Sample LawStrategyTM Report

This custom strategic plan was created for a family law attorney. We believe that lawyers should understand what we can do for them and their opportunit ies in the marketplace before choosing a marketing partner.

The LawStrategy™ Report

Prepared for: _____________________________

Date: February 15, 2014

Law Firm Focus: Family Law

Metro Area: ____________

Prepared for: _______________________

About this Strategic Plan

You’re a Lawyer You agree that you are an attorney in private practice. If you are not, please destroy this strategic plan and let us know.

Just for You This strategic plan was created just for you. By reviewing this plan, you agree that the ideas, concepts, and strategies are the property of ForwardLawyer, and that you will not share it with anyone.

It’s Preliminary & Abridged In a perfect world, we would fully develop a strategic plan after learning your goals, objectives, practice capabilities, and personal preferences. We also understand that attorney are bombarded (perhaps even harassed) by marketers endlessly.

We want to work with you. That’s why we spend hours putting this together. If you decide not to speak with us, please let us know. As we tell everyone we meet, it’s okay to say “no.”

This is a preliminary and abridged plan, so you can decide if speaking with us further makes sense for your practice. No matter if you choose to work with us or not, we wish you great success in your legal career!

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About ForwardLawyer

Service Offerings ForwardLawyer is a digital marketing agency for attorneys. We believe that lawyers are best served when we focus on delivering qualified leads at the lowest possible cost. We accomplish this task by breaking your marketing into discrete campaigns that are targeted to end users looking for specific legal services you offer.

About Laird Laird loves all things marketing, particularly in the digital realm. He focuses first on strategy and then selects the right tools for the job.

Basically, he sums it up like this…

“Lawyers do not need yet another website developer, and they don’t need to be listed in yet another directory. What they need is someone to strategize with them, to build a campaign targeting the prospects they want, and then someone to execute the campaign. In other words, lawyers need someone to think first and build second.” - Laird

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1. Triage Existing Marketing

Overview Our first step is to understand what marketing activities your practice currently deploys. Armed with this information, we can make immediate short term gains for your firm.

Background You have identified the following current marketing activities for your firm:

✓ Adwords

✓ Website

✓ Local Magazine Circulars

✓ Findlaw Directory Profiles

The approximate spend is ______________ per month. You’ve identified “family law clients in _________________ “ as your primary target market. Your practice is currently ______ number of attorneys, and you intend to grow that by 10% in the next 12 months using referral-based and marketing-based means.

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Google Adwords Overview Google Adwords delivers bottom of the funnel clients, which means it can deliver clients in the “buy” phase. Adwords can be an effective solution growing a legal practice.

Adwords Activity Your account had only 3 actions taken on it in the last 2 months. We recommend weekly actions.

Wasting SpendYour law firm is receiving clicks (spending marketing dollars) on words that are highly unlikely to convert to paying clients. In the last 30 days, you wasted $2,000. Here are a few examples:

“Cheap Divorce Lawyer”

“Bar Association”

“How to file a DIY divorce” * We’ve identified over $16,000 in ADDITIONAL spend that you will likely waste in the future.

Why is this happening? Wasted spend occurs because negative keywords have not been added to your campaigns on a weekly basis. Negative keywords ensure that your ads do not appear for searches that are unlikely to convert to paying clients. It is imperative to add additional negative keywords.

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$2K

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ConversionsOn average, you are converting 4.23% of your clicks into conversions (calls or emails). We recommend targeting conversions at a minimum of 11.5%.

Click Through RateClick Through Rate (CTR) is how often users click on your ads. Your current CTR is 2.97%, which is acceptable. We recommend a CTR of 3.25%.

Mobile Campaigns 0 of 24 campaigns are currently using mobile ads. Mobile ads are more likely to result in conversions when used in conjunction with mobile campaigns.

Match TypesMatch types tell Google how loosely it should interpret your keywords when matching your ads to users’ searches. All of you keywords are at least set for modified broad match, which provide some restriction.

Keywords4% of your ads appear in search results with only one keyword trigger. These keywords are likely not targeted to your audience, and it is unlikely that you will be able to properly target the landing page. These represent additional wasted spend. Aim for 0% of single keyword triggers.

