Reports indicate that competition in the field of legal services is increasing as supply outstrips demand. Georgetown University’s 2014 State of the Legal Market urges law firms to “focus on developing new business models and service delivery models that will enable them to provide more efficient, predictable, and cost effective legal services.” (UPDATE: 2015 State of the Legal Market can be found here.)
Amerihope Alliance Legal Services responded to this by investing in inbound marketing, and generated some remarkable results.
119% increase in organic traffic.
186% increase in contacts.
27% increase in customers.
Want to help your firm produce competitive success in the legal market? Looking for an alternative to buying contacts with low conversion rates? Read on.
While many firms cut marketing budgets during tight times, investing in marketing is even more important when competition for clients is high. HubSpot's case study on Amerihope demonstrates the power of inbound marketing for law firms.
Even in a period of slow economic growth, demand for legal aid in litigation, bankruptcy, trusts, personal injury, products liability, etc. can be expected to remain steady. But in order to reach people in need of legal services and convince contacts to choose your firm, you need to attract more client attention.
Faced with a tight budget, Amerihope decided to cut paid advertising and turned to HubSpot, integrated with a project management tool called Zerys. They used to buy 1200 contacts every month, but these were often shared with up to 3 other firms, which made these leads overly competitive, resulting in low conversion rates. With HubSpot, Amerihope has generated a 200% increase in organic traffic since January 2014. Because organic leads have a higher close rate than paid contacts (25% vs. 8% on average), this has helped Amerihope achieve a 27% increase in clients over the last 2 quarters.
A report by LexisNexis shows that websites are the most popular marketing tactic for legal services, and Amerihope’s success indicates why. "Without all of the content and blogs, we would not be where we are right now," says Director of Marketing Kristen Clinton.
“After using HubSpot, we actually have people finding our website on Google,” Clinton said, “Every person who finds us on Google is coming to us via blog posts, not through site pages.
At the outset, Clinton admits that she was worried about the time needed to launch a successful inbound marketing campaign. If you are interested in implementing inbound for your firm but concerned about time constraints, hiring marketing staff and making the most of a limited marketing budget, you should consider hiring a marketing agency.
You are probably already concinced that inbound marketing will give you a boost of new business, but maybe you don't know how to start launching a campaign. You could hire a marketer to run everything in-house or you can hire a marketing agency.
