3 Legal Marketing Survey Statistics That Will Shock You
This past summer, our friends at Answering Legal sent out a survey to 100 lawyers, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of how attorneys are going about marketing their firms in 2018. While the legal community as a whole seems fairly prepared to take on marketing in the digital age, our survey results indicate that there may be some areas of marketing where lawyers may be slacking. Here are three rather alarming statistics pulled from our survey results.
#1- 38 percent of attorneys we surveyed have websites that aren’t up to date
As you can see from the above results, many, but far from all attorneys are on the ball when it comes to the design of their website. Our survey results indicate that 24 percent of lawyers— which equates to almost one out of every four law offices— are lacking anything that resembles a functional website. This is a pretty discouraging trend, as it’s near impossible to attract online consumers with an out-of-date website. It takes a lot to keep the attention of a visitor to your site these days, and if your site looks old and is difficult to navigate, you’re likely going to have a pretty high bounce rate.
Another 14 percent of lawyers said that while they’re website looks great, it is lacking in mobile and SEO friendliness. While this may not seem like a huge issue on the surface, it can have serious negative effects when it comes to a law office’s ability to be found in search engine results. A 2017 report revealed that 55 percent of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices, and that number is only likely to increase in the coming years. Google has adapted to this trend by transitioning over to mobile first indexing. This means that law firms must make sure their website displays and runs well on mobile devices, or risk getting buried in search results. Not having web pages properly SEO optimized can have similar effects resulting in law offices lacking visibility in search results. Working alongside a web developer to ensure that relevant keywords are placed in a number of high-attention areas of your website is a must.
41 percent of attorneys we surveyed aren’t engaged in search marketing
Statistics show that websites on the first page of search engine results receive almost 95% of web traffic, leaving only 5% for results beyond the first page. That’s why it is absolutely crucial for attorneys today to be participating in some kind of search marketing, to make sure their websites are actually getting seen by consumers for keywords relevant to the services they provide. In our survey, 27 percent of lawyers said engaging in search marketing wasn’t something they had time for, while another 14 percent said they weren’t currently engaging in search marketing despite knowing they they should be. Not great.
Whether firms should be taking part in search engine optimization tactics, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), or a mix of both, is still largely debated. But, what we do know is that not engaging in any kind of search marketing is just asking to have your firm left behind in the digital age. Getting started with one of these types of campaigns, and actually executing them correctly probably will mean at least consulting with a web development professional, if not hiring one to your staff. But, whatever money that costs you in the short-term, should be well worth it once you begin appearing on the first page of relevant search results, creating online consumers several paths towards becoming new clients at your firm.
83 percent of attorneys we surveyed don’t engage in email marketing
While we won’t compare email marketing in importance to that of having an up-to-date website or engaging in search, we were somewhat surprised to see that an overwhelming 83 percent of the lawyers we surveyed had no interest in advertising through email. Email marketing is actually much easier for lawyers to get started with than other types of marketing, and can be a great way to stay relevant with colleagues, referral sources, and former clients.
So why aren’t most of the lawyers we survey engaging in it? Perhaps they view email marketing as somewhat out-of-date, and with all the other types of marketing that they are expected to participate in during the digital age, email advertising just isn’t something they have time for. But, despite being a form of communication that emerged in the 1990s, email is still highly relevant in the lives of just about every adult. So even if you just send out a monthly e-newsletter, you’re likely to get a decent amount of attention from it. And since you choose who you’re sending emails out to, you know you’re marketing to an audience that is 100 percent relevant to what you do. All, that being said, don’t engage in email marketing unless you’re ready to invest in an email marketing software. Sending mass emails out from your Gmail account is likely to get you sent directly to people’s spam boxes, and just be a waste of time.
The above statistics all come from Answering Legal’s newest eBook, “How Attorneys Are Marketing Their Law Firms In The Digital Age: A Survey Article”. To learn more about the eBook, and pre-order it for free, click here!