We helped Wilson Nesbitt solicitors to find new customers, on new channels and then cut the cost of acquisition.
Understanding customer intent and serving the right message, on the right device, at the right moment, helped dramatically increase the number of enquiries for profitable legal services.
Results (2018 vs. 2017) *this is just the start
- 57% increase in enquiries from all digital marketing activity, including a 69% increase in enquiries from mobile devices
- 25% decrease in the cost per enquiry from paid media (Google Ads)
- 35% increase in website visitors converting into enquiries (via an enquiry form)
- Better attribution (where did leads come from) & tracking
- Clearer reporting on ROI to the rest of the team
- Understand what makes clients tick
Who
A well known solicitor firm in Northern Ireland employing over 60 staff members in two locations. Wilson Nesbitt Solicitors provide a range of individual and business services to clients ranging from property conveyancing and family law, to employment law and business contracts.
The challenge
Finding new, cost-effective ways to target, engage and attract new clients, while maintaining their position as a market leader. Competitors crop up from every angle, so building and maintaining a market share is vital. People looking for legal services fall into two main categories:
- An urgent requirement for legal help e.g. employment law, criminal issues or road traffic accidents
- A longer-term requirement such as will-writing, property conveyancing or personal injury claims.
Understanding the buying cycle for both was critical. How does the journey to becoming a client begin? How long is it likely to take?
Business Objectives
- Lower the cost per relevant enquiry
- Increase the number of enquiries
- Better measure the source of all enquiries coming into the business
- Justify costs on marketing spend through concise reporting
How We Did It
In order to get results, we looked at 3 key areas:
Existing cost per enquiry
The firm already has great awareness in the local market through Radio, print media and of course, good old fashioned word of mouth. We looked at how much it costs to get new enquiries from each channel and this set an ongoing benchmark for digital channels. We needed to be sure that we are reaching more people with more relevance than traditional media and that it cost less to reach these people.
Where do potential customers start their journey to making an enquiry?
This stage requires a great deal of research and is ongoing to ensure that Wilson Nesbitt retains a market leading position. For example if a competitor has a higher market share in search engines and is getting more traffic, we need to understand why.
The customer journey –
How do customers search for legal services?
Sales funnels for legal services often start with users looking to educate themselves by searching on Google or looking at relevant website content. At this point we needed to either:
- Be aware of what they are looking for and make sure that we create adverts (and organic pages) that answer their search query or
- If they aren’t ready to enquire we need to learn more about them e.g. what pages did they visit? What was the specific search term they used? We can then set up remarketing campaigns to make our next communication even more relevant.
To complicate matters further, the journey is not linear. A user will switch between desktop and mobile devices before making a decision to enquire.
We did lots of research into the online channels that could start driving relevant traffic to the website and established two key channels:
- The Google Search Network – to build awareness and drive traffic amongst potential clients who were looking for legal services in the local area.
- Facebook ads – to build awareness and drive traffic from people who have shown an interest in legal services but aren’t actively looking
Because of the demographic information available, Facebook can be used to determine what the size of the market is for people who have shown an interest in services ranging from property conveyancing to family issues. Using Facebook ads, you can create an audience from these people and serve them relevant messages.
And what if people visit our site or interact with us, but don’t enquire?
We looked at the journey a potential client may take before making an enquiry and ensured we are there at each stage to provide the right message. This includes ensuring paid media works hand in hand with other media, like content marketing.
Wilson Nesbitt provides valuable content on a daily basis in the form of relevant news stories. These news stories often have a slant that is designed to provoke thought in the reader. The great thing about these articles is that they allow us to create remarketing lists. If someone has viewed a news article about wills, we can capture there cookie info and add them to a list about wills for remarketing purposes (providing they consent of course).
Find out more about marketing for law firms.
The power of remarketing
With a large volume of traffic coming to the site on a weekly basis, we created remarketing lists for both Google and Facebook. This allows us to serve ads to visitors based on the service page that they visited and then serve them a relevant ad to try and get them to come back, eg.:
- User visits the homepage only – ( we want to keep it generic) “Legal problem? Ask Wilson Nesbitt”
- User visits the property conveyancing page “Moving home? Talk to one of Northern Ireland’s largest conveyancing teams”.
Advanced tip: Layers – to keep costs down we can then layer the targeting e.g. targeting people who visited the property conveyancing page only when they are viewing content relating to moving home, on the Google display network.
Measuring
Getting results is one thing, conveying the positive results to the rest of the business in a manageable report is another. We used Google Data studio to create a concise report that pulls in all website activity from all channels onto one dashboard. This means it can be updated any time so any member of staff can find the information they’re looking for and more importantly, justify the spend so that there is a case to invest more.