Legal Services Consumers & The Internet
In a recent post at SEOmoz, master inbounder, Rand Fishkin made some excellent points on how the internet has changed how people shop for men's clothing.
Since Rand did such a nice job articulating the differences between interruption and inbound marketing, I thought it worth applying these concepts to some ways legal services consumers use the internet to when they think they need a lawyer.
Here's a recent television commercial I saw here in Chicago:
So that's there's no confusion, I don't know this attorney. I don't know what the cost of this campaign was. And I have no idea what kind of return it generated.
However, I do know that when their potential clients think they might be in need of a lawyer, they might do this:
And they might see this:
And some folks might not know whether they even need a lawyer yet. So they might ask a question like this:
And some of those consumers may have been referred by friends. So those folks might do this:
And they might see this:
And this:
And they'll eventually find this:
And they may even get to this:
Whether they're directly searching for a lawyer, trying to get answers about their legal issues, or vetting a referral that they received from a friend or family member, the way legal services consumers find information about their legal issues has been forever changed by the internet.
I don't know if interruption marketing will ever completely die. However, I am pretty confident that providing your potential clients with content that demonstrates your knowledge, skill, and experience, when they are looking for it is much more likely to motivate them to contact and hire you than when you interrupt their favorite television show or sports game.
And the internet provides a variety of ways for you to do that. And most of these are much less expensive than their interruption counterparts.
I received a concerned email from one of our clients this week asking what had happened to the reviews on his Google Places page. The firm's Places page was showing a total of 34 reviews at the beginning of last month and when he happened to check over the weekend his review count had dropped to just 5. 
One of our current clients had hired a company to perform Google Maps search optimization prior to coming on board with AttorneySync. The company had been working with our client for 6 months or so prior to the start of our relationship.
Law firm testimonials are becoming much more important to effective 