Advertising with Facebook is one of the hottest trends in law firm marketing today. Less than ten percent of firms were doing any Facebook advertising whatsoever just 3 years ago (not even having a firm page!). Today, over half of lawyers have a Facebook presence and more are starting to use Facebook advertising every day. Keep reading to find out six different answers to the question “why advertise on Facebook?” that will make you think.

Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #1: Everybody's Doing It

For many lawyers, advertising with Facebook might have been a waste of money as recently as just a few years ago. The number of Facebook users has been soaring every year since the website began, and only now is it popular enough for it to become an advertising method for marketing to a wide range of demographics.

Today, it's not just college students who are using Facebook. With nearly a billion users looking at Facebook ads worldwide, Facebook advertising is now a way to reach out not only to young people, but to anyone looking to reconnect with old friends or talk to family members and colleagues.

In other words, the answer to the question “why advertise on Facebook?” has changed significantly for most law firms. Almost every forecaster sees Facebook advertising as likely to maintain its relevance for many years to come. As long as advertising with Facebook puts you in front of the biggest B2C audience in the world, you'll want to keep working with it.

Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #2: Why Facebook Beats Google AdWords

Maybe you already have a pay per click strategy on Google that seems to work. If so, you may be wondering—why advertise on Facebook instead of just continuing with business as usual on Google?

Business owners who are used to doing most of their web advertising with pay per click Google AdWords are often excited by the precision targeting abilities that Facebook advertising has. When you start advertising with Facebook, you don't need to think about what kinds of keywords your target market is looking for—all you have to know is who your target market is.

If you know, for example, that most of your clients come from your zip code and the six zip codes that surround it, you can narrow your focus so that your Facebook advertising is only displayed to people who live in those zip codes. You can also segment your advertising with Facebook by gender, age, and location.

Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #3: Your Advertising Generates Extra Buzz

When you start running direct ads with another advertising service, like Google AdWords, it's pretty unlikely that anyone is going to show their friends your ad. But with Facebook advertising, this kind of thing happens all the time. Advertising with Facebook gives you the ability to have your ads seen not only by their initial viewers, but also by the people those viewers are connected with.

If your Facebook advertising starts generating “likes” and comments, its visibility will increase substantially. After you have been advertising with Facebook for some time, you'll be able to figure out which ads work best for generating the kind of buzz that your law firm needs in this competitive economic climate.

Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #4: Mobile Advertising Results

When you do Facebook advertising today, you have more options than ever. Because mobile traffic to Facebook doesn't look at sidebar ads, you can now start advertising with Facebook directly to mobile customers with organic-looking “sponsored stories.”

Why advertise on Facebook Mobile? When you pay for a sponsored story, your advertising with Facebook will get click through rates that are more than ten times better than rates for browser ads. What's more, when you design your landing pages to be conversion friendly, you can take people from Facebook advertising to consulting over the phone in just seconds.

Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #5: Easy Results Tracking

Not all Facebook advertising works. Why advertise on Facebook if you're not keeping track of the results that you're getting? As soon as you start advertising with Facebook, you need to start testing your ads and applying what you've learned.

The great part about Facebook advertising is that Facebook has simplified results tracking and is great at showing you the information you need to know. Not only can you easily track your key performance indicators when you start advertising with Facebook, you can also ask Facebook to do a lot of the work for you.

Facebook advertising even allows you to decide what your objective is, and can automate a great deal of your bidding if you don't want to outsource but don't have the time to babysit clicks and bids all day long. While this may not be the most cost effective method of advertising with Facebook, it takes a lot of the guesswork out and lets you get back to practicing law.

Why Advertise on Facebook, Reason #6: Beating Your Competition

Let's face it: most consumers only have room to “like” one or two law firms at most. That means that the best way to make sure your firm is liked better than your competitor is simple: get there first. Start advertising with Facebook sooner than your competition does, and you'll be the only game in town. If you delay your Facebook advertising campaign, your competitors will get to those potential clients first.

If your competition is already advertising with Facebook, you have a tougher road ahead of you but it's not impossible. Try to identify the weaknesses in your competitor's marketing strategy. Remember that just having a Facebook page isn't enough to really be strong marketing: is your competition doing all they can do in terms of creating new content, using polls, and asking open ended questions to fans and friends?

If not, there's still room for you to do something different. Different is what the internet notices, and you're better off trying to pick up where your competition left off than going head to head with similar marketing efforts.

