Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

In 17 years of practicing law, I found the least desirable clients came via the Yellow Pages.

As a plaintiff's trial lawyer representing injury victims and their family members, my partners and I spent a ton of money on full page yellow page ads. But never really attracted folks who I was proud to sit next to in court or cases that there were a lot fun. The good clients and cases came by word of mouth - either generated offline or over the Internet.

So I read with interest Holden Oliver's post at What about Clients entitled 'Get out of the Yellow Pages Now.'

It may sound counter-intuitive, but we continue to believe that the 'Yellow Pages' and anything like it--i.e., people look up 'lawyers' who do '[specialty]' and call your firm--brings on the worst possible headaches (and clients) for anyone who is doing or wants to do work for good companies. Even inexpensive name-specialty-phone number ads yield more trouble than they are worth. If you want sophisticated clients--and not 'price-shoppers' who see lawyers as providing fungible services or commodities--unlist yourselves. But stay in the White Pages so clients who already know or have heard of you can find you.

I'll add that the White Pages is no longer the phone book. Google is your phone book as a lawyer, whether you represent consumers or corporate clients. People need to be able Google your name, and perhaps your location and the word 'lawyer,' and find your name listed at the top of Google search results.

You'll get that listing via a well indexed and optimized website or blog. It's not coming via a listing in legal directories in Martindale-Hubbell, lawyers.com, or FindLaw.

And if you're looking to generate clients via word of mouth online, you'll need to blog effectively as opposed to using a website alone.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Looks like it's not only law firms pulling out of the yellow pages. The Raleigh News & Observer's David Ranni reports R.H. Donnelley shares fell 12 percent Tuesday upon the announcement of disappointing third-quarter advertising sales for its yellow pages business.

Interesting that no one is quoted in the article about growth or even stability in yellow page book ad sales. It's online where any ad growth is going to take place.

Signal Hill analyst Maurice McKenzie remained optimistic about the yellow pages business and Donnelley in particular because of steps "...[T]he company has taken, over the past year or so, in terms of strengthening its position online, which we see as a critical growth engine going forward."

Don't get me started about having your law firm rely on the yellow page sales people for having an effective online presence. I just can't see the sales people who tried to earn a commission by getting my old law firm to put green or purple in our yellow page ad as Internet marketing gurus.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Some lawyers may find advertising in yellow pages effective, but it's hard to believe we went to law school to get edged out by pizza and auto parts on the list of the biggest yellow page advertisers.

That's the word from an article by Jodi Sokolowski in the Buffalo Law Journal about how law firms are dominating the yellow pages. I don't know but the article sounds like it's right out of Yellow Page companies' play book on how great yellow page ads are.

Heck, when I found the yellow page directory laying in my driveway, I wanted to find the SOB who left it there. I put them back in the street and wondered why a company like DEX, Verizon, or Qwest had the right to throw garbage in my yard. Wouldn't it be great to get a dump truck with all the unwanted yellow page directories and dump it in Verizon's parking lot?

This post will draw the usual flack from the yellow page folks. But look at some of the recent commentary on yellow pages and yellowpages.com I've seen from lawyers and legal marketing professionals.

• The yellow pages are last century's marketing. Today, clients find lawyers on the Web. Your clients should ignore the Yellowpages.com salesperson and put their marketing dollars into their website.
• ...[I]n the 21st century of websites and blogs, yellow pages are a waste of money. And they are an expensive scam. In my 2-inch thick AT&T Yellow Pages for suburban Illinois (DuPage County), the listings for lawyers run for 43 consecutive pages. I believe this makes it impossible for a law firm to stand out.
• We tried yellowpages.com for a year, and picked three specific listing areas and four markets in the state. We had modest clickthroughs (.15%) but virtually none of the business we were looking for. I had better results with Web site ads on content sites that the clients/prospects were reading at the same or less cost.
• For PI attorneys, the phone book is perfect. For us [general practice], I agree that we are lost in a big mess of incongruent ads and unless we take out a full page, our firm and its members will be hard to locate-by firm name or their own name.
• ...I rarely see them in the search engines when doing a search or hear about them unless it is a salesperson trying to sell a listing. ...[E]ven if the searcher finds yellowpages.com, the attorney's probability of being chosen is low unless the attorney buys a top spot.

Please comment with your thoughts. Yellow pages sales guys too.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks (1)
• Share Link

Acknowledging that they are getting killed by the Internet and by people's ability to search for a local lawyer on the search engines, the yellow pages are really reaching this time. Per a story in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (sub req'ed), yellow pages are selling video ads to law firms that will accompany the law firm's online yellow page listing.

Read the article and you'll see that video like this is totally unproven as a local advertising tool. But it's being done as it fits right in with the yellow pages business model of always up-selling lawyers. Before it was color and large display ads. Now, added to your free online listing, it's $1,000 for the ad production and then a payment for each click by a user to play the ad.

Plus, are you really going to trust page yellow page sales people to make sure you get a nice video? I was a plaintiff's trial lawyer for 17 years. I bought plenty of yellow page ads. Took me a number of years to reach my own opinion that the sales person really didn't give a darn how my ad looked as long as they up-sold me and got their sale.

Even the WSJ article notes production problems:

...[A]dvertisers have to be careful that they don't hurt business with ads that look too cheesy. Some directory businesses hire videographers who try to steer advertisers away from content that might turn off consumers. But it doesn't always work. Some of the ads look like snippets of infomercials with shots of cheery employees answering phones at a beauty salon, for example. Directory companies try to avoid problems by screening ads to make sure they're G-rated and include basic information about businesses.

There are any number of ways for law firms to use the Internet effectively. Trying gimmicks meant to serve outmoded yellow pages business models are not among them.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (4)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link