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Advertising Ideas for Virginia Criminal Attorneys - Why Direct Mail is BEST!
The State of Virginia has one of the more diverse and voluminous populations in the United States. Located just outside of Washington, D.C., Virginia represents the so-called “melting pot.” As a result, any Virginia attorney wishing to advertise their practice will want to consider the best practices to best promote their law firm. Here, we will talk about the 3 major ways to promote your practice in Virginia: Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, and Direct Mail Marketing.
Pay Per Click Marketing for Attorneys in Virginia
Pay Per Click can be a quick way to get clients. Through AdWords (we will focus on Google here since they are by far the 
biggest search engine) you can simply pay money to Google (or to a company to do it for you) and have your ad placed on the top of a search engine results page (SERP). As a result, if done properly, there is no need for potential clients to scroll down a page whether they are on their laptop, tablet, or mobile phone because the ad is right in front of them. By using paid search you can see immediate results and gain clients quickly.
To do a Pay Per Click campaign, you would create keywords conducive with the area of law you are advertising for that also is consistent with what a potential client might use in the search engine search box (e.g. “Loudoun County DUI Lawyer). In addition, you can create an advertisement snippet as to why they should take a look at your site and, hopefully, call you. To have your ad appear on Google, you will have to bid against other marketer-lawyers. The higher your bid the better chance you have in appearing in the top of the search results. Of course, this assumes your ad has a good “quality score.” Relevance and usefulness are a factor Google takes into consideration in its AdWords. In fact, even if your bid is under another lawyer-marketer, you may still appear above their ad if your quality score is higher. Finally, the click-through rate in which how many clicks your ad has received previously is taken into consideration.
Pay Per Click advertising does have drawbacks however. Any time your ad is clicked on, you will be billed. This means that, if one of your competitors decides to try to run you off the first page, all they have to do is continuously click on your ad. You will have no new client leads and be billed for each of those clicks. Additionally, salesmen looking to find new clients to represent may click on your ad trying to find you. And, finally, Pay Per Click can be expensive. The more populous the locality you are advertising in the more expensive bids will be. The more competitive the keywords are the more expensive it will be. There is just no guarantee that a person clicking on your ad is a potential client looking for your services.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your site for search engines so that your site can be indexed and, essentially, be 
considered an authority in the area of law you are promoting. If your site is liked by search engines, it will be shown in the so-called “organic rankings.” The allure of a good position in the organic rankings is that it is free. By properly noting the locality in which you practice, the area of law you are focusing on (i.e. the keywords), and a host of other factors such as having good content, proper title tags, internal and external linking, etc., you can find yourself on the first page of Google where potential clients are likely to find you.
The drawback of SEO is that it takes time and much patience. You will not likely pick up clients immediately. In addition, SEO is constantly changing and, therefore, so are the things that Google requires for you to be considered an authority. Many times a law firm’s site will rank well. However, an update to Google’s algorithm can result in a loss of rank (such as your site is not mobile friendly or your site does not clearly specify your locality). Your site must be updated regularly and follow SEO best practices and this takes a lot of time. Unless you want to spend money on an SEO company to help you, it can be too time-consuming to be regularly updating and optimizing your site when you have a busy practice to focus on.
Direct Mail Advertising
Direct Mail is exactly what it sounds like. Mail is sent to a potential client that needs your help. Unlike with Pay Per Click or SEO, direct mail hits the client 
right when they receive it. There’s no need for them to search online or, quite frankly, think! You are handing them your services on a platter. As for you as a marketer, you don’t have to worry about paying for clicks or spending time optimizing a site in the hopes that they find you. To the contrary, you find your clients.
While direct mail is an advertising campaign you can do yourself, it is very labor intensive. Trying to find your clients that need legal help, locate their address (hopefully you found their correct address), create a computer program to manually type the potential client’s names and their addresses into, print them out, fold them up, put them into envelopes, seal them, stamp them, and send them off can be extremely time-consuming. However, a company can do this for you. While this is certainly not free, when you take into account that you don’t need to do anything (except tell your direct mail marketing service what cases you are looking for), it is money well spent. All you have to do is wait for the phone to ring. Provided you have a cup of coffee handy, direct mail marketing in Virginia is the easiest and most cost effective way to go. A company like Direct Legal Mail, LLC is a great option for Virginia attorneys. They provide two types of service for attorneys: one type of service is a data only service where Direct Legal Mail sends you high quality leads on newly filed criminal and traffic cases. These are fresh leads and the addresses in the leads have also been address corrected using state-of-the art address correction software to remove bad addresses and to replace old addresses where the defendants who have moved used to live, with the new addresses where they live now. The other service that Direct Legal Mail provides is a full mailing service. With the full mailing service, Direct Legal Mail handles the entire process each day for you, from gathering the data to mailing off your advertising mail pieces each day. The full service can save you both time and money. With Direct Legal Mail, you really can get a good return on your marketing dollars.