There's no reason that you can't get creative when doing internet marketing.  While a large percentage of small firm attorneys list marketing responsibilities as among their least favorite job duties, marketing doesn't have to be a joyless slog.  Check out these nine tips that can help you shake off the marketing doldrums and get creative with your internet marketing strategies.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #1: Infographics

Infographics are exactly what they sound like: an image that combines information with relevant graphics.  These graphics are often statistical in nature if they're reporting on results of studies.  Some infographics contain both quantitative and qualitative data.

For example, if you're an attorney working in special education law, you can have infographics on the prevalence of 504 plans and IEP use in your area.  You can also use your infographic to convey information about potential accommodations that may be available for children with special needs.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #2: Foursquare

Most attorneys in the United States practice in urban areas.  That's the place that Foursquare, one of the newest and fastest growing social networking services, shines.  Foursquare allows you to virtually tag places with information pertaining to something relevant to people who might become your clients.  When people look for tags to find out more information about a location, they'll see what you've written.  This is a great place for creative internet marketing.  For instance, a disability attorney might have information on Foursquare about disability accessibility of transit stops, restaurants, and so on.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #3: Creative Emails

Today, if you want to keep sending emails out without people hitting the “unsubscribe” button, you're going to have to shake things up a bit.  It's no longer enough to just send out what amount to email advertisements.  People think of those as spam, not valuable information.

If you want to actually succeed in your creative internet marketing via email, you want people to look forward to getting your email.  That means don't send emails to people on your mailing list too frequently.  When you do send emails, consider making them funny or a little sarcastic—having a good sense of humor is a must if you want your email content to stand out!  In a land of boring emails, the man who tells really great jokes is the creative internet marketing king.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #4: Mobile Focus

More and more, people are using their smartphones as more than a very expensive way to play Angry Birds.  Creating a mobile internet marketing strategy is a great way to get creative internet marketing working for your law firm.  Make a mobile optimized website that mobile visitors are directed to, and make sure that yourmain page is at least visible with a zoom and scroll.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #5: Video Blogs

Even if you don't think you have what it takes to become a superstar, you can get creative with some video uploads.  Youtube and other easy video uploading services mean that you won't have to use your own internet bandwidth to use this creative internet marketing method.  Get as creative as you want!  Consider showing for clients a mini-sketch that shows how to act during an arrest process and how to request an attorney when being questioned, if you're a criminal defense attorney.  Lawyers who do a lot of divorce mediations may want to show a re-enacted mediation session so that divorcing spouses know what to expect from the mediation process.  Keep in mind that many people are intimidated by legal proceedings—anything you can do to demystify the law and the court system will be considered helpful.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #6: Viral Video

“But you're wrong!” you said when reading strategy #5.  “I do have what it takes to become a superstar!”  Oh yeah?  Prove it.  If you think you've got the right stuff, the next step is to take your video viral.  Maybe you made a parody video that also teaches important lessons about field sobriety tests and breathalyzers.  Maybe you developed a legal sketch comedy show that you're certain rivals the first season of Saturday Night Live for sheer comedic brilliance.

Whatever you've done, don't do it until you've already got some creative internet marketing for social media under your belt. You want your video to appear in the context of a law firm that already gets how to use the internet creatively, not as a one-off effort that amounts to nothing more than a flash in the pan.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #7: Answer Questions

When it comes to marketing on the internet, too many attorneys talk too much and don't listen enough.  One of the most helpful things you can do as part of a creative internet marketing strategy is to actually respond to people's legal questions when they start asking them or even before.  Having a FAQ on your website is great, and you can make it a part of your creative marketing strategy—don't be afraid to let your personality shine through!

If you're on social media, consider hosting weekly question and answer sessions.  Specific legal advice is obviously not kosher, but you can easily answer more general or hypothetical questions with the appropriate disclaimers.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #8: Build Relationships

Don't just think of your internet marketing as a way to get new clients right away.  Often, the most creative internet marketing strategies are all about building name recognition, a brand identity, and the kind of relationships that will bring in clients in the longer term.  When you build social networks full of connections, for example, you'll have an easier time finding people to show your new content to.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #9: Think Local

Don't neglect some of the older sources of marketing—sometimes things that are old can look new again when they're combined with internet marketing.  For example, sponsoring local events is not just a way to get name recognition in the community at those events.  If there's also a website for the event, it's a good way to get some links that help you rise in search engine rankings.  This kind of creative internet marketing strategy pairs well with any strategies for content generation.

