Update on Yodle for Law Firm Marketing

If you have ever tried to start your own law firm, you know one thing - getting clients is the end all be all of your business. You can be the best attorney out there, but if you can't get anyone to utilize your services, you won't be in business. Because of that, the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about when I go to bed is how to get clients to my law firm.

A week or so ago I wrote a little bit about the only marketing I'm paying for. I'm using Yodle to market my law firm right now. What they do is put ads up at the top of Google search and on the sidebar of google search so that people can see that your firm is out there and that they can do what the potential searcher needs. I think it's been about a month and I've received three calls, one from a prospective client and two from internet marketers trying to sell me the same type of stuff, and a lot of ad clicks.

Does this mean that adsense and adwords advertising doesn't work? I don't know if I'm ready to say that yet. For one thing, it's not possible for me to tell if people are just not interested when they click or if they are not interested when they get to the site. That remains to be seen (and I'm doing some site modification as a bit of a test to see if it helps).

Another thing that has caused me to shy away from this type of advertising is the studies and articles I've read on it that show that people don't really look at those ads anymore when searching for what they want. And those articles make sense to me, because when I am searching for stuff I never look at or click on the ads that are around. In some sense it is almost like they've disappeared into the background. I immediately go for the organic search results to find what I am looking for, in part because I can see some of the content they've created and gauge whether or not I think they are a trusty source.

I'm going to try to talk to the Yodle people and either suspend my account for a bit or significantly downsize it until my site changes are made. I'll let you know how that works out, since we don't have a term contract in place, just an agreement to start the services. I have a feeling they get responses from customers like me all the time, so we'll just have to see how they handle it.

In the end, getting law firm clients is king. Without them, not only do you not work, but you don't eat. So keep your marketing efforts ramped up, keep going after those clients, and don't rest on your laurels. Business may be good now, but there is always someone (like us!) hot on your heels trying to dethrone you as the (in my case) Seattle criminal defense attorney in town.

Update on Yodle Law Firm Marketing

Here are the other Yodle Marketing Posts.

Yodle for Law Firm Marketing - Part 1

Yodle for Law Firm Marketing - Part 3