The median annual salary for attorneys stands at $119,000. Yet, there’s a noticeable disparity within the personal injury law field, with some lawyers earning less than this figure, while others rake in up to $500,000 per year. What sets these high earners apart? The answer lies in their ability to handle more cases, driven by a consistent and reliable influx of potential and prospective clients themselves Relying solely on referrals might hamper your business expansion efforts.
This article delves into how personal injury attorneys can increase their earnings, focusing on personal injury lead generation. Regardless of whether you’re a solo practitioner or part of a larger law firm, these insights will aid in attracting more clients, thus driving the growth of your law practice.
How to Get More Personal Injury Leads
- Define your target audience.
- Set up search engine optimization and use local SEO services for law firms.
- Use local services ads on Google or social media.
- Write content about successful law firm cases.
- Connect with your customers on social media.
Top 6 Personal Injury Lead Generation Strategies
Mastering personal injury lawyer lead generation is no easy task. We have compiled an ultimate 6-step guide covering all the essentials of internet marketing to help you generate personal injury and auto accident leads and attract more clients for your practice.
1. Be Where Your Prospective Personal Injury Clients Are Looking
Visibility on Google is crucial for attracting personal injury leads. Being on the first page of search results is essential as it garners 90% of the clicks. If you’re not there, you’re virtually invisible. Monthly statistics show thousands of searches in your metro area for the legal services you offer.
A handful of law firms consistently rank high, mastering their conversion rate optimization. Achieving this prominence requires understanding how search engine results work. While we’ll provide steps for gaining Google visibility, many law firms find it more efficient to hire a digital marketing agency, allowing them to focus on other aspects of their business.
Organic “Findability”
People look up all kinds of information on Google, and online marketing for lawyers is a big piece of the puzzle to get flagged by Google as an “expert” and show up in search results. Google uses hundreds of factors as evidence that your website will answer the question each user has, and knowing how to work those factors into your website and digital marketing strategy is what is all about.
To get organic search visibility for you or your firm, you need to have two kinds of relevant content marketing information on your site:
- Answers to prospects’ questions about the problem they face.
Think about the questions and phrases a prospective personal injury client will type in when in need of personal injury services. “What’s the maximum I can come out within a personal injury claim orcase?” “How long do the personal injury claims and cases last?” “What injuries can I take to court?” “Car accident lawyer near me.”
Pay special attention to the types of injuries people most commonly want to know about: motorcycle and car accidents, bike accidents, medical malpractice, workplace injuries, etc.
You need to be there on page one with those answers. It’s hard to work up to page one Google search results, but others have done it. We’ll get more into the search engine marketing technicalities of this below. Answer to a specific question to convert your personal injury leads into clients.
- Information about your personal injury law firm.
You also need to be visible when people look specifically for your law firm or for information on your services. When was the last time you googled yourself? Do the search results clarify that you solve the problems your prospects are googling you for?
We’ll give you a solid example: if someone’s heard of you and searches for your website, they want to know if you solve the problem they experience. You need to show up on page one so no one else does the talking for you, and you also have to make it clear what you do. Forget about the “practice areas” tab on your website—use language like “problems we solve” to speak to what you can do for the prospect.
Unlock the potential of SEO for your personal injury practice. Dive into our guide for invaluable insights and tips.
Use Local SEO to Generate Personal Injury Leads
The next time someone types in “best winning personal injury law firm Chicago,” you want to be one of those primary links in the local search results map pack.
Now to the “how.” Optimizing that little box that pops up when people tap on local options has some technicalities behind it, but you can get a head start with setting up your Google My Business page using these handy steps by the Search Engine Journal.
The thing is, in a city like Chicago, there will be countless red dots on the map for many, many possible attorneys. We won’t get into the weeds on the legal process or other tactics for leveraging your local listing here, so give us a ring, and our marketing team will walk you through it.
The next time someone types in “best winning personal injury law firm Chicago,” you want to be one of those primary links in the local search results map pack.
Now to the “how.” Optimizing that little box that pops up when people tap on local options has some technicalities behind it, but you can get a head start with setting up your Google My Business page using these handy steps by the Search Engine Journal.