Geo-targetingSome of your campaigns are not geo-targeted. Lawyers should geo target

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2.9%

zero

A

4.2%

B

F

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100% of their campaigns.

Tracking ConversionsNot all of your Adword campaigns are currently tracking conversions. This is a major problem. Both email and phone call conversions must be tracked.

Tracking lets you know the total cost per acquisition. That is, how much does it cost before you get an email or phone call. Unless you track conversions, it becomes impossible to know what is working and what is not.

Short-Term RecommendationYour pay-per-click campaigns needs to be reviewed weekly and modified. The immediate next step is to add negative keywords. Thousands of dollars in wasted budget will be immediately saved.

Web Presence At Forward Lawyer, we believe your website has only two purposes.

✓ Get Found

✓ Get Contacted

Because you have a modern, responsive website, it is not necessary that you create a new website. However, it should be enhanced to take advantage of conversions best practices.

OverviewWhat follows are several recommendations to improve your web presence and increase your conversions.

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Search Engine OptimizationAn SEO strategy drives clients organically to your website delivering a great return on your investment. Although there are hundreds of factors, we choose three known search ranking factors for this strategic plan and evaluated your website’s performance against those factors.

Known Factor 1: Site Speed

“we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”

- Google, April 9, 2010

Your website speed as calculated by Google:

Mobile Page Speed*

Desktop Page Speed*

* Page speeds calculated by Google Developers PageSpeeds Insights for www.______________.com.

The ProblemYour page has 3 blocking script resources and 14 blocking CSS resources. This causes a delay in rendering your page. These factors are the main contributors to your website’s

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slower speed as they are render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content. This means that none of the above-the-fold content on your page could be rendered without waiting for the blocking scripts to load.

Short-Term RecommendationDefer or asynchronously load blocking resources, or inline the critical portions of those resources directly in the HTML. Also, compress images for additional speed savings.

Known Factor 2: Mobile Friendly

“Starting April 21, 2015, Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.” - Google Support

Your website’s mobile responsiveness as seen by Google*:

Good news! Your website is mobile friendly.*

*Google Developers, Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool

Short-Term RecommendationNone. Your website is mobile friendly.

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Known Factor 3: Security

A secure website is indicated by “HTTPS” and typically accompanied by a lock icon or a green website address. Google has announced that a secure website is now a ranking factor:

“we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.”

- Google, August 6, 2014

Is your website secure?

Your website is not currently secure. Not only is a secure website a ranking factor, but it also increases trust with your potential clients and leads to a higher conversion rate.

Short-Term RecommendationUpdate all URLS (webpages) to HTTPS.

A major warning!

You can seriously destroy your current rankings when you move to a secure website. The “HTTP” and HTTPS” versions of your website are completely different. They are like having two separate webpages. If you update your website to use encryption, make sure that your redirects are proper or you risk redirecting to 404 error pages or losing search volume for years.

Performance on Local Search

Inconsistent Local Listing Data17% of your local listing data, such as name, address, phone number, and website

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17%

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are inconsistent across 11 search engines including Facbook, Bing, Axiom, Hotfrog, and yp. An additional 18% of your listings are incomplete. Consistent listing information across the web is critical to ranking well on local search engines.

Findlaw Profile OverviewWe are always concerned about the total cost of directory listings for attorneys, which tend to be expensive for the cost per acquisition. For example, are the clients that you are looking for actually converting?

Typically, the closer the proximate location to your office that the prospective client is the more likely they are to convert. Unfortunately, unless the directory is hyper localized, the volume may be high, but the conversions low.

RecommendationWe recommend carefully reviewing the actual clients received from Findlaw. To do so, you must analyze the call tracking and email report and trace that information to actual client data.

By doing so, you will be able to determine the cost per acquisition as compared to your other marketing activities and make an educated determination if a continued investment in FindLaw is appropriate.

Local Circulars We cannot review the offline media and ads. We recommend installing tracking numbers to determine ROI and having a clear call to action.

