Is Marketing for Personal Injury a Competitive Arena in Law?

Marketing for personal injury can be a very lucrative strategy if you know how to do it. Since the return on investment on per case basis is usually higher than other law fields, knowledgeable personal injury lawyers can produce very productive results from marketing their business.

As the majority of clients tend to consult a local lawyer near their business or home, it helps reduce the competition for personal injury lawyers because their only competitors are local businesses and lawyers in the immediate area.

Here are six important tips that will provide personal injury lawyers a great advantage compared to their competition. If used correctly, it can boost returns in a matter of weeks.

Evaluate your investment on cost per case basis

A lot of personal injury lawyers use traditional benchmarks to calculate their ROI, return on investment. Most such figures for ROI are calculated based on old-fashioned criteria used by marketing firms. The traditional return-on-investment figure may suit a specific company, but it may not be reasonable for calculating the profits of a personal injury law firm.

Experts recommend that it may be a good idea to evaluate your profits in each case based on cost-per-case. In order to do that, you must figure out the payment that you will get on a specific case. Depending on the type of injury, the payment may vary from a few hundred dollars to more than a hundred thousand dollars; therefore, it is nice to set a benchmark for expected payment per case.

Once you have a basic idea on what financial numeration you will get from a specific case, it’s time to set a marketing budget. Based on your area of expertise, you can calculate a marketing budget based on the average settlement cost of your cases in the last year or two. The average settlement cost will allow you to dedicate a portion of your profits to marketing for such cases.

The figure can be anywhere from 10% to 30%, depending on how much you are willing to sacrifice. It will also be the cost per case, which means that you are willing to put a certain portion of your potential profit to marketing your business. As a result of a benchmark figure, it is much easier for you to calculate the ROI, return on investment.

Let’s suppose your average case settlement is $5,000 in the last two years and you are willing to spend 20% on marketing. In this case, if you are able to settle a particular case for $8,000, your return on investment will be $8000 – (20% of $8,000), which is $5,600. Just by looking at the figure, you can easily tell that you have achieved an above-average return on your investment.

Track your marketing investment

Once you have set a marketing budget for each type of case or for your entire business area, a lawyer would need to track the marketing budget. Tracking the budget is critical because you may realize that the 20% marketing budget is higher than what you require. In such a case, you can decrease your marketing budget to increase the overall profits. On the other hand, you may realize that you will need to spend more on marketing, which will also provide you, a realistic overview of the profit margins.

If your firm takes multiple types of personal injury cases, tracking the results of your marketing budget will help you fine-tune the marketing aspects of each personal injury area. Similarly, tracking your marketing investment will also ensure that you are able to focus on specific areas that are most productive for your business.

While it is easier to suggest that you should track the marketing budget, it may be more difficult to do in the real world unless you know what to do. For instance, a lot of businesses are taking their businesses online so they can track their marketing budget easily. To help such businesses, there is a variety of call tracking software that will allow businesses to track their calls originating from search engine marketing.

If you have placed an ad on Google for your local business, you can easily track the number of calls and potential leads that you are able to convert from those calls. By advertising your local business online and adding a tracking cookie, you will be able to get a realistic picture of your marketing efforts.

In fact, there are lots of other online methods that will also allow you to track the marketing budget. Online chats, inquiry form submissions, and landing page conversions are just a few basic tools that can give personal injury lawyers advantage over traditional business tools.

Retarget your potential customers

After determining a good source of marketing channels that will likely allow you to track your marketing campaign, it’s time to improve the effectiveness of that campaign. If you’re using an online ad campaign such as PPC, Pay-Per-Click model, you may be leaking a lot of cash because you are not retargeting your clients.

If you are a personal injury firm, it is likely that the vast majority of your clients are people who live in the immediate vicinity of your business. Once these clients start looking for a lawyer, they will want to take immediate decisions; therefore, lawyers don’t have enough time on their hands. If you can, include retargeting in your campaign, your ads will continue to show even when these individuals don’t find your webpage.

If you have a good ad copy, the client will notice your ad sooner or later because they need to consult someone in their local area. By retargeting your ads, you are also improving your chances of staying ahead of your competitors.

