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Earlier this week, I ran into an attorney friend of mine who owns a thriving personal injury practice in the Atlanta area. He told me that he was in negotiation with a “pay per click” (PPC) management firm and that he planned on testing PPC to attract personal injury cases. He would be testing this tool to the tune of $3,000 per month for a minimum of three months. What did I think of this?
I responded by asking him if he had tested his web site for conversion. It turns out that his web site is not yet live – it is in production and will be produced by a friend at no cost. I just took a look and, yes, the domain is registered, and the “in production” version of the site is there. The designer is using a template downloaded from Free Website Templates, and the site looks to be about 10% complete.
Now let me stop right here and say that I have nothing against a free website template. In my view money spent on expensive design is often money wasted as one can have a very effective web site with a free template that displays good content.
My point here is simply that before my friend even thinks of signing on for $3,000 per month of pay per click traffic, he needs to have a live web site up and running and he needs to test that site to verify that live visitors are responding appropriately. If live visitors don’t like your site, and if they don’t follow the path that you have set out for them, you are wasting your money with paid advertising.
I explained to my friend my concerns about marketing for personal injury online and that in my view his target ought to be the “researcher” type who will spend hours online looking for a vendor who will provide extensive information.
I also suggested to my friend that he should capture names and email and add a sequential autoresponder to his site to communicate with past, present and future clients.
Now, my friend is a very smart and successful lawyer. But this episode shows that even smart, savvy, trained minds can fall prey to the hype of a good salesman and the excitement of wanting to tap into the Internet gold rush. My friend needs to either educate himself about how the Internet might work for his practice or he needs to associate a consultant like me to advise him. Otherwise the $9,000 he plans on spending will do him no good at all.