Everything About Cell Phone Advertising

One of the biggest changes to the internet in recent years has come from the explosive growth in mobile browsing.  Even five years ago, it was difficult and inconvenient to use the internet on a cell phone, but today's smartphones make web browsing so easy that recent statistics indicate that the amount of mobile web traffic will overtake web traffic from computers by 2014.  This is a market you can't afford to ignore—but how can you get the most out of cell phone advertisements?  Keep reading to find out strategies, terminology, and more about this new frontier of advertising for your law firm.

SMS Cell Phone Advertising: Benefits and Basics

When you start considering using cell phone advertisements, one three-letter acronym will come up again and again.  SMS, short for “short message service,” is the dominant way that people communicate using mobile phones.  Typically, the maximum size of one of these messages will be 160 characters, so if your law firm wants to consider SMS cell phone advertising, you should be prepared to be brief and to the point.

Using cell phone advertisements through SMS can be a great deal more effective than email advertising.  This is because spam filters catch a great deal of bulk email, and people tend not to even open email that isn't from people they know personally.  In fact, while SMS use has been booming, email has taken a nosedive—usage is down by 59 percent in just the last year.  Research shows that people do open their text messages, even when they don't open emails: up to 97 percent of texts are read.

SMS Cell Phone Advertising: A Word of Caution

Using cell phone advertisements well can generate great leads for your business, but use caution.  Statistics show that at over half of mobile users have unsubscribed to a SMS list after opting in to receiving communications.  There are two good principles to keep in mind if you want to keep your SMS subscribers: don't send messages too often, and when you do, make them worthwhile.

If you send cell phone advertisements too frequently, it won't matter how great your cell phone advertising is.  Even if you're offering to just give your services away for free, people ignore any single number that keeps sending repetitive advertisements.

It's also important that you make it worthwhile for someone to open one of your SMS messages.  If your cell phone advertisements are nothing more than a rehash of things that your subscribers already know, it's unlikely that you'll have much success.  Try to tell people something new or unusual, or link to a mobile-friendly webpage that contains additional engaging content.

Customer Relationship Marketing With Cell Phone Advertising

When you're a small law firm, it's critical to keep the clients that you have.  If your firm collects cell phone numbers of clients, you may want to ask them to opt in to newsletters with content that might be interesting to them.  Cell phone advertising that is designed for customer relationship marketing targets people who are already your clients, rather than new leads.  These cell phone advertisements shouldn't look as much like ads—instead, you should focus on leading clients to social media sites, blog entries, or newsletter articles.

Here, again, it's absolutely critical that you don't alienate your clients by inundating them with information.  Just one piece of cell phone advertising per week can be enough to keep your firm's name on a client's mind, without making them think that you're a spammer.  If you haven't used cell phone advertisements for existing clients before, you may want to offer some kind of promotion to get previous clients back into your offices.

Microtargeting Your Clients With Cell Phone Advertising

When you send cell phone advertisements to your clients, you can target your ads more narrowly with this type of advertising than almost any other.  Cell phone advertising is a lot like direct mail advertising, in that you can choose exactly which people see which message.  If your law firm practices in several different legal fields, you can target different types of cell phone advertisements to different clients.

While a certain degree of microtargeting is usually considered acceptable by customers, 86 percent of Americans see some microtargeting and profiled advertising as an invasion of privacy.  You should always monitor the results of your cell phone advertising campaigns, so that you can be certain that your cell phone advertisements aren't hurting more than they're helping.

You should also avoid sending microtargeted cell phone advertising to customers if it might contain information that could be sensitive if it was seen by the wrong person.  If someone consulted with a divorce attorney to see whether divorce was feasible, receiving a SMS about divorce law could be disastrous if seen by a spouse.  Be aware of how your cell phone advertisements could be seen, and make sure that you're sensitive to the needs of all of your clients and potential clients.

Cell Phone Advertising Integration

Cell phone advertising is best when it's combined with other forms of advertising.  The opportunities for integration are endless—did you know that over 85 percent of mobile users use their cell phones while watching television?  Make sure that when you broadcast television ads, you include a web address for a mobile friendly version of your website for the people at home who might have a smartphone in their hands.  Print advertising can also include not only web addresses, but also quick response (QR) codes that can be photographed by a mobile device to send a potential client to your site.

