According to StatCounter, its data is based on the analysis of four billion page loads per month among StatCounter's two million members.

From Hubspot: We all know our website is a key part of our marketing and lead generation strategy. But when prospects visit your site, what are they looking for? What do they want to see, and what do they consider most important? To find out, RainToday surveyed more than 200 buyers of B2B services -- in companies of all sizes -- to rate the importance of various elements of a service provider's website.

The top 4 elements should come as no surprise:

•  Service descriptions (87%)
•  Description of industries served (78%)
•  Success stories / case studies (73%)
•  Professional website design and presentation (69%)

These elements are the core of most firms' websites. If something is amiss here, it will raise major questions with buyers from the get-go. Getting these elements in place is just the price of entering the game.

However, if you want to win clients, don't overlook the remaining six elements. Even podcasts and audio content, at the bottom of the list, were rated by 40% of decision makers as being "extremely" or "very important" when deciding to make initial contact with a service provider. 

Whatever marketing you are doing, the first stop for most buyers is a visit to your website. It can either draw them in further with online resources and content, podcasts, videos, and news, or it can say the same thing as your competitors' sites, providing a laundry list of services and a nice look, but neither helping nor hurting your chances to start or enhance a relationship.

Web Elements Working Together - An Example

Say you are going to run a webinar. You may send an invitation by email (a top way to generate attendance at webinars), directing buyers to register for the event on your website. During the registration process, you can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, allowing you to add them to ongoing marketing communications. And, on the confirmation page, you can direct them to blog posts, case studies, or podcasts on related topics to the event, further engaging them with your brand and thought-leading content.

Pull People to You

You can go a step further and share information about the webinar and the related content items via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Doing this allows you to reach your followers and fans, some of whom may not be on your email list, as well as enhancing your Web presence. As more people use the Web to find services, you want to make sure you have compelling content that is findable in search engines and draws people to you.

Buyers may not indicate elements such as blog posts, podcasts, and video as being the most important features of a website, but leveraging content can really help your product or service stand out in a crowded market space.

What type of content do you have available on your website?