A new study shows that Belgian business law firms score poorly in terms of marketing effectiveness. While most Belgian law firms have a website, most of them score poorly on technical variables to enhance the site ranking on search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. And when it comes to convincing visitors of the firm's expertise and converting these visitors to real leads, law firms seem unaware of best practices.
Online marketing for lawyers and consultants has changed dramatically in the last few years. The web has matured as a marketing channel: it was never easier or cheaper to reach a large number of leads thanks to sophisticated e-mail software, blogging and social media like LinkedIn and Twitter. "Unfortunately, the knowledge about these new techniques is not yet widely recognized or adopted", says Kristien Vermoesen, managing partner at FINN PR.
In its report "Online presence, strategies and effectiveness of Belgian law firms, 2010", FINN benchmarked websites of fifty leading Belgian business law firms on technical and marketing effectiveness.
Kristien Vermoesen: "The average overall score of Belgian law websites is disappointing. Only 12% can be said to do everything right in terms of connecting, convincing and converting online traffic. About a third of the sites have no significant online marketing strategy."
Belgian law sites score extremely poor on "connecting" metrics or SEO: 20% has no indexed pages on Google, less than half of the websites show metadata or use headings.
When it comes to convincing visiting prospects of expertise and track record, Belgian law firms score low as well. Only 14% of Belgian law firms blog. 60% offers firm news, but without any real value to clients. Belgian law firms seem also to be unaware of the importance of list building: only 8% offer a subscription form to their newsletters on every website page. Newer ways of connecting to prospects, such as Twitter and Facebook, remain marginal. Only 4 of the researched firms have a Twitter account that is connected to their website.
"It's clear from this research that Belgian law firms are not very aware about the possibilities of online marketing", says Kristien Vermoesen. "Firm websites are obviously considered a necessity, but they are not strategically embedded. B2B-marketing is all about positioning yourself as an expert. An expert knows things, an expert analyses trends, and an expert has opinions about what he knows and analyses. Most law firms know this: it is why they organize offline seminars and publish in several law publications. What they don't know is that these are also the things that a firm's online marketing should focus on to make sure that prospects want to enter into a business relationship with the firm. Because of this lack of understanding of what online marketing can and should be, firms miss a lot of opportunities to undertake some very effective and cheap marketing."
More info : http://www.finn.be/whitepaper/online-marketing-law-firms-belgium-2010