The thing is, in a city like Chicago, there will be countless red dots on the map for many, many possible attorneys. We won’t get into the weeds on the legal process or other tactics for leveraging your local listing here, so give us a ring, and our marketing team will walk you through it.
Ready to dominate your local market in 2024? Explore our comprehensive guide on local SEO for lawyers.
Use Paid Listings to Get More Personal Injury Leads
Ah yes, the paid listings. These are the results that show at the very top of the page in Google search results.
Most traffic will actually go to the organic listings local service ads we talked about, but 10% will still go to these top-of-page Google ads.
The strategies and tactics for successful paid ads on Google can be simplified by knowing how to bid for the right keywords. After all, you want to show up when someone googles “best personal injury attorney,” not “what to do when my grandma slipped and fell.”
You have to show up in all three of these places on Google to be found. If you’re on page three of organic search and nowhere to be found in ads or local listings, you’ll lose the battle against the marketing machines who know how to use Google successfully. PPC ads for personal injury practices is one of the most expensive channels of online marketing, but it can be very successful if you use the appropriate strategy.
Don’t miss out on potential clients! Check out our blog to find the best online directories for lawyers and start growing your practice.
Comrade Digital Marketing Agency provides expert PPC services. Want to drive targeted traffic and dominate the competition? Schedule a free consultation.
2. Learn How to Leverage Directories
How to get more new personal injury clients if you already have satisfied customers? People love recommendations. But the “immediate gratification” phenomenon of the digital age sometimes gets the better of us, and calling a friend for a referral takes too much time. Directories for lawyers are popular (and positively wiped out the phone book) because people love to look something up and get an immediate list of vetted personal injury firms with ratings and reviews.
Directories like Avvo, Yelp, and SuperLawyers make it easy for consumers to select a list of lawyers to contact. And those consumers quickly become prospects if you’re listed prominently with multiple online reviews to back you up.
And yes, you can pay for higher placement on these directory sites. Your ROI here can be easily justified, too. Just look at us. If we were on page 37 of a directory when someone typed in “digital marketing agency chicago,” we might as well be invisible. Bringing it back to your practice area, other firms who talk to the prospects first end up getting the business 71% of the time. You have to be visible on these directories, so you can be the first personal injury lawyer prospects call.
You also have to answer those calls and emails FAST—preferably in minutes. Just remember what brought the prospect to a directory in the first place (immediate gratification).
Another reason you want to be on directories is that they do pop up in organic search results. Just look your specialty up, and invariably two of those organic results will be directories.
3. USE YouTube Marketing as Part of your Personal Injury Marketing Strategy
Why lawyers should use YouTube in their online marketing strategy? YouTube is the largest search engine used today to answer questions and the third most visited site on the web. We talked a little about question-answering and what it does to your search findability. YouTube is the even more engaging side of that coin.
If you want to know how you can use Youtube to attract potential clients read our article about law firm video marketing
People ask you questions all the time when you talk to them. There are easily two or three dozen questions that prospects ask you repeatedly—and then, a few one-off questions you may have thought were especially shrewd.
How to Get More Personal Injury Clients with Video Marketing?
You have to provide prospects with the answer to every one of those questions on YouTube to stand a chance at getting found. And this isn’t just about “branding,” or even about being human, relatable, and likable (though that’s important)—it’s about proving to prospects that you are knowledgeable and can help them solve their problem.
Use YouTube as a marketing campaign platform to answer those questions, and you will get attention.
Delivering Business Results: Our Digital Marketing Case Studies
4. Have a High-Performance Website That Attracts and Converts
Webpage optimization for law firms requires a few definitions first:
- High-performance website: an “average” website converts around 2% of its visitors into personal injury leads. A “high-performance” website can convert up to 10%. Think about that for a moment… If you close 1 out of every 4 calls to your law firm, and your website has an “average” conversion rate today, can you imagine quintupling your calls (and therefore your cases) with a high-performing website?
- A website that attracts: in simple terms, this means websites for lawyers have to be findable by search engines. Start by publishing answers to all those common questions your prospects have, like we outlined above.
