Motor Vehicle Accident, or MVA Leads, are typically the best way for a personal injury law firm to purchase third party leads, for a few reasons discussed below. For purposes of this article, we’ll assume workers compensation leads are in a category by themselves, although some lead generation companies do group workers compensation leads in with personal injury.
The reason auto accident leads tend to drastically outperform general personal injury leads such as slip & falls and dog bites, is wide ranging but can be boiled down to 2 main factors:
- It’s generally much easier to prove liability in a car accident. There are usually witnesses, police reports, photos, and physical damage to the vehicles involved. Contrast this with someone slipping on a sidewalk or in a store when no one was looking – much harder to prove fault.
- The injuries sustained in motor vehicle accidents are usually more severe than in a premises liability lead, which makes up about 80% of all personal injury leads, excluding MVA leads. As a result, the dollar amounts will generally be much larger on car accident settlements than other personal injury claims due to the higher medical bills, treatment, loss of income, pain & suffering, etc.
Because more definitive liability means more cases accepted, your conversion rate (Percentage of MVA leads you turn into clients) is high, and because the injuries are more severe, on average your case value is higher, MVA leads will almost always beat out general PI leads even at a much higher price per lead.
How Much do Your MVA Leads Cost?
This can depend on the market, the source of the leads (TV, PPC, Social Media, etc), and whether or not the leads are exclusive to one firm or sold to multiple attorneys. The general range for an exclusive MVA lead is between $175-$275, but that number can change if a few local firms decide to drive up advertising costs in an area. Also, more congested markets like NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago where there are a lot of marketing savvy firms competing for the same MVA cases, you can expect the price of MVA leads to be higher than in a rural state with little relative competition.
What’s the Difference Between Buying Car Accident Leads and Generating Them Myself?
There’s generally a trade off made in buying MVA leads from a third party company like PinPoint, or investing in generating them yourself.
Buying third party leads is generally a much faster, risk averse approach to getting more MVA cases for a lower initial buy in, both in terms of time and money. You are plugging into a system that’s already working well, and if you’re working with a reputable lead generation company, their livelihood depends on repeat business so they will be incentivized to get you as many good leads as they can in the interest of earning your long term business.
However that convenience does come at a cost- first off, you don’t get the branding associated with having your firm’s name in the community, whether on a billboard, tv, or people searching google – your advertising dollars are going to a marketing company who is now using them to drive traffic to a website that doesn’t bring you any name recognition until you receive the lead and make the initial contact with the PNC. While this may not have a short-term effect, over time the subliminal messaging of seeing your firm repetitively advertised may hurt your chances at referrals and converting new business.
Also, no matter how good the legal lead generation company, the fact remains that the lead you just purchased was someone who filled out a non-branded form on the internet asking for a consultation with an attorney. They didn’t take the time to do their research on local firms, read reviews, or ask for recommendations. As a result, they can be a bit flakier, hard to get a hold of, and quicker to fill out multiple lead gen forms in their quest for answers. Couple that with the fact that they haven’t read your bio, seen where you went to law school or where your office is located, seen testimonials from past clients or past successes you’ve won for your clients, and you can have an uphill battle on your hands when it comes to converting leads to clients.
To conclude, whether buying third party or generating your own, MVA leads are usually a very high quality way to grow your personal injury practice.