How Do Consumer Bankruptcy Clients Find Their Attorneys?
Bankruptcy law, especially consumer bankruptcy law, is a legal practice area in which client acquisition was traditionally considered to be “advertising-influenced” and would currently be best described as “search-influenced.” This is in contrast to some practice areas, in which longstanding relationships between attorneys and clients account for the majority of billing. Existing relationships between business owners and their attorneys might account for a substantial volume of Chapter 11 reorganizations, but consumer bankruptcy clients are different.
Prospective consumer-bankruptcy clients are often attempting to solve unanticipated financial crises without having a pre-existing relationship with an attorney. Some people in this situation are hesitant to ask friends, neighbors, and family members for recommendations or referrals due to privacy concerns and pride.
Historically, the phone book was the principal medium that prospective consumer-bankruptcy clients would use to find an attorney to handle their cases, but now even a dominant presence in the phone book produces little more than a trickle of clients. Today, people who desperately need a bankruptcy attorney to prevent a foreclosure, stop creditor harassment, or prevent the imminent repossession of their vehicle, are likely to conduct a web search on their smartphone or computer. Virtually all demographics use the Internet for basic searching. Whether the client is an older man living in a rural town in Central Massachusetts or a younger woman living in the urban core of Worcester, the likelihood that these prospective consumer bankruptcy clients will simply “Google it” is far greater than any other scenario.
Be Where Your Prospective Clients Are Looking
A prospective client of Applied Interactive is a solo practitioner attorney based in Worcester, MA, who represents clients in family law, personal injury, and bankruptcy cases. Although he plans to continue handling all of these types of cases, he is considering engaging Applied Interactive to increase his pipeline of consumer bankruptcy clients. He can efficiently and profitably handle simple consumer bankruptcy cases while offering A) greater attention to detail and B) higher levels of service than big “bankruptcy mills” and smaller, less-experienced law firms.
Even though it is no longer possible for attorneys to simply pay their way to prominence by buying the largest ads in the phone book, they can build pipelines of clients via successful Internet marketing strategies. While our Internet marketing efforts will improve this particular attorney’s visibility in all three of his practice areas, we plan to run a campaign focused on consumer bankruptcy that ultimately captures a substantial portion of the Worcester, MA, market. Our plan starts with redesigning and rebuilding this attorney’s existing website, converting it to WordPress, fixing inconsistencies and errors with his local business listings and online directories, and producing high-quality, original videos and photos. Once the website is relaunched, we will publish an ongoing stream of helpful and informative web pages that will rank well on Google for long-tail search terms used by potential consumer-bankruptcy clients.
Applied Interactive cannot convince every prospective consumer bankruptcy client in Worcester, MA, to hire this attorney to handle their case, but we can increase the number of people who see his local listings and his website, and call him, as opposed to one of his competitors.