Posted by Yodle

With all of the time and work necessary to run a successful law firm, your legal marketing campaign may be an area that you want handled by an outside expert. While we’d love for any of you to choose Yodle, regardless of who you choose, before you hire any online advertising partner and make that final decision, be sure to ask yourself these key questions:

How will the success of your campaigns be measured? Even though nearly every aspect of online advertising is quantifiable, many local online advertising vendors don’t provide their clients with a way to track the success of their websites. A local online marketing company worth your time and money should give you the capability to monitor how your ad dollars are performing against the metrics that matter most to your business, be it Cost-Per-Lead, Click-Through-Rate, Cost-Per-Acquisition or any other.

How experienced is the vendor? As opposed to a vendor who has just started marketing in the legal industry, a company with experience in your industry will have a better understanding of the ad copy tactics and keywords that will perform best.

How long is your contract? A good rule of thumb (unless of course you get a great deal for a longer contract) is that results should be able to be seen within 3-6 months for a PPC campaign and 9-12 months for SEO. If you are told that you have to sign a contract that will extend well beyond these periods of time, it’s probably a sign that you should start looking elsewhere.

How interested does the vendor seem in your website? Before taking your law firm on as a customer, a representative from the vendor should examine your website and offer you suggestions for improvements that will help increase the amount of new phone calls you receive. After all, web traffic is only of any use to your firm if it is driven to a website that will successfully convert online visitors into offline cases.

How widely will your business be distributed on the web? Any company can get you a spot on the sponsored section of large search engines such as Google and Yahoo. While search engines are undoubtedly a huge part of a healthy online presence, there are tons of directories, Internet Yellow Pages, and local sites that can provide valuable incremental exposure, traffic, and cases. Moreover, these complementary sites are often very cost effective ways to advertise your law firm given their lower levels of competition.

Whether you decide to hire a company to market your law firm for you, or decide to do it on your own, continue to check back for more ideas and tips for successfully advertising your law firm.