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2. Competit ive Analysis

Overview You have identified ______________, and __________________________ as your greatest competition in the marketplace. We have reviewed their digital marketing strategy. Here are the results.

Pay Per Click Competitive Analysis (Adwords)

Additional PPC Insights:

Keywords your competitors bid for on Adwords, but you do not: 23

Competitor Ads:

Ads your competitors consider most successful:

You __________________________ abridged

Paid Keywords 98 329 abridged

Est. No. of Clicks, Mo. 727 1,100 abridged

Est. Adwords Budget $6,300 $12,500 abridged

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v1, August 2013, v2, December 2013, v3 January 2014

[Ad redacted from sample]

Organic (SEO) Competitive Analysis

Profitable Keyword & Rank

You __________________________ abridged

Organic Keywords 146 248 abridged

Est. No. of Clicks, Mo. 25 37 abridged

PageSpeed Mobile 56 76 abridged

PageSpeed Desktop 81 90 abridged

Mobile Friendly Yes Yes abridged

Secure No No abridged

Top Keywords Your Rank __________________________

_____________ Difficulty to Rank

[xxxx] Divorce Attorney

23 11 abridged 43

[xxxx] Divorce lawyer

15 11 abridged 31

abridged abridged abridged abridged abridged

abridged abridged abridged abridged abridged

abridged abridged abridged abridged abridged

abridged abridged abridged abridged abridged

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Additional SEO Insights:

Number of keywords your competitors rank for but you do not: 39

New keywords your competitors ranked for in the past 6 months: 5

Competitor SEO Insights

Competitor #1: C__________________________

Your competitor’s most profitable keywords and their rank in the SERP

Additional information redacted from sample strategic report

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3. Getting Control

Overview Once we have triaged your existing marketing, we need to get control. Here are the four things that we want to accomplish:

✓ Stop wasting money. You are wasting thousands of dollars targeting prospects that will never buy from you, such as “cheap” divorce attorney.

✓ Determine ROI. We need to install tracking codes on all marketing, both online and print, to form a baseline and determine where your best marketing comes from.

✓ Terminate Unprofitable Marketing. We create a spreadsheet with all marketing contract renewal dates. Those marketing activities that drive the costliest conversions must be eliminated.

✓ Optimize Landing Pages. Your landing pages are critical. Once the prospect finds your website, will they call or email you?

I won’t lie. This is going to be like getting a bad tooth pulled. Here are a few of our tasks.

Saying Goodbye. Marketing that is not performing must go. There can be hard feelings from vendors that feel like you owe it to them to continue. Most of us do not like to give bad news, so this can be difficult. (We can help.)

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Organizing is not Fun. Do you know every password to every account? Do you have each contract? Endlessly clicking “forgot password” is time consuming. Nevertheless, we need to gather every password to each marketing account so we can help you manage them.

What’s Happening. Getting control means tracking everything on the backend. Because no changes are apparent on the front end initially, it can be frustrating. The good news is that the tracking only needs to happen once and it will save you thousands in the long run.

AdwordsOverall, tracking codes should be installed on all campaigns. Second, the unprofitable keywords should be removed and negative keywords should be added to stop wasting marketing dollars. These recommendations should provide savings in the thousands.

Add RetargetingYour website lacks retargeting. Retargeting are the ads that “follow” searchers around the internet after they land on your page. Typical cost per click is less then $1.00 and can increase conversions up to 3%.

#1 Item to Fix: Landing Pages

OverviewA landing page is any webpage that your visitors view when looking for a specific services. Every page on your website, therefore, should be designed to convert leads. Too many attorneys and their marketing providers are focused on SEO. Think conversions first; traffic is easy to get!

Each page must have:

✓ Your Attorney Selling Position. This is what makes you different. Are you a litigator, mediator, compassionate, low cost, the “best,” etc.

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✓ Main headline & Supporting Headline. Most of your users will be on a mobile device. The headline needs to get their attention and convince them to call you. Do not use SEO headlines!

✓ Social Proof. Add case studies and reviews that are specific to the problem the client is facing. Each page should have a relevant client testimonials or case studies.