The best way to make sure cell phone users can use your website effectively is to optimize one version of your site for mobile users, and then base which version of the site customers see on what device they're using to access it.  Even if you don't have a full mobile version of your website, you should at least make sure that your regular website displays properly on Android phones and iPhones.

Everything About Twitter Viral Marketing

If your law firm doesn't have a Twitter presence yet, you need one: statistics show that the percentage of online adults who use Twitter every day has doubled for each of the last two years.  Twitter users aren't just typical web users—they tend to use mobile phones (especially smartphones) more often, and they are often linked to a large number of social media networks and websites.  This guide will teach you how to use Twitter viral marketing to maximize the return on investment you get from having a Twitter account.

What Not to Do: Everything About Our Company in 140 Characters!

When law firms first start out on Twitter, they often try to use the kinds of marketing tactics that worked before.  However, Twitter's 140 character limit makes it hard to express the same kinds of ideas that might have seemed fairly easy to talk about on other social media sites.

No matter how tempting it is, you should never try to start a Twitter viral marketing campaign based on information-heavy tweets with a lot of abbreviations.  You may think that you're packing in as much content as possible, but when people see your tweets, they won't think about sharing—they'll just skim over them and skip right to something that's written more clearly and concisely.

Try This Instead: Make the Message Fit the Medium

Don't fight with the 140 character limit in your Twitter viral marketing—make it part of your strategy.  Studies show that people are most likely to retweet posts that are 100 characters long or less.  Avoid using any kind of abbreviations in your Twitter post.  These can take longer to read and are more likely to be skimmed over.

What Not to Do: Flooding the Stream

If a little bit of Twitter viral marketing makes a little positive change for your firm's website and bottom line, a lot should do even more, right?  Not so fast!  When people see too many tweets from a single person or company, they tend to disengage rather than becoming more interested.  Too much of a good thing will make your law firm seem like spammers, rather than helpful professionals.

If you're feeling like you have to send a huge number of tweets to get your message across, consider whether the message you're trying to send is really well designed for Twitter viral marketing.  You may want to use other venues to try to communicate more long-form thoughts, with just a very quick headline and link to the content as a tweet instead.

Try This Instead: Posting in a Steady Trickle

Tweets a few times a day will be much better received by your followers, and won't result in people no longer following you due to concerns about being spammed.  Try to make sure that you're tweeting at many different times of day, rather than consistently posting your tweets at specific times.  People have wildly different Twitter habits, and in order to get the most out of your Twitter viral marketing, you'll want to make sure people are seeing your posts in the stream no matter when they go online.

What Not to Do: Our Corporate Logo in Chief

If you've looked around at your competitors' Twitter accounts, some of them may have a corporate logo as their icon.  Think about it: does that really make you feel like a person is running the account, or like it's being run as an advertisement?  People don't want to be blatantly advertised to on Twitter, and having your company's logo instead of a real person sends a clear message: this is a corporate account designed to feed a corporate bottom line.

Try This Instead: Human Voices for Your Company

More successful Twitter viral marketing can be done when a Twitter account is authored by one person, with a unique point of view.  You should be transparent about who is running your firm's Twitter account, and make that person someone with enough enthusiasm, insight, and intelligence that they can develop great content consistently.  This may be a professional Twitter viral marketing guru hired by your firm, or it may be someone already on your staff.

Don't have someone substitute for your usual Twitter contributor unless they say they're doing so.  Transparency is absolutely necessary for successful Twitter viral marketing.  If you're seen as a company that likes to hide things or that lies about its web presence, your reputation will suffer.  Having a legal secretary post under a lawyer's name may seem like a cost savings, but it's likely to reflect badly on your firm if it gets found out.

What Not to Do: Hog the Spotlight

No one likes a Twitter user who just exists to broadcast his or her thoughts without responding to other people's.  If your idea of Twitter viral marketing just involves making tweets and getting followers, you haven't really done your homework about what the platform is typically used for.  One of the most common mistakes companies make when trying to advertise on Twitter is trying to make it into a bullhorn, rather than a round table for discussion.

Try This Instead: Share Your Light With Others

Getting the most out of Twitter viral marketing means getting involved in conversations, even the ones that aren't directly about your firm.  Try answering other people's questions, re-tweeting the things other people have said, or even talking about another law firm (especially if the law firm isn't in competition with you directly due to geography or having different specialties).

