If you live in a large city, you’re likely not the only personal injury firm in the area. You’re competing for clients against firms with 500+ lawyers or sometimes even national recognition. That means you’ll need to be a little more strategic about getting personal injury clients.
The best ways to get personal injury clients are making profiles on legal directories, building an online presence, initiating pay-per-click ads, and investing in SEO for your website. Building partnerships with local doctors, running email campaigns, getting referrals, and buying leads also work.
Getting personal injury clients will come down to marketing, advertising, and your presence on digital platforms. So, let’s talk about eight methods of getting personal injury clients in the year 2020.
Nearly 40% of people will use the internet when they’re looking to hire a lawyer. About 93% of people prefer to read user reviews before buying a product, visiting a certain location, or hiring a professional to do a service.
As a personal injury lawyer, that means two things: You want potential clients to find your information online and you want them to read good things about you and your firm.
The best way to do this is by making profiles on as many legal directories as possible. This will allow locals interested in hiring a personal injury attorney to see your information and reviews side-by-side with your competitors.
Here’s a list of legal directories to look into:
Some legal directories are a little bit better than others these days. So, check out this video that goes over the top five directories that’ll impact your Google rankings!
Though social media gets a bad reputation, it’s impossible to deny the facts: Over 70% of Americans have a profile on at least one social media platform. And your competition knows that, which is why 80% of lawyers have a professional presence on these sites.
That means you need to create a business profile on as many social media platforms that you can think of, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and maybe even Pinterest.
Getting personal injury clients via social media can look a few different ways. You can use these platforms to like, share, and comment on the things that your followers post. Or, you can create shareable content and run targeted ads that capture contact information.
The whole purpose of social media is that it offers a unique glimpse into who you are and to get clients to reach out to you.
As a personal injury lawyer, your clients will either have current or pre-existing injuries that they’re looking to settle financially in court. That means you want to go where the injured people are going: The doctor.
One of the best things you can do is build trusting relationships with local doctors. By doing so, you may be able to send referrals and clients to one another.
For instance, a doctor may refer your contact information to a person who was tripped over a ladder while walking past a worksite. From your perspective, you can send personal injury clients to be evaluated by this specific doctor.
The type of doctor you work with will depend on your niche. In many cases, you may want to partner up with a chiropractor.
Getting your website to that top-ranked spot on Google could cost you thousands of dollars and take years, even if you hire an SEO expert. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can help you get on the front page of Google search results for a fee.
This can cost you $300 or more every time your link is clicked.
To be most successful when running PPC ads, you want to be as specific as possible with the keywords you’re targeting and the geographical location you’re using.
Simply using the keyword “lawyer in Kansas” will draw in users all across the state looking for lawyers in every niche. Instead of spending hundreds on users not looking for a personal injury lawyer, longer keywords like “personal injury lawyer in Topeka, Kansas” would be more useful.
Just about everyone in American owns a smartphone and has constant internet access. In fact, about 96% of people will turn to the internet when searching for legal advice.
You want them to find your website.
Just creating a website for your personal injury firm doesn’t mean that you’ll show up on anyone’s Google search results page. There’s so much other competition out there that you’re competing to be seen at all, let alone by the right people.
The trick: SEO.
SEO means using specific keywords on your website to rank on Google when people search that keyword. The higher your rank, the more visitors you’ll get, and the more clients you’ll lockdown.
These services will likely cost you between $2,500 and $20,000 a month, depending on your firm’s size and the keywords you’re targeting. So be sure to add this to your marketing budget.
You simply don’t have the time to make phone calls to leads and clients every single day. Not only is that not realistic, but your clients probably wouldn’t appreciate being contacted so frequently anyway.
So, all leads should be registered on an email campaign.
An email campaign will help to send automated emails to your entire contact list. These emails can be informative monthly newsletters, holiday greetings, birthday wishes, or relevant press releases for your firm. The goal is to keep your name front and center at all times.
Tip: Make sure you’re sending emails that are actually useful to clients. About 22% of emails from legal firms will be opened, but that number can be increased with quality content.
What you may not know is that “new clients” won’t be a huge source of revenue for your personal injury firm. In fact, about 70% of your firm’s clientele will be repeat clients, while another 10% of clients will come from referrals.
Since hiring a lawyer can be a huge financial risk, clients want to hire someone they trust.
Referrals are a great source of ingrained trust since the person who referred your name clearly had a great experience with you and has a relationship with your new client. Better yet, referrals are the gift that keeps on giving: They cost nothing.
Here’s how you can get referrals:
The best way to guarantee referrals is by giving all clients a great experience.
Getting leads is what keeps your law firm afloat financially, but it’s not always an easy task. You might go weeks without a solid lead.
Your best alternative: Buying leads.
Pay-per-lead (PPL) systems will give you a direct link to people looking to hire a lawyer. On average, you’ll be spending about $100 per lead that you accept, though some of these services offer monthly fees instead.
The best part about these services is that these leads are usually filtered by niche. That means you don’t have to worry about spending $100 on a bankruptcy lead when you’re looking to capture personal injury leads for your firm.
But there are also a few problems, such as the fact that many lawyers may be getting the same lead and that you’ll have to compete to be the first. Some leads aren’t verified either.
Any of these methods can be effective if you’re willing to stick to them and adjust course as needed. Just remember that a person is simply a “lead” until you convert them into a client. For example, getting a referral from a friend doesn’t mean anything until you actually reach out to them and encourage them to work with your firm. The most important thing you can do is nurture your leads and respond to them as soon as possible.
