Turn Your Website Into a Lead Generation Machine
In the past month, how many new clients found you through your website?
How about in the past year?
Your attorney website should be one of the best ways for you to source new business. It should be one of the ways people find out who you are and what you have to offer. But it should also be much, much more than that. Your attorney website should be one of the most effective tools you have to sift, sort and screen potential clients. It should help you weed out the people who can’t pay, won’t pay or don’t pay.
A client who finds your firm through your attorney website should be ready willing and able to make a commitment to pay a premium for your services.
There are three ways to make sure that your attorney website is working hard to position you properly.
A good website does three things for an attorney:
- 1.) It educates the client on the attorney’s area of specialization.
- 2.) It helps build the attorney’s credibility in the eyes of the prospective client.
- 3.) It captures the prospective client’s contact information.
These three things are critically important. They must be built into the structure of the site itself.
As most bar associations will tell you, hiring an attorney is an important decision. It is also a decision that most of your clients will not take lightly. And you don’t want them to take it lightly. You want them to do as much research as possible.
Provide Educational Content
When you provide educational material on your website you help your client realize exactly how serious his situation is. This helps him understand that he will need a highly skilled professional to help him.
For example:
Bankruptcy Attorneys should provide information on their website about the complexity of bankruptcy law. They should cite several complex cases that demonstrate the need for an expert to help guide them through the maze of filings. Keep in mind that clients don’t know what they don’t know. You need to help them understand the depth of the law in your field.
Divorce Attorneys should help clients realize just how complicated a divorce can be from a legal prospective. The emotional toll will be enormous, and most clients expect to face that challenge. The challenge they will not anticipate and the challenge you should educate them on, is the implication of a poorly structured settlement. Help them see the things that they have no way of knowing. Help them understand that there is more to a divorce than fighting it out and signing some paperwork.
Corporate Attorneys should discuss the implications of not forming proper corporate entities or of not protecting the “corporate veil” or of poorly structured contracts.
There are endless topics that you can and should explore for your prospective clients. Help them get to a point where they can make an educated decision.
Build Credibility
Having a law degree and listing your graduation date on your website is not enough. Providing a list of credentials is not enough. Posting a resume with significant accomplishments listed in chronological order is not enough. You need to demonstrate to your prospective client why you are the best choice for him. Your website must make a compelling case for hiring you and ignoring all the alternative choices in your field.
You must make this case on your website just as you would make a case to a jury in a courtroom. You need to lay out the facts and weave them into a compelling story. The story should be interesting and it should highlight the client as the hero.
That’s right.
The client is the hero of the story. He saved the day by taking action. He chose YOU as the attorney.
Capture Client Contact Information
This is the area where 95% of all attorney websites fall short. They have no built-in follow-up mechanism. Your website is only as good as the leads it generates for you. If you don’t have a way of knowing who is visiting your site, you can’t follow-up with them.
It is a cold, hard business fact that people do not take action unless they are prompted to do so. In the case of a law practice, that prompt should come in the form of a follow-up email directly from you asking if you can answer any questions. If your website does not give you that opportunity, you are going to miss out on a good deal of potential business.
Your website should be one of the most profitable investments you make in your law practice. It should pay dividends for you day-in and day-out.
Do a quick audit of your web presence and see if it meets the three criteria we discussed. If it doesn’t, there is a good chance your next million-dollar client will be walking into the office of your competitor instead of sitting down in front of you.
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