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Welcome
to
Consultwebs.com's law firm Web
marketing site. The site contains proven law firm Web site promotion techniques.
We invite you to visit our Promote Webs
site for additional lawyers Website marketing promotion approaches. Please drop by and visit or post
to our legal marketing
Bulletin Board. To suggest a link or provide a suggestion about the
site, please
click here. The site is an on-going collection of marketing and
promotion resources.
»
See Dale Tincher's
latest legal article: "Law
Firm Blogs - Hip or Hype?"
»
Your Legal Web
Site: If You Build It, They Might Not Come. But If You Build It
And Market It, They Will - by Dale H.
Tincher and Wendy R.
Leibowitz
Lawyers and marketing have always been an uneasy mix. The
assumption until very recently was that if you were a good,
ethical attorney, clients would find their way to you. Your job
would be to sit back and handle the stampede of clients breaking
down your door as your secretary fielded the never-ending calls
from well-heeled clients seeking an appointment with you.
Occasionally, such a non-marketing lawyer would write an
article. Or make a speech. Or play golf. Other marketing
efforts, other than circulating a dull newsletter or sending a
newspaper article to a client with a little note saying, “I
thought you might find this of interest,” were regarded as
distasteful or even unprofessional.
But the reality is that lawyers have always had to market their
service and expertise--they just have done so with no focus and
no education. So, face it: Some legal marketing efforts are
clumsy and unproductive. Most late-night television
advertisements from personal injury lawyers can be downright
tacky and embarrassing to the entire profession.
The unfamiliarity with professional marketing, coupled with a
general unfamiliarity with Internet technologies, underlies the
reluctance of many lawyers to market their Web sites. Many
attorneys, including large, prestigious firms, tossed up a legal
Web site to keep up with the Joneses, and to recruit young
lawyers who are addicted to technology and who search out
information first by logging onto the Internet.
But because many attorneys do not believe that the Web is a way
to effectively serve clients, or to attract new clients, they do
not ask their clients what information would be useful to see on
the attorney Web site. If there is little of interest to the
clients on the site, clients won’t visit very much. If clients
don’t visit, lawyers see no reason to market their Web sites,
and might even be ashamed of the site, since it is a poor
reflection of the depth of their expertise. Sometimes attorneys
do not even make elementary efforts to ensure their sites appear
prominently in search engines or are updated regularly. Heck,
many lawyers don’t even put their Web addresses on their
business cards.
But some lawyers can change. A Web site, unlike more formal and
static printed material, can reflect your personality, your
clients’ growth and interests, and your vision for the future of
your practice. Your Web site can help your practice and help
your clients--but only if clients know where your site is, and
what will be found on it.
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A well designed and marketed Web site can bring in new clients and
keep current clients visiting on a regular basis. The Internet is
becoming a basic component of business in the 21st century. A
December 29, 2002 CNN article stated that About 60 percent of
2,000 people surveyed in the
Pew Internet and American Life Project study said they used the
Web regularly. Two-thirds of those had been online for three or more
years. At least 80 percent of the Internet users questioned in
September and October said they expected to find reliable news,
health care information and government services information on the
Web. Almost as many Internet users, 79 percent, said they
expected to find a business with a Web site that will give them
information about a product they are considering buying.
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