Showing people that you care about more than just talking about yourself makes your law firm look like a better internet citizen.  You'll maximize the return on your Twitter viral marketing when people don't just expect it to look like a rundown of your corporate slogans or a record of your successes in court.  Name-dropping other firms can be useful in the future when they decide to use the same technique to drop your firm's name in their tweets.  This kind of reciprocity is common in Twitter viral marketing, and you should build goodwill with other firms in your area and beyond to encourage it.

One of the hardest things to get used to about the internet is how fast things can change.  What might have been helpful as a strategy for law firm marketing several years ago can now be counterproductive.  An unfortunate side effect of these fast changes is that many attorneys who were quite well equipped to handle the web of 2008 are deeply mired in bad habits now that it's 2013, with 2014 on the way soon.  In this guide, we'll explore seven habits of highly ineffective legal marketers—and how you can make yourself more marketable by breaking them.

#1: Hovering In Social Media Discussions

One of the biggest social media debacles in recent memory happened to a Phoenix bakery called Amy's.  After a disastrous showing on a television show, Amy's social media pages were bombarded by internet commenters eager to get their jollies by kicking a company when it was down.  The smart thing to do would have been to shut down comments for a short time, until the publicity had died down, and then moderate comments heavily that seemed to come from unhelpful internet “trolls.”  However, Amy's didn't make the smart decision.

Instead, they hovered over discussions, making rude and often profane comments even to people who had made relatively innocuous statements.  Obviously, Amy's is an extreme example, but it goes to show that you can definitely talk too much to dissatisfied customers online.  You won't look good to others when you hover over discussions, whether they're positive or negative.  While it's good to step in and correct misconceptions if they're major, there's no need to stop people from discussing your law firm by taking over every conversation somebody starts about it.

#2: Inconsistent Blog Updates

If you're looking for a fast way to lose followers and make sure that no one reads your blog, just update it incredibly inconsistently—a few posts here, followed by months of silence, followed by a post apologizing for the months of silence and then another few weeks of silence after that ought to do it.  This kind of posting frequency commonly happens when someone starts a blog with a good idea, but hasn't thought through what kinds of topics might sustain that blog through the next several months.

You should maintain several blog posts in reserve so that you can trickle them out at a steady pace, instead of just waiting for inspiration to hit.  Make sure that you're reading other people's blogs, which can often give you the germ of an idea for an entry of your own.

#3: Intrusive Video and Audio

It's one of the most annoying things on the internet: you're looking for something, minding your own business, and when you open up a website—BAM!—you're accosted with a music file playing loudly, or a video of someone introducing themselves to you or asking if they can help you.  You want to help your clients, not give them heart attacks.  Leave the intrusive audio and video to other law firms, whose websites will get closed fast.  No one wants to take the time to look for a mute button, when it's just so easy to open a different website instead.

#4: Negative Responses to Criticism

Even if you're not as bad as Amy's, one of the biggest wrong moves you may be making is to respond negatively to criticism—for instance, by shrugging it off or thinking that a person who wrote a bad review is just crazy.

This may be the easiest habit on this list to fall into.  It's easy to believe that when people make harsh critiques, they're just being needlessly cruel, and it's possible that this could be the case sometimes.  However, all too often, criticisms are legitimate and ignored by places of business that could have fixed a problem and instead choose to bury their head in the sand.  Be the kind of law firm that recognizes when it has messed up, not the kind that ignores client relations issues until your reputation is thoroughly tarnished.

#5: Fear of New Websites

Just because a website generated great returns for you a few years ago doesn't mean that your strategy is still working.  You should periodically make sure to check whether you're now wasting money on advertising with websites that aren't generating any returns for your business.  Don't be afraid to look at new trends and advertising on websites and social networks that were opened recently.  Often, getting in on the ground floor can be a relatively inexpensive way to enhance your marketing reach.  Not everything will pan out, but by making sure that you're diversifying your advertising presence, you'll find some new places for your marketing roots to take hold.

#6: Adopting Every New Trend

While it's important not to be afraid of the new, it's just as important not to waste your time chasing after a dozen different marketing strategies for a dozen different new trendy sites.  Stake your claim, make your choices, and don't try to be on every social network because there's simply no way that you have time to do all of them justice.  Pick three or four main places for your social media presence to be felt, and stick to those places—larger firms can go with more, but for small firms and solos, four is about the limit before you'll start having to outsource your content, which presents problems of its own.

