While more and more law firms are making investments into online legal marketing products and services, too many are "jumping the gun". In order to be effective, online legal marketing must be strategic. While becoming the next legal content farm may generate some traffic for your firm, this isn't a long-term strategy.

Before you buy online legal marketing, make sure that you have spent some real time analyzing your marketing message and position. Ask yourself the tough questions of what you can do better than your competition and how you can most effectively communicate that message through all your marketing efforts. Don't try to be all things to all potential clients. This is likely to result in a diluted message.

Additionally, spend some time researching online marketing strategies. So many legal professionals lock themselves into long-term deals with marketing agencies that simply can't generate results with the methodologies that they are implementing. Like anything else, in order to maximize your chances of success, you need to understand some basics about how online marketing and search engines work. Who knows, you may find that you can handle a majority of your strategies on your own.