Ever heard anyone say there are too many lawyers? There may be some truth to it. Because there are so many lawyers, competition to get clients has become fierce.
Nowhere is this truer in the personal injury realm. There’s a reason you see tv ads and billboards everywhere you go. As a result, the industry has become a ripe battleground for the latest and the best technology to identify where clients come from.
The Old Ways of Call Tracking
“When I started out practicing, there was no way of generating clients on the internet. We got all of our clients from traditional sources like radio, television and print ads.” Says Paul H. Cannon, Managing Partner of the established Houston personal injury law firm, Simmons and Fletcher, P.C., Injury & Accident Lawyers. “We used to use a tracking number for each, divide the total cost by the total number of calls and that calculation of ‘cost-per-call’ was the best we could do for lead-cost tracking.” Cannon said.
Cost-Per-Lead Was Not Accurate
The problem with cost-per-lead tracking is that it was not accurate. “When our firm integrated Clio’s case management software with Callrail’s call tracking software, it was eye-opening,” according to Cannon. After analyzing the data, Cannon discovered that certain advertisers were manipulating calls simply by sending a lot of spam calls to your phone number late in the evening and then hanging up before your machine answered or your call service registered a billable call. “It showed up on your bill as a call so that when you did your cost—per-call math, it looked like the source was a cheap lead generator when it was not, “ explains Cannon.
Modern Call Tracking Software
There are many types of call tracking software out there. Companies like Callrail, 800.com, Revenue.io, Invoca, What Converts, and SalesKen all provide a variety of services to enable the user to issue designated phone numbers that can placed in specific areas so as to track only calls from a particular source. The software then compiles the data in a database format so the use can search and sort to determine which call sources are producing the most calls. The quality of the call can also be analyzed by looking at the data on call duration and time of day.
In addition, many types of law firm case management software integrate with call tracking software (often by means of a Zapier “zap”) so that you can see when leads are turning into actual clients. “At the end of the day, cost-per-client is the metric you really want to be tracking,” says Cannon. Thus, modern call tracking software gives you the ability to identify the call quality so that your cost calculations are based upon the quality of calls not just the quantity. In a competitive industry, using the most current technology to adapt and change your business can be the determinative factor in your company’s longevity. Perhaps this is why Simmons and Fletcher, P.C. has been able to stay last over 4 decades (since 1979) in a competitive market like Houston, Texas.
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