#7: Outsourcing Ideas and Content

Some attorneys got into the habit of having other companies write content for their law firm during the age of keyword SEO.  While search engine optimization still exists today, it's now more based in building quality backlinks and having content that is useful to real human readers.  Those kinds of tasks are best accomplished by marketing personnel at your law firm, not by people who are working on dozens of different accounts.  In house marketing allows you to be more flexible and responsive to client needs and discussions.

So you're getting a large number of hits on your website, but even though people seem to be arriving, they're not staying for long enough to do what you want them to do: sign up for a consultation or a phone call.  If you're looking for better conversion rates—and in today's competitive legal services market, you're in good company—you need this guide.  Keep reading to find out how you can turn your website from one that just brings people in for a moment to one that gets you new business and a better bottom line.

#1: Start With Great Targeting

While one of the reasons for a low conversion rate can be a website that just doesn't pop, another reason may be that you're actually targeting too wide of an audience range with your advertising and marketing.  A number of people may be visiting your website who really aren't able to be serviced by your firm.  For example, if your law firm is in a city that shares a name with cities in several different states, you should make sure that you're excluding any searchers using keywords relating to those other states from seeing your targeted advertisements.

Reducing the number of people you show your website to, while making sure that the right people are being targeted, can actually lead to a significant climb in your overall new business numbers in addition to your conversion rates.

#2: Do A/B Testing—One Size Doesn't Fit All

If you're really serious about increasing your conversion rates and you have several ideas about how you might accomplish this, don't settle for just using one idea—instead, test them side by side.  Modern analytics tools allow you more freedom than ever to compare two different marketing techniques and see for yourself which one works best.

If you're not doing A/B testing, then really you're just making educated guesses about your marketing strategy—and those guesses can easily backfire.  Thorough, single variable testing (in which you change one element at a time, so that you can more easily pinpoint what works and what doesn't) is the fastest and best way to improve your marketing strategy over the long term.

#3: Consider Niche Sites and Microsites

One of the best ways to ensure that you're only getting the kinds of site visitors whose needs you can meet is to split your site up.  In addition to having a main law firm website that shows all of your practice areas, you can also create niche sites with descriptive, long titles that direct exactly the kinds of clients you want to the site. 

Microsites can have places for clients to go back to your main website, but they should contain enough information that a client could feel comfortable calling for a consultation just because of reading the microsite's content.  Don't make your microsite feel so uncomfortably small that people still have more questions than answers.

#4: Use Professionally Produced Video

If you're considering adding video to your website, beware the curse of amateur production values.  While a professionally produced, well done video can make conversions more likely, an amateurish video with harsh sound and low resolution will sink you just as quickly.

Any time you use video on your website, you should hire a production company that will take care of the technical details for you, and you may want to consider hiring an agency to help you write the scripts for your videos.  Without an experienced scriptwriter helping you to work on your video scripts, they may seem undirected or like they take too long for the amount of information given.

#5: Keep Your Website Updated

Many attorneys don't realize that their website will be higher in search rankings and will draw more people in when it's updated frequently.  Today, Google and Bing searches take your website's most recent updates into account when deciding whether to rank your site higher or lower than other websites with a similar reputation.

This is an easy way to get ahead of your competition, who may not yet be in the habit of frequent updates.  Try to make sure that your site is being updated once a week—twice a month at least.  Have planned updates, so that you're not caught without inspiration and with nothing to post.

#6: Have a Great Mobile Site

One of the fastest ways to lose potential clients and raise your bounce rate is to have a website that breaks when people try to look at it with an Android or iOS device.  A good mobile website that allows access to your full site (which should still look good on a smartphone) while putting the most commonly used site functions at a smartphone user's fingertips is critical to increasing your conversion rates.

Studies have shown that clients who are already looking on their mobile phone are more likely than those looking on their desktop or laptop PCs to call an attorney right away.  Make sure your phone number is clearly listed on your website in text, not an image, which will allow people to click the number in order to call you.

You should also make sure that your mobile site doesn't require a great deal of downloaded data.  When a website takes a long time to load, people will tend to click away and visit a different site.  By making a fast-loading, streamlined website, you'll give yourself the best chance of pulling in clients through a mobile website.

#7: Know Who Your Client Base Is

If you're planning to do marketing with good conversion rates, you need to know who's most likely to convert from your website.  That means doing good market research to determine who your most likely clients are and which clients are most likely to find you through your website.  By knowing who your ideal client is, you give yourself a better base profile to start your targeted marketing and ads.