✓ A Call to Action. What action do you want your users to take? Most likely it is a call or email to your office. Make sure you ask your prospective clients to contact you.

Findings From Your WebsiteIf we review your website, we see that the pages are generally designed for SEO purposes. Those pages need to be enhanced to gain more conversions. Here is an example for your page at www.___________________________________.com (We do not recommend a website redesign. Small enhancements can make a big difference.)

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Findlaw DirectoryYour Findlaw profile should be reviewed and updated with a consistent message - your unique attorney selling position - to entice the type of clients that you desire. For example, do you prefer to attract contested divorce cases, or amicable child custody?

Search Engine Optimization - The BasicsWe have a complete list of SEO optimization tasks we implement for every website we handle. Here we will discuss a few of the highlights:

✓ Profiles. Update all free lawyer local profiles such as those found on Lawyers.com, Findlaw, BBB, AVVO, and your bar organization.

✓ Local Listings. Drive consistent data to all local listings. Also, it is important to add additional local listing providers that will give you additional exposure.

✓ SSL. Implement security and transition all of your webpages to HTTPS to take advantage of a known ranking factor and gain trust with your potential clients.

✓ Speed. Speed up your website using a Content Delivery Network and reduce page load requests.

Great News. This Getting Control campaign will radically improve your marketing. In fact, it is likely that you will save and earn thousands more by optimizing your current marketing spend.

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4. Survey & Reviews

Overview A major factor in clients choosing your law practice is social proof. We use surveys to get reviews from your happy clients. With nearly no reviews, clients are far less likely to call you over your competition.

Your competitors have numerous reviews. Here is an example on Google:

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The solution. We recommend implementing a survey to gather positive and negative feedback from your clients. We develop and deploy the survey.

Here is why surveys are great:

✓ Negative Feedback. Clients that are not happy get to vent, reducing the chance of posting negative comments in public forums or to the bar.

✓ Positive Feedback. When clients give positive feedback, we reach out to them and ask them to post the review on a public forum. Most clients will not post on a public forum without prompting.

Great reviews help with local SEO as well as giving your clients the social proof they need to hire you.

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5. Child Custody Lawyer

Overview. Once we have gained control of your marketing, we are ready to expand into new niche practices. This initial campaign targets bottom of the funnel prospects and is designed to attract additional paying clients fast. Our goal is to target prospects that are in the active “buy” phase.

The Research.When we look to expand into new niche markets, we are looking for four things:

✓ Competition. We want to find niches that have low competition relative to your current marketing resources and the value of the search term.

✓ Search Volume. Significant volume, so the niche is worth pursuing.

✓ User’s Intent. Can we determine what benefits the prospective client is trying to acquire through the search phrase?

✓ Clients you Want. How do we attract clients that are ready to purchase your services?

The Results.We identified the following term that met our criteria:

Term “Child Custody lawyer”

Estimated Searches Per Mo. within 20 miles 590

Estimated No. Clicks/ Month 96

Ranking Difficulty 38

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The Plan.We recommend a separate landing page specifically targeting this niche. Statistics have shown that landing pages convert more leads then generalized websites.

✓ Landing Page. A webpage specifically addressing child custody cases only.

✓ Focus. The targeted campaign will provide a high return on investment for every dollar spent.

✓Content. Content that sells, not teaches! Our goal is conversions. Therefore, our content will use case studies, testimonials, and awards to demonstrate why you should be hired. It will not be another dictation of the law.

✓ Attorney Selling Position. Our microsite will position you as the expert in child custody cases.

Expectation.We expect to convert 18% of the web visitors from paid traffic into consultations, and 5% of the organic search traffic into consultations.

Deployment.Upon retaining our services we will fully develop the campaign’s deployment strategy.

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This is just the beginning

This report only scratches the surface. Within each item, there are dozens of additional action items, and more ideas and campaigns to pursue. When we speak we can discuss additional action items that need your attention.

Thank you

Thank you for taking the time to review this strategic plan. I hope you gain additional insights int your practice. Please email us at info@forwardlawyer.com to schedule a time to talk.

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