Every year, law firms across the country spend several million dollars on acquiring mass tort leads. According to Reuters, trial lawyers and legal marketing firms searching for mass tort clients in the second quarter of 2018 spent around $186 million on broadcast ads alone.
Furthermore, mass tort marketing leads can cost a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars each, according to Advertoscope. Yet some law firms do not see much return for their investment because leads aren’t converting into clients. Why? Often, it’s due to an ineffective client intake process, and one misstep can cause incoming leads to move on and keep shopping around to multiple law firms until they find the right one.
Four Tips to Improve Client Intake and Stop the Shopping
The client intake process is the key factor that can make the difference between losing leads to the competition and instantly capturing and converting leads into profitable clients. Here are some tips to stop the shopping and improve your client intake.
1. Have (At Least) One Dedicated Person to Respond
Multitasking will kill your intake process. When your intake staff is also tackling other important duties for your firm, responsiveness is not possible. Responding quickly to leads with friendly, accurate answers is a key factor in stopping the shopping and turning leads into clients.
Instead of passing client intake on to someone who handles multiple responsibilities, have one dedicated, trained person (or team) whose sole job is to respond to leads. A responsive firm that quickly answers leads will achieve a higher number of conversions.
2. Get Contracts Signed on the First Call
Train your dedicated intake specialist to get clients to sign a contract on their first call or contact. Once a signed contract is in place, clients will stop shopping around to other law firms and will feel confident moving forward with yours.
Make it easy and intuitive for clients to sign on the first call. Offer options to e-sign through email or text, or FedEx the contract quickly to the client directly. Use only secure delivery methods in order to protect your client’s information and solidify their confidence in your firm.
3. Manage Client Expectations
Many clients who contact a law firm that does mass tort cases have no idea what to expect. Maybe they heard an advertisement that connected them with the mass tort issue, but they’re not aware of the overall process. If your firm can be the one that provides a clear outline of what happens next, you become more authoritative and helpful in their minds, which will translate into a conversion.
To manage expectations, outline the first few steps before ending the call, starting with scheduling a follow-up appointment. You can also send a welcome email that details what to expect after signing on as a client.
4. Partner With a Legal Services Call Center
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with this process, consider partnering with a legal services call center. This will allow you to answer every call and web lead with a live, fast response. Your potential clients will have a quality experience when they call in, and you won’t have to spend your valuable time addressing every potential lead.
When looking for a call center, make sure you choose one that has empathetic intake specialists who can truly listen to your leads and provide a positive experience for each caller. At Alert Communications, we provide our clients with a call center staff that is trained specifically for the needs of law firms. We answer leads 24/7, every day of the year, and offer advanced lead tracking services to follow leads from initial contact to conversion. We also have bilingual specialists, so you will never miss another lead because of a language barrier.
During a mass tort marketing campaign, you need to capture every lead possible. An effective, efficient intake process is the key stopping the shopping. Consider these four tips to optimize your client intake to convert more mass tort marketing leads, and in turn, maximize your return on investment.