When you're trying to differentiate yourself in the legal market today, one of the best ways is to have truly stellar customer service.  Giving clients a uniquely good customer experience will ensure that you'll have plenty of good reviews and will build new business through word of mouth and referrals.  In this guide, we'll explore seven contemporary best practices for building a consumer oriented law firm.  While implementing these practices may not always be easy—especially if you're deeply entrenched in a law firm culture that feels toxic to clients or staff—they will pay off over the long term.

#1: Friendly Service At Every Desk

One of the mistakes that attorneys can sometimes make about customer service has to do with who needs customer service skills.  It's not just your attorneys who need to understand how to interact professionally and courteously with clients.  Every secretary and paralegal in your firm needs to have a positive, customer focused attitude that matches the overall client orientation that your law firm is trying to project.

All too often, even if an attorney's customer service is great, a bad customer service experience with other people in your firm's office can sour a client's experience.  Attorneys should make sure that they're not trying to save money by paying less and hiring inexperienced people or those with less than stellar customer service skills.  If an inexperienced person causes a client to walk away, you'll have lost a lot more money than if you'd hired someone who was skilled with clients to begin with.

#2: Keep Staff Morale High

Part of making sure that your clients are getting the best possible service is making sure that your staff is kept happy.  An overworked staff is not going to be as competent at handling clients as one that is well rested and maintains a good work life balance.

While staff morale won't always be perfect, it's also important to foster an environment that encourages good communication.  This ensures that small issues in office politics won't become large issues that threaten the overall morale or cohesion of your law firm.  Keep communication channels open from partners to staff members so that there are no big surprises.  When people feel they are informed and kept in the loop, they'll be more likely to present the kind of customer service attitudes you want your clients to see.

#3: Don't Play Hard to Get

There's never an excuse to get far behind on your calls and emails.  Clients can easily become alienated by attorneys who take forever to get back to them, and you're unlikely to receive positive reviews from clients who felt like it was an uphill battle just to get you to take their calls.  The best way to make sure that you're customer focused, more than any other single piece of advice, is to take calls as often as possible and return emails within a reasonable timeframe.

Typically, you should aim to respond to most calls and emails on the same day that you receive them.  While some responses—especially to questions asked toward the end of the day—may take until the next business day, there's no reason that you should ever wait longer than one extra day to respond.  If the question is going to require research that may take some time, you still need to respond to inform the client that you are doing the research, that they have not been forgotten, and that you will get back to them as soon as you have an answer to their query.

#4: Get Involved In Community Events

Another way to help yourself build a reputation in the community—a reputation that will help cement your brand as a client focused law firm—is to make yourself visible as a community leader.  Involve yourself in some charitable causes and sponsor community events and teams.  You may also want to make yourself available to give talks on areas of the law you're an expert in.

By becoming a visible presence around your town or neighborhood, you give yourself added name recognition.  In some situations, it can be substantially less expensive to get your name into the public consciousness this way than through traditional forms of advertising.  What's more, this kind of community involvement gives you clearer name recognition than just putting your name and face on public transit or in the Yellow Pages.

This is a particularly good way to get clients if you're working in a rural area or have a practice that depends on large numbers of older clients.  This can mean that many online marketing ideas won't really bring in the clients you're depending on, and offline measures become critically important.

#5: Work Pro Bono Cases

While you can't do everything for free or take cases without regard for a client's ability to pay, you should always be thinking about whether a case may be worth taking on a pro bono basis.  Pro bono cases should usually be the kinds of case that will stretch and push you without pushing so far that they're beyond your ability level.  You should consider taking cases pro bono if you believe that they may help you make a name for yourself in the local legal community.

Keep in mind that just because a case will attract a lot of publicity doesn't mean you're obligated to take it on a pro bono basis.  Ask a trusted mentor for advice about taking a case if you're worried it's too far outside your wheelhouse.

#6: Responsive Social Media Channels

When you're using social networking websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, you should make sure that you're keeping an eye on your firm's name and any relevant hashtags to make sure that if you're being talked about, you know what's being said.  You shouldn't always interfere—for example, if people are giving you compliments, it's often better to just stay out of it—but you should make sure that you're always listening.  If someone has a complaint or a question, feel free to respond to it in a positive, constructive manner.  This will give you a better online reputation and make it more likely that people seeing your social media presence will want to hire you.