An Increase in Bankruptcies Is Coming. Are Bankruptcy Attorneys Ready?
The deep and unsettling economic impact of the global pandemic will be felt for years to come. While the months ahead will thankfully see many of the lost jobs return, economists warn that it could take years before the US again realizes the historically-low levels of unemployment we enjoyed in 2018 and 2019. Many businesses will fail in the short term, resulting in a tsunami of bankruptcy filings from business owners and some of their employees. A massive increase in demand for bankruptcy attorneys is only months away; is your law firm ready for it?
An Unprecedented Number of Bankruptcies
Prior to our current economic turmoil, all of us pointed to the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009 as one of the worst economic disasters of our time. Thousands of businesses failed, millions of Americans lost jobs, and the number of business and nonbusiness bankruptcies exploded almost overnight.
Data from the Administrative Office of the US Courts find that the total number of nonbusiness bankruptcy filings jumped 98% between 2007 and 2010. Business bankruptcy filings rose by the same amount during that same time period.
Many economic observers, including those at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have indicated that the global pandemic recession will be worse than what we experienced during 2008. By consequence, that means we can likely expect a dramatic increase in the number of business and nonbusiness bankruptcy filings, far beyond what we experienced during the last recession.
How Can Bankruptcy Attorneys Prepare?
There are two key ways bankruptcy attorneys may want to prepare for what could be one of the busiest periods of bankruptcy activity in American history.
Hire more staff, especially more paralegals
Increase marketing to capture the incoming demand
Increase staff earlier rather than later
Hiring more staff may be a given. As your workload will undoubtedly increase, you’re going to need all the help you can get. Clients are going to be stressed, and if your resources are tight, you may lose clients to a competitor who increased their staff to meet the demand.
Also, take into account the impact that online reviews will have on your business once the abundance of new business slows down the time it takes to move from filing to discharge. Potential clients will take to the web on places like Avvo, Lawyers.com, FindLaw, Google, Yelp, and social media to leave both positive and negative reviews. These review sites matter to the success of your business, and handling cases quickly and successfully can result in better reviews.
Increase marketing
Marketing is going to be absolutely essential during this time. Having your firm listed in as many locations as possible to get more exposure will be important, but you’ll also want to be strategic in your messaging.
You likely already have a profile set up on top sites for finding attorneys, like Avvo, Lawyers.com and FindLaw. But you also need to take into account how many potential clients could find you just by performing a Google search. Much of your competition may already be operating a commanding lead on Google searches through paid ads or with well-developed SEO content. If you’re not competing on those angles, you may be losing valuable opportunities in what will be an incredibly dense market.
Marketing Strategies for Bankruptcy Attorneys
You could market widely, but there are a few key areas of concern that you’ll need to take into consideration.
Enhance your marketing with local SEO strategies
Among the many strategies you employ, make sure you have your bases covered with local SEO.
Local SEO involves ensuring your business information shows up when people search online in the area you serve. Think about all of the businesses that show up when you perform a generic search on Google maps for any time of restaurant, clothing store, or doctor. Those businesses have incorporated local SEO strategies to make sure they show up on Google.
Your local SEO should start with getting all of your business information, including a website, physical address, phone numbers, social media, and hours of operation listed with Google. You can accomplish this by registering with the company’s official Google My Business service. That will ensure that you show up on those generic searches for “bankruptcy attorneys”.
There are any other local SEO practices you’ll want to employ as well. Contact Madison Ave Media for a complimentary consultation.
Paid search on Google and social media
Paid search should be a part of your marketing strategy, especially in the short term. While your long-term goal should be to have a commanding presence on organic searches (more on that later), you can get more immediate attention through paid advertising.
Areas of focus for paid advertising will likely include search engines (Google, in particular), and social media (including Facebook).
You’ll encounter a few different paid advertising models. Google and Yahoo use what’s called a pay-per-click (PPC) model, in which pay Google a certain amount for each time someone clicks an advertisement. The cost per click will vary, depending on how competitive the keyword is. Google and other search engines typically allow you to set a budget to help prevent unexpected cost overruns.
Many social media sites, like Facebook, let you pay for ads based on the number of individuals you want to target and their specific demographics. So if you want to target just people in their 50s with interests in entrepreneurship who are located in Brooklyn, you’ll pay more for the ad than if you were only targeting a set number of people in the same location.
Again, your ad spend is fully dependent on the budget you set. And importantly, all of the ad content you create should be backed by content on your site that matches what potential clients see in the ad or what they’re specifically looking for.
Not sure what your ad budget should be? Madison Ave Media will conduct competitive research to recommend an appropriate, competitive ad spend that best fits your needs.
Organic marketing through search engines
Paid marketing is a short-term solution. For the long-term, you should be focused on increasing your business through organic marketing, with a heavy focus on search engine results.
While paid marketing will put your ads directly in front of customers on search engines, social media, and websites with on-page ads, paid advertising tends to have a lower ROI. Ad blockers and a general distrust of paid ads can lead many consumers to simply skip such ads. However, creating SEO content for organic search engine results can lead to a significantly better ROI if you’re able to land on the first page of Google searches.
You may want to zero in on getting highly ranked on Google searches for keywords that will matter for both businesses and individuals seeking bankruptcy assistance. Short-tail keywords (usually one or two words long) will be hard to effectively target, but long-tail keywords that include your may the region you serve be a winning strategy.
For example, if you’re offering bankruptcy services in San Diego, you wouldn’t want to produce SEO-targeted content that just focused on the keyword “bankruptcy”. Instead, you might craft content using long-tail keywords like “bankruptcy attorneys in San Diego” or “how to file for bankruptcy in San Diego”.
Additionally, note that your organic marketing should emphasize Google, but should not ignore other major search engines, including Bing and Yahoo. While Google search makes up over 70% of the online search engine market, it’s not the only search engine in town. Most of your SEO content will work for other search engines, but you may need to make some additional tweaks to get your content.
Google favors older, well-crafted content, making it important to start producing organic SEO content sooner rather than later.
Start Your Bankruptcy Attorney Marketing Today
The number of bankruptcies is only going to increase each day as we get further into the economic crisis facing our country. Bankruptcy attorneys will play an integral part in that, and consumers are likely going to turn to the web to find one.
Don’t lag behind your competitors. Get ahead of the digital marketing game to make sure you position yourself well for when the market really gets takes off. Contact Madison Ave Media today for a free consultation.