- A website that converts: after visiting your website, the call to action (to call you, email you or fill out a form) has to be loud and clear. Take a look at the 7 essential elements your law firm website needs to get more visitors to call
Put it all together, and you will never think about how to get more personal injury cases because your website will become a high-performance tool to attract and convert clients into actionable opportunities.
Let’s look at an example outside the legal industry. Years ago, I was at a marketing conference and met this retired guy who had just sold his business for eight-figures.
Naturally, I was curious. I asked what his business was and how he sold it for so much.
The guy owned a sleep clinic in Alaska and told me that an associate came to him one day to talk. “People call in and always ask the same questions—the very same, time and time again,” the associate said.
So then, to make the associate’s life easier as well as to offer something of value to his prospects, the clinic owner decided to post those questions (and their answers) to their website.
But the way he went about it was interesting. The associate took notes for the following three weeks on questions that came in. And then, the owner took those questions and answered all of them on the website—but with each question on a unique page.
Over the following months, Google saw that expertise and value. Visitors started staying longer on the clinic’s site as they navigated from one question to another, and Google boosted the site’s relevance score even more.
When a bigger sleep clinic in the area bought this guy out, it wasn’t for his services. It wasn’t even for his potential client-ele. It was for his website. His marketing efforts literally paid off!
You can do the same. Write out the questions you get asked frequently, then write quality answers and post them individually to your site. Your website will attract quality personal injury leads – the people who need those questions answered. Think Creative found that websites with these types of questions answered attract 55% more visitors and gather 126% more personal injury leads than those without.
Find out how the best law firm SEO agencies can help you dominate search results and grow your practice.
5. Leverage Referral Sources
We said before that the average-earning firm owners we talk to are those relying on referral sources, and that digital marketing for lawyers is the way forward. But referrals will still play a part in personal injury advertising efforts.
For example, if you have a chiropractor who has sent you referrals in the past, and that chiropractor has a blog with content that’s relevant to your services, a backlink from that blog to your website can act as a great indicator to Google that you are a source of authority. These backlinks, in fact, are a big part of
However, coming back to our original point…
- Meeting other professionals who can do this takes time and effort
- Building new relationships also takes time
- Referrals are not consistent
- There is little traffic gain compared to the other steps of this ultimate guide
Remember that you can dedicate a little time to referral-building efforts, but this should only be done in addition to mass-volume sources.
Unlock the power of referral marketing for your law firm with our expert strategies. Read our blog post now.
6. And Then, You Have to Convert
A prospect who’s ready to talk to an attorney is actually the minority. Most people need to see some proof that you can help (and get answers to their questions) before they even make a list of whom to call.
We’ll break this down into a few marketing tips:
- First, tell website visitors what you do. It needs to match what they need, so be clear about what problems you solve.
- Next, show competence. This means talking about your cases and their outcomes. Case studies are the best tool to show what you’re capable of, but some Bar associations don’t allow their use in marketing. Another solution is to list out awards and recognitions.
For example, SuperLawyers.com has a process to “validate” (and highlight) good personal injury lawyers. When you get recognition like this (or any other award in the non-digital world), these are solid examples of your competence that you can share on your website.
Our final word of wisdom on this: be certain not to come on too strong with how impressive you are with all those serious-looking photos and formal writing, or your website will become more about you and less about solving the problems your prospects face.
- Finally, you need to have trust-building assets. These generally come in the form of reviews and testimonials (because people will only buy when they trust the professional).
But, again, some local Bar associations will nix the use of reviews in legal marketing. There are some technical solutions to (ethically) get around this, including asking your Chicago web design agency to install a review site “badge” on your website with a real-time update of your ratings and number of reviews.
Now… let’s talk about converting those clients who aren’t ready to call, who are the majority. If someone has a problem that you can solve and has gotten as far as your website, help them in a way that other attorneys or law firm websites won’t. For example, offer these prospects a checklist that will help them organize their personal injury cases. Try “Things You Must Know Before Talking to a Personal Injury Attorney” or something similar. And then, make that checklist downloadable on your website.
