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Product Review

Conversion Kit: Convert It Expands Web Marketing Suite to Include Website Development

For these digital marketing and intake experts, one metric rules them all.

By Jared Correia
website development

Convert It full-scale online presence solution for law firms: website development, delivery, and maintenance of a complete law firm website.

When it comes to law firm business development and client conversion, attorneys live in extremes.

Some things they’re very, very good at are personal networking, performing quality work that generates word of mouth referrals and closing business during in-person and online meetings.

Other things they’re very, very bad at: web marketing, lead management and (probably) nuclear physics.

Frankly, this should not be all that surprising. Most attorneys who own businesses have no formal business training; all that lawyers are taught is focused on substantive legal work for clients. So, is it any wonder that they can talk about what they do in a compelling way? Most attorneys are really good at closing business — they just don’t get the frequency of chances they should to close it.

That’s where web marketing services come in: to bridge that yawning skill gap that attorneys continue to fall into.

Convert It has spent the last decade building high-performance landing pages for law firms, supported by effective pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.  In doing so, they’ve learned the most effective strategies for online lead management and conversion across law firms. In fact, the company has developed a shorthand for determining whether any new feature set is worthy of launch: Is it easy, effective and affordable?  If that test isn’t passed, the envisioned feature set doesn’t see the light of day.  Lawyers can be assured, then, that any Convert It offering is, at a baseline, comprised of that trio of product touchstones.

But, landing pages and PPC represent but a small archipelago on the map of web marketing. And, a company with a name like”Convert It” proposes a high bar for itself.  So, it only makes sense for the company to expand its platform to include website development and management. The principles that make conversion (or landing) pages work also apply to a law firm’s primary website.

Your Law Firm Website Is Now a Conversion Page, Too

website development

Convert It’s focus to this point had been the delivery and maintenance of conversion pages (landing pages focused on a particular subject matter, meant to convert leads online); as noted above, however (and, probably obviously), conversion tactics for landing pages tend to work for general websites also.  And, that’s why Convert It has launched its new full-scale online presence solution for law firms, the core of which is the delivery and maintenance of a complete law firm website.

Web Conversion Best Practices

Convert It’s new offering will convert (see what I did there) landing page tactics to law firm websites — which far too many law firms still view as online business cards. Frankly, if your idea of a website follows that logic, that is far too passive a model to succeed in a competitive online environment — and legal is one of the more competitive online environments out there.

What does succeed? Well, Convert It has an established playbook, focusing on driving traffic, increasing credibility and visibility and optimizing for conversion. (You probably could have guessed that last one.) Employing that philosophy through the medium of a law firm website with a modern look and feel is the bedrock of Convert It’s new service. It’s got everything you’d expect a law firm website to have (logo, headshots, bios, practice area pages), as well as everything you wish a law firm website had . . . like an intake system . . . of any kind.

The Hunted, Online Edition

Web marketing for lawyers is the opposite of the most dangerous game. You want to be hunted down by potential clients. So, this begs the simple question: Is your law firm easy to find online? And then there’s the corollary: Are you easy to find in local search? With Google “near me” searches exploding (these types of searches have increased by 500%+), it’s clear that legal consumers not only want to know what you do but also where you do it. Local search has become the most important facet of online marketing for law firms.

And yet, most law firms ignore viable directory profiles (which can help cement a local presence online), including free services like Google My Business. That’s almost criminal. But, you don’t have to worry about that anymore with Convert It. Their new program ensures that your major directory profiles will be complete, consistent and up-to-date. Convert It even offers a “local presence check” that serves to review your web footprint for missing elements. Once completed, you’ll get an “online presence score,” so you know what you need to fix. Of course, Convert It will have the tools to help you do it.

Knowledgebase-line

Legal consumers want to know where you’re located, whether you’re good at what you do, and how you can help them with their problems. They’ve got lots of questions about their particular issues, as well as the legal process.

For potential clients who don’t arrive at your virtual doorstep through a referral, their interest is in learning more about the type of law you practice. Of course, many law firms don’t answer that question. They just blather on about how many degrees they have. But, here’s another clue for you all: no one cares about that. If you’re not actively discussing what you do, another law firm will, and that makes them a far more compelling option for a savvy legal consumer.

I get it: You don’t want to write or do anything more than you’re doing right now.

