With our attorney marketing program or most other forms of 3rd party legal leads, people are filling out forms on a website and waiting for an attorney to call them back. In almost all cases, they have no idea which law firm will be calling them, or when. This is very different from a referral from a client or another lawyer, or even from most other forms of lawyer marketing like a lead that found your law firm’s website.
In all of the attorney marketing avenues above (aside from legal leads), the person waiting for a call from you is somewhat pre-sold on your firm. Either they’ve heard good things from a friend, family member, or another attorney, and will generally wait for you to call rather than shopping around for other firms. Even in the case of someone finding your website, they will typically take the time to read your bio, see where your office is located, etc. So they generally will have made some sort of mental commitment to talk with you.
With lead generation as opposed to other forms of legal marketing, clients are generally looking at a non-branded, information resource website, and asking for a free consultation with “a lawyer”. Understanding the difference and working it into your intake process can be the difference between a successful legal lead generation campaign and a break even or losing lawyer marketing campaign.
Intake – The Great Law Firm Marketing Equalizer:
A few key points to remember:
- Your call is the fist they have heard of you, or your firm, so an intro and some salesmanship is in order.
- Calling early and often is imperative. Given the fact that they don’t know who is calling, they will be much more likely to go back online and find another firm to call.
- Vary your timing. A lot of people will fill out a form at work, or at night when they can’t talk. Calling after business hours, or the next morning, helps quite a bit.
- Varying your method of contact helps. Meet people where they are – some people prefer to communicate via text or email, so make sure you give them that option.
- Consider the type of lead you’re following up on. A personal injury lead may have different characteristics to a workers comp lead or a bankruptcy lead.
Below is a method for intake that we developed based on conversations with some of our highest converting clients.
3-2-1 Method:
- First Day: Call/VM-Text-Email. Call back with no message at least once more, preferably twice on day 1 at various times of day. At least one call should be after business hours in case the person can’t talk while at work.
- Second Day: Call/VM – Text. Call back once more at a different time of day (again, preferably at least one call after business hours but not too late) with no message left.
- Third Day : Call/VM – Email.
If you have some sort of email marketing service like constant contact, Infusionsoft etc… it’s also recommended you put the no contacts into some sort of drip email campaign so they get a few more emails over the next week or two. This should enhance your law firm marketing efforts by closing a few extra “dead leads” out of every batch.