Research shows that the chances of conversion increase by almost 100 percent if ads are retargeted to potential clients. Likewise, the impact of the retargeted ad on ad fatigue is less than traditional ads, which means that customers are likely to respond to retargeted ads when it’s time-sensitive for them to get a service.

Unlike traditional ad retargeting, personal injury lawyers must retarget their clients because there are only a certain number of businesses in your area, which means that there is likely less competition because most clients reside nearby your office. You simply cannot miss the opportunity to let your clients know that you are there to help them, and you are located near their home or business.

Get on Google My Business

The easiest and the most cost-effective marketing strategy is to claim your business listing on Google. Google My Business is a free tool from Google that allows business owners to manage their listing on the Google Network. In simple words, it means that putting a few details of your business can often put you on top of the Google listing for your local area. Whenever a potential client from your area searches for a personal injury lawyer, Google My Business allows you to show your business listing to your client free of cost.

In fact, there are several methods that you can use to increase the interest of the client. For example, if you can ask your previous clients to give you some positive reviews, those reviews will show up beside your listing increasing your reputation and worth. The local listing will also contain information regarding your website and telephone number.

You just need to claim your business profile. To do this, put the name of your business or the company on Google. After you see the results, click on the “knowledge graph” beside your business listing to start the business verification process. Often, it takes only a couple of hours to verify the business. Once verified, you can make sure that your business always appears in front of your potential clients by including important keywords, business profile, and the image of your business.

Overall, it is a great strategy to get a lot of free clients for your business.

Use Ad extensions

When creating ad copies for an online marketing campaign, you should never ignore the importance of ad extensions. Just like Google My Business, ad extensions are also a free gift from Google that allows you to add an important business profile free of cost. Based on your preference, the ad extension may contain the address of your office or it may define the different areas of your business practice.

These ad extensions appear at the bottom of your Google listing. As suggested, you can use the additional space to list your local address, which is clearly beneficial to clients who will know that you have a physical presence somewhere near them. There are a lot of businesses that use these extensions to highlight their areas of practice. Besides the address, you can also add different areas of your practice at the bottom of the listing.

Sometimes, you will also see telephone numbers of business at the end of the listing. Businesses using ad extensions are aware that giving telephone numbers is a great idea because the customer doesn’t need to go to the website to find the telephone number. It is much easier for the client to get the number in the listing and place a call to the lawyer.

Depending on your preference, some lawyers put their personal telephone numbers instead of their office telephone. This is a powerful strategy if you are targeting a specific audience that has a very high-profit margin based on the return on investment. A marketing agency for personal injury lawyers can help you make an impact using ad extensions. In fact, a reputable agency can often work marvels as they know how to fine-tune the marketing budget to get massive results. Hence, it's better to talk to a professional as you may get a much better return on your investment, enabling personal injury lawyers to save marketing budget on a cost per case basis.

Customize your website

It may look odd that this article focuses on online marketing techniques. The primary reason for suggesting online marketing is the potential reach of the business. For example, research suggests that nearly 70% of law firms generated their business using their websites. In fact, almost three-quarters of the potential customers will visit a website to start their legal proceedings.

Trends may be changing as more and more individuals are relying on the Internet to get information about the personal injury lawyers. If this is true, then you should make sure that you have a good website to keep the customer interested. If potential clients see and click on your ad listing on the search engine, you can easily lose that client if you have a very generic website. Recent research also indicated that a shocking 97% percent of the law website is not customized content on their website. The customized content ensures that the customer sees you as an experienced lawyer who knows what you are looking for. If you have done your homework on marketing techniques described above, it is likely that you know what your strength is.

Based on your best practice area, make sure that the customers are diverted to the exact landing page customized for them. If someone gets injured in a car crash, your business listing should direct those customers to that specific page highlighting your strengths and experience in the field. If you are not sure how to customize and target your website, it also helps by explaining the different areas of strength. Perhaps, a good landing page that describes three to four areas of your strength can be as effective as a single page. In fact, you don’t need to spend the extra time and dollars on building additional web pages.

Despite the fact that these are only six marketing strategies, but focusing only on these few tips can provide a great return on your investment. You just need to remember that your business should be in front of your potential clients who are near your place of business. Using these few techniques, you can definitely grab a very large chunk of the overall business in your area. As the saying goes, "work smart, not hard", that's why it's time to pounce on the immense opportunities offered to you, and many of these are free of cost.