Well, that’s why Convert It’s new web presence package includes a content library with hundreds of practice area-specific content pieces to choose from. Convert It has also relied on its expertise in developing compelling landing pages to create practice area pages and subpages aimed at satisfying legal consumers’ thirst for information about the legal process. (Relevant narrative practice area pages are also a key component of relevance criteria for search engines.)

And, since potential clients want to understand better how you can help them, there is perhaps no better driver for that than adding testimonials to your website and directory profiles. Convert It makes it easy to pull in those five-star reviews, for prominent placement on your website, via a widget. No-fuss, no muss.

Convert It: Responsiveness is the One, True Metric

Without a doubt, responsiveness (or speed to lead) is the most important metric for conversion – largely because it increases a law firm’s opportunity to convert so massively. If you don’t get to the lead quickly enough, and that lead contacts another law firm that is actually responsive, it’s game over.

So, Convert It websites are focused on engagement. There are intake forms. There’s a click-to-call link that sticks to the top of the page wherever the user navigates to. There are lead magnet web forms. There’s a schedule a consultation button. Some packages include call answering, call tracking and appointment scheduling. Some packages include 24/7 live chat. You can “stop the shop” with dynamic response tools and get to the closing conversion faster. And, that’s a win for both lawyers and their (new) clients.

Of course, the first contact isn’t the only contact. Law firms also lose leads because they don’t follow up to push those leads to the next event — schedule an appointment, sign a document, collect payment. So, Convert It has also created a lite CRM tool to help firms better manage the entire “client journey.” (Or, how a lead becomes a client.)

website development

Its Kanban-style lead tracker is a simple and convenient way to access and manage your lead pipeline, including status updates for specific leads.

In addition, law firms can create “nurture campaigns” to follow up with leads in an automated fashion (so the attorneys and staff don’t have to spend time crafting individualized messages), which moves legal consumers to conversion faster and easier.

Combine the metrics generated by the Convert It CRM program with the analytics tool built into its website platform, and your law firm will have all the data it needs to make intelligent decisions about its online marketing presence.

Now, you might be thinking those features are awesome, but it sounds like a lot of work to set all that up. Well, it would be a lot of work, but Convert It has thought of that, too.

As well-meaning as law firms are when it comes to developing marketing automations in a granular way (this email follows that text message follows that payment link, and so on), most attorneys or law firm staff will never make time to create those workflows. That’s why it’s so important for tech products to include “playbooks” out-of-the-box so that law firms can not only access the features they want but also launch them right away. Convert It includes scripts for call answering and live chat, as well as pre-built email “drip campaigns” that relate to the stage the lead is parked at in the firm’s intake pipeline.  Want to take the next step with a potential client? Simply advance to the next stage in the pipeline, and the necessary notifications will be sent automatically.

Website Development: Good Things, All Packages

Taking each of the above-described elements separately and launching them via disparate systems can be costly and time-consuming. Convert It’s robust new online presence platform allows law firms to build a lead management system so attorneys can focus on what they do best: delivering great work and talking to their leads and clients about what they do.

The substance of what Convert It has built is a new kind of comprehensive package for law firm web marketing, but the pricing model is different, too. Traditional website design involves a significant upfront cost, potentially absent continuing support.  Convert It websites are part of a larger online presence package, which includes support (plus a brand spanking new website every three years, as legal consumer tastes change), and which is billed on a monthly or annual subscription basis, without reliance on a large, upfront charge.

In sum, building out the package that Convert It now offers for law firms out-of-the-box would be an arduous, costly and time-consuming journey. Buying all of the features separately, chaining together those disparate products and building out your marketing sequences could cost more than $1,500 per month.  With Convert It, attorneys get all of that for as low as $299 per month. You can check out package options at Convert It’s webpage.

For years, law firms have been clamoring for the “set it and forget it” online marketing plan.

Convert It delivers.

Attorney at Work’s sponsored Product Reviews and Product Spotlights showcase news and features from legal technology industry leaders. For more information, click here.

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Jared Correia Jared Correia

Jared D. Correia is CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, which offers subscription-based law firm business management consulting services, and works with legal vendors to develop programming and content. Jared is also COO of Gideon Software, Inc., which offers intelligent messaging and predictive analytics software built exclusively for law firms. A former practicing attorney, Jared is the host of the Legal Toolkit podcast and speaks frequently at industry events. In addition to his Attorney at Work column, Managing, he writes an advice column for Lawyerist and on tech startups for Above the Law. Follow him @JaredCorreia.

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