If you Diversify your Law Firm Marketing you can have a Secure Practice

When I first started out I wish I knew the importance of diversifying my marketing efforts.

In 2003 I created my website, www.ranchodlaw.com.

At this time having a good website as a lawyer was more of an exception than the norm. Therefore, even though my website was in its infancy, it showed up well for keyword searches. Pay Per Click advertising on Google and Bing were highly cost effective.

There was a flipside to this success. On the hand I obtained most of my cases from my website. On the other hand I became completely reliant on Google.

For approximately the first year after the launch of my website I was able to successfully obtain enough cases to grow my practice. However, I began to experience the fatal flaw in relying on only one marketing method.

Because my website was so effective I did not explore many other marketing avenues. I had a print advertisement in an ethnic publication, “Indian Currents,” I had a small advertisement in yellow pages and was a member of the San Francisco Lawyer Referral Service. Each of these lead sources brought in very few cases and were not very effective.

Why was this a problem? When Google changed its algorithm and my website did not perform well and my revenue severely decreased. One month my website would perform really well but when Google changed its algorithm I felt like the Titanic as my revenue and case load hit the Google ice berg. This was a horrible way to live that caused a great deal of anxiety. Usually the changes would last for a month and my website rankings would decrease from the top 5 search results to the bottom of the first page or second page. As you may know if you are not on the first page of Google you are not being found.

Thus, being dependent on Google was a roller coaster ride. Even though my website was successful and transformed my struggling days of the very first year of my law practice, this was still a painful way to live.

For me relying on a website alone was the problem. Now don’t get me wrong, many of my cases come from my website, but now my website is not my only source of cases. You should diversify your law firm marketing practice just as you would diversify your investment portfolio.

For online advertising you could diversify your web marketing from merely Search Engine Optimization to Pay Per Click, printed newsletter, Social Media (make sure you have mastered the fundamentals in marketing before investing time here) and paid directories. Additionally, you can diversify your marketing mediums to print advertising; radio advertising; direct mail; television; giving speeches and lectures; and attending community events. It is better to have one case coming from each of the mediums above then have all seven cases coming from your website. Relying on any one medium makes you extremely vulnerable to the whims of that medium source.

For instance, in my situation I was adversely affected by Google Algorithms; but if you were completely reliant on TV advertising, and the TV advertiser decided to raise their rates-to where you could not advertise cost effectively, what would you do? You do not want to be in this position.

Diversifying your practice to other mediums takes a little bit of time and testing. Unless you are lucky, you may not have immediate success when testing other marketing mediums. Therefore, be patient when testing. It is easy to get frustrated when testing another marketing medium because the advertising method is not performing. I have also found that when testing a marketing medium it is helpful to give it three months to fairly evaluate how the marketing method performs. While you are testing it is extremely important to track everything. Otherwise you will not be able to measure your marketing efforts effectively.

Now, brainstorm on other marketing mediums you can test, so that you have a more secure practice.