Say I’m your potential personal injury claim client. I’ve googled “how to choose the best personal injury lawyer” and found your site. I see your checklist for the top questions to ask an attorney, and I click to download. Then your website asks for my name and email address in exchange. Next, if you use a web design and digital marketing company, they can set up an auto-responder on your website. Over the next few weeks, that responder sends anyone who downloaded that checklist more information that’s relevant to them.
You already know what problems these visitors are facing, and you know you have other answers on your website to more questions they’re probably asking. So, you send them links to those answers. When the time comes time, who will that prospect call? You. Because you’ve already proven you can be useful.
Why Personal Injury Lead Generation is Important
If you aim to expand your client base in the field of personal injury law, it’s crucial to establish a consistent strategy for top quality personal injurylawyer lead generation. The era of gaining prominence through Yellow Pages is a thing of the past.
Effective marketing for personal injury law firms can help you connect with your desired audience. It identifies potential clients and ensures a steady flow of leads if your marketing strategy is well-executed. Moreover, it provides tangible goals that contribute to the ultimate objective of handling more cases and expanding your practice.
Even if you’re already familiar with 99% of what we’re about to share, there’s a significant chance you’re not fully utilizing these strategies. Lacking or even having subpar digital marketing tactics can negatively impact your personal injury lead flow.
How Much do Personal Injury Leads Cost
The cost of buying personal injury leads can vary significantly, largely depending on the quality of the leads and the source from which they’re sourced. As per the data gathered from various sources, the average cost for personal injury leads can go as high as $2,200 per lead. However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all leads are created equal. The price often reflects the quality, exclusivity, and potential value of the lead. Honesty of the lead generation company is also always a gamble.
That being said, investing in lead generation strategies can potentially offer a better ROI. The key here is to focus not just on the quantity of legal leads, but more importantly, on their quality. Higher quality leads may cost more upfront, but they typically have a higher conversion rate, resulting in more personal injury and auto accident leads and a lower overall cost per acquisition.
Furthermore, optimizing your marketing efforts can help improve the cost-effectiveness of your lead generation. This could involve refining your SEO strategy to improve organic search rankings or leveraging digital marketing agencies’ expertise. While these services might require an initial investment, they can help ensure that your firm is visible when and where potential clients are searching for legal assistance, ultimately leading to more high-quality leads.
How Better Lead Generation Led to Growth for These Personal Injury Attorneys [Case Study]
In the world of law firm SEO, personal injury lawyer marketing is a crowded field. In Central LA alone, you’re contending with 220 million web pages just to make it to the top of the search results. It’s tough going, but well worth the effort for those who succeed!
To thrive in your legal practice, your website needs to rank highly in organic search results. Having high visibility is crucial because potential clients may not take an interest in your services otherwise.
If your objective is to expand your legal practice and help people, then obtaining professional assistance is a must to achieve that goal.
The good news is that Comrade can help.
We specialize in SEO packages for Personal Injury Lawyers and attorneys in competitive markets to rank for the most coveted keywords.
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Action Summary to Get Your Personal Injury Law Firm More Clients and Cases
You read this guide to learn how to attract and convert more clients. We’ve talked about where you need to be, directories for lawyers, YouTube marketing, your high-performance website, good ol’ referrals, blogging tips for lawyers, and how to build your firm’s reviews. Of course, you should also invest in Google search ads, but you’ll need a decent marketing budget, and should first get the basics right before rolling out banner ads or engaging on social media.
It’s bewildering to us why the vast majority of personal injury attorneys aren’t developing adequate marketing initiatives. There’s nothing wrong with calling us for help, either because we’re as specialized in digital marketing services for personal injury attorneys as you are in delivering the best personal injury guidance.
Those Bureau of Labor statistics astounds us. Most law firms earning the average (or less) per year can’t keep on relying on potential referral partners alone. A year from now, where could you be? Call us and discuss your professional personal injury lawyer advertising goals, and we’ll do our job, so you can do more of yours.
Comrade is a Chicago-based digital marketing company that specializes in website design and marketing for attorneys.
Frequently Asked Questions
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