As an attorney, you know that referrals from other attorneys or satisfied clients are one of the best sources of new clients for your law practice, not the least because the referring party has already said good things about you and the work you do. Most of your clients probably come to your practice in this manner. However, as effective as word-of-mouth marketing may be, it is often not enough to sustain or grow a successful law practice. You must seek out new prospects from other sources as well.
If you have a website, hopefully prospects will find you online through a search engine or directory and visit your site to learn more about you. Since you don’t know which page of the Web site the prospect will enter from, it is critical that every page be constructed in such a way as to encourage as many of these visitors as possible to make contact with you.
You don’t have much time to convince them either. Many believe that you have as little as 10 seconds to grab a Web site visitor’s interest before they back out and visit a different site. As a service professional, you don’t have a tangible product to sell, so how do you convince prospective clients to take the step of making contact with you?
Add Client Testimonials
Along with other elements of a successful site, you should consider adding client testimonials. If a satisfied client says something positive about you in a letter or email, or over the telephone, ask them directly if you can ascribe their feedback to a Web site testimonial. It will increase visitors’ comfort level with you if they see that other people, like them, hired you and were glad that they did.
Add Case Results
If you’re not comfortable with client testimonials (or you don’t have any), have a short case result on the page. For example, if the page is about your personal injury practice, boast about a particularly successful case result like “Case: Dog attack causing facial scarring. Result: $150,000 to plaintiff.” Then provide a “View More Results” link to a results page listing all of your good results.Providing such information helps prospective clients be confident that you can provide the legal services that will help them solve whatever problem they are facing.
Say It Loudly
When including the testimonial or case result on the Web page, make sure that you include it in such a way as the visitor cannot help but see it. Change the background of the client quote or case result somewhat so that the visitors’ eyes are drawn to it. Keep the call-out above the scroll bar so that it is in front of their eyes the moment the page loads into their browser.
Remember that you have only a few seconds to grab visitors, so make those seconds count.
