There’s nothing so rewarding as being part of a team that has trusting relationships and is working towards the same goal.
Unfortunately, this kind of trusted relationship and teamwork can be hard to come by with third-party vendors, especially in the field of legal lead generation.
For 20 years, 4LegalLeads.com has been trying to address that issue. Trust is earned, and we focus on building long-term relationships with our attorneys where it’s clear that both sides are working towards the same goal: finding new clients for the law firm online.
Part of that work to earn trust happens behind the scenes. There’s critical work that a lead provider needs to do to maintain the quality of their leads, provide great service and support, and of course to continually optimize campaigns so that they provide a steady lead flow.
However, we’ve found that there’s another critical strategy that we use to build trust with attorneys. We focus on building the right environment where trust can grow.
It’s hard for an attorney to assess whether the behind-the-scenes technical work is being done the right way, but you can assess whether the environment seems balanced and fair. Most importantly, the kind of environment you encounter in working with a lead provider reveals a great deal about their confidence in their product.
Here’s are some examples of what to look for.
Attorneys should have freedom in their relationship with a lead provider.
This is probably the most important aspect of a healthy working relationship between attorneys and legal lead companies.
- Look for a contract-free experience. This holds the provider accountable to provide high-quality leads and support.
- Look for a guaranteed refund. 4LegalLeads offers a guaranteed, pro-rated account refund to all attorney account holders.
Law firms fund their accounts with money that will later be used to purchase legal leads. It’s comforting to know those funds can be recovered, but more importantly, the guaranteed refund is another means of holding the provider accountable for the quality of their work.
For a company that’s confident in its product, offering this kind of freedom is easy. Being locked into long-term contracts or financial commitments should raise red flags for your team when considering a legal lead provider.
In the end, this is the only approach that makes sense for building an environment where trust can truly be earned.
Attorneys should have access to knowledgeable legal lead account managers.
Learning to use leads effectively takes time and effort. It involves setting up workflows for lead intake that lead to success.
For example, leads need to followed-up on immediately. Literally, every minute lost lowers a law firm’s conversion rate with leads as people searching for a lawyer online become very impatient. When there’s not a fast response, they keep reaching out through other websites until they make a connection. One of your first concerns is making sure the response to your leads is both automated and well-staffed.
Fortunately, there are great software solutions available now that make it easier to respond and remain organized and consistent in the intake process. We help point account holders to reliable software solutions all the time.
Look for a legal lead provider who provides guidance and resources that help set your firm up for success. Most importantly, look for a provider whose team is well-staffed and accessible when you need their input.
Your law firm deserves custom-tailored targeting for leads.
Leads are all about reaching humans, and they behave differently in every market. Our team takes the time to build custom targeting for attorneys and keeps working with them to refine it.
There are two main types of targeting you need to customize.
- Geographic Targeting: You should be able to do far more than just choose a broad region like a state. You should be able to target by county or a mile radius from a central zip code.
- Legal Category Targeting: You should have several categories and sub-categories to help make sure you’re sourcing your ideal clients.
Customization isn’t a one-time event (or at least, it shouldn’t be). Your support team should be available to help you continue to refine your targeting.
Sometimes adjustments are necessary to increase your lead flow. However, adjusting your targeting opens up new opportunities for your firm.
We’ve seen law firms boost growth in powerful ways by accessing new regional markets or serving new categories of law through online lead generation.
Attorneys should have a fair and reliable system for returning legal leads.
Part of having a fair and reliable system is adequate staffing. We’ve invested heavily in our Verification/Quality Control Team so that every return request is processed individually. This makes sure returns are processed efficiently, but it also provides leniency and understanding around unusual circumstances. Being hands-on with each return also allows for the detection of quality concerns to immediately optimize campaigns.
There are at least two major questions you should consider in evaluating a returns policy.
- Does this policy leave room for unique circumstances? Every lead is a human, and humans make mistakes or even mislead. It should be clear in a returns policy that your provider understands that just like the law, each case deserves to be heard on its own merits.
- Is the policy followed as written? Though it may sound too simple, you’ll know the quality of a returns policy by how consistently and faithfully it’s followed by the provider.
Your legal lead provider should have an open door for communication that improves lead quality.
Feedback and open dialogue are the keys to optimizing the incredibly complex advertising systems at the heart of lead generation.
What’s not to be missed is that both kinds of feedback are helpful.
- Positive feedback, gained when attorneys update a lead’s status in their account, helps providers identify which sources of leads are performing well.
- Negative feedback, gained largely through lead returns, helps identify problems in the system.
We encourage attorneys to check in with our support team whenever there seems to be an issue. Even though lead delivery is largely automated, there are still many adjustments and solutions available to our team for resolving issues and improving performance for a law firm.
If all of the other environmental pieces are in place, then it’s easier for attorneys to see the relationship with us as it’s meant to be–as a partnership. It takes both sides to communicate openly to keep a legal lead campaign working at peak performance.
Find a legal lead provider you can trust.
While you’re vetting services for online legal lead generation, look closely at the environment in which your relationship with the provider will be built.
For the law firms who really invest their time and energy with the right legal leads partner, there’s so much to be gained. Legal leads provide a turnkey, easily-scaled solution for sourcing new clients online, and a long-term, consistent relationship can really become a powerful driver of growth for a firm.
There’s one thing our Support Team wants to see at the end of the day: attorneys finding new clients online. We’re happy to answer your questions at (844) 844-0513, or you can create your account at 4legalleads.com/lawyers to start finding new clients online.
