Buying Leads Overview

Buying leads involves two parties: your law firm and an online lead selling agency. You should look for the following characteristics when selecting the agency:

● Prequalified leads

● Exclusivity for every lead

● Real-time delivery

● Flexible contracts, ideally month-to-month

● Custom filters

● Control over the number of leads you get every month

PPC Overview

Pay-per-click advertising involves your firm and an advertising platform, such as Google. Beyond the keyword you decide to target, you have a very high level of control over nearly every aspect of your campaign.

Keywords for lawyers are extraordinarily expensive. Exerting campaign control on a minute level based on information you get from independent market research and statistical data from comparable businesses is really the only way to get a decent ROI for PPC for attorneys.

Strengths of Exclusive Leads

Buying exclusive leads is advantageous for a number of different types of law firms. Here are some reasons why:

● It's one of the most direct ways to generate leads.

● You get detailed information about the potential clients.

● Programs can be flexible if you choose the right agency.

● You do not have to compete with other firms for a given lead.

Strengths of Pay-Per-Click

One of the reasons that PPC advertising is so popular is that it also has many different strengths. They include:

● PPC platforms are relatively easy to start using.

● It synergizes well with other types of search engine marketing, such as SEO.

● You can control who sees your advertisements based on demographics, location, and schedules.

● You have a large amount of control over the appearance and content of the initial message to your potential clients.

Downsides of Both Tactics

All marketing tools have some possible downsides, which is one reason that you should combine multiple techniques to grow your business. For example, without careful planning, it's easy to buy too many leads for your firm to handle in a timely manner.

PPC has a bit more potential downside. Simply put, it takes more work. Furthermore, mismanagement will cost you:

● If you do not monitor your campaigns, your recurring payments could keep supplying advertising budgets to non-performing ads.

● It's easy to overpay for keywords as an attorney if you do not filter and target your campaigns.

● You waste good impressions by failing to optimize your advertising landing pages.

PPC also has quite a bit of potential upside. That's evidenced by the fact that many lead-selling agencies run extensive PPC campaigns in addition to other types of lead-generation processes. These agencies, however, have full-time, experienced staff managing and updating their campaigns.

Buying Leads When Growing a Firm

The best time to buy leads is when your firm is growing. This could be during a period of sustained growth or at the beginning of your venture.

There are a number of advantages to buying leads in this situation. It is simpler, easier to manage, and more direct than many other marketing strategies. It also has the benefit of immediately giving you the contact information you need (rather than slowly building a reputation like some other forms of marketing and advertising).

Major PPC Campaigns for Established Businesses

Generalized PPC campaigns are ideal for well-established firms. These types of businesses tend to have much larger business development budgets. They also tend to derive more benefit from the name-recognition aspect of PPC.

If you would consider taking out a billboard or a full-page print ad in a newspaper, then your business is probably at the scale where you would want a generalized PPC campaign. Otherwise, a more targeted approach is likely to be the most practical.

Buying Leads To Stabilize Intake Workload

It's often overlooked, but a law firm lead provider can help you make the most of your staff. The benefits go beyond simply keeping people busy.

Always having leads to process means that your staff always has an opportunity to generate revenue for your business. In turn, this means you can afford to pay skilled intake staff members a competitive salary, give them meaningful tasks, and help them become more dedicated advocates for your firm. If you do your own intake, buying leads simply ensures that you always have an avenue to pursue.

PPC for Special Events or Highly Targeted Campaigns

PPC shines for small firms when it comes to special events and very specific advertising campaigns. Here are some examples of when you might want to run a campaign for a couple of months:

● Opening a new office

● New legislation or a landmark case that affects your practice area

● The addition of a new practice area focus to your firm

● To capture traffic from high seasonal interest in a specific practice area (divorce, boating injuries, or tourism-based criminal defense, for example)

Flexible Lead Purchase for Seasonal Practice Areas

Since you can target the types of leads you receive from companies that sell leads for attorneys, lead purchasing is also a good tactic to stabilize seasonal business. Typically, you would want to buy more leads in your lower seasons.

Combining the Techniques as Part of a Strategic Business Development Plan

Combining lead purchase, PPC, SEO, directory listings, and direct client outreach is the key to growing your business. Knowing the strength of each technique is the key to getting the combination right.

Please contact Legal Locator if you're ready to get started. Our firm is backed by in-depth lawyer marketing knowledge, and we can help you decide the scale and schedule of lead purchasing that is best suited for your unique business.