Personal injury leads may cost anywhere from $100 to over $350, depending on many factors and the company you buy the leads from. In smaller geographic areas, the leads may be less expensive. Leads in bigger metropolitan areas will cost at the higher end of the range.
According to the ABA, many lawyers across all practice areas invest in buying leads. As a personal injury lawyer, you might consider paying for lead generation to help you get new cases. This is most helpful for new lawyers who don’t have other established marketing channels.
Buying leads could be good to supplement your other marketing activities. But using it as your primary method to win cases may be more costly than it seems. Other law firm marketing tactics are more sustainable and lead to greater long-term value.
Factors that Affect the Price of Personal Injury Leads
Determining the cost of personal injury leads can be challenging because many factors go into the final price.
These include exclusivity, the geographic area, and the type of personal injury case.
One other factor almost always applies to lead cost regardless of the other. The more specific you get in terms of lead quality, the more you’ll pay.
Exclusivity
The concept of exclusive leads is straightforward. Leads that are meant for only one lawyer are more valuable than those where lawyers must compete.
An exclusive lead goes to only one lawyer. These leads are more expensive than non-exclusive ones, but you might find it easier to close them. That’s because you’re not competing against any other law firms for the lead’s business.
Non-exclusive leads may be shared with multiple law firms. You can pay for the lead, but there’s little guarantee that you’ll win their business. You have to do the hard work of standing out from all the other attorneys who bought the same lead.
Geographic Area
Personal injury lawyers in high-population areas pay more than less competitive areas. This means that leads in places like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other bigger cities may be too expensive for some firms.
Many lawyers in bigger cities are willing to pay a lot for leads on personal injury cases. This drives the market cost up even more. This may make it harder for newer lawyers to set aside enough budget to compete for these potential clients.
Type of Personal Injury
Lawyers value personal injury cases differently. So it follows that leads for different claim types may also vary in price.
A dog bite lead will not cost as much as one for a victim in a truck accident case, for example.
Be prepared to pay more for cases that other lawyers value because of their preferred practice areas or the case’s potential settlement or verdict value.
Buying Leads Vs. Generating Your Own
Buying leads from time to time may be fine for lawyers, but it isn’t sustainable in the long run. This is especially true compared to the long-term value of quality leads you can bring in yourself.
There are a few challenges with making lead-buying your primary source of clients. The biggest two are scalability and the quality of leads.
Buying leads funds a 1-to-1 payout. You pay X amount to the lead seller. In return, you get Y number of leads. To get more leads, you have to pay more.
With tactics like SEO for lawyers, you pay for compounding growth over time. Each piece of content you create exists on a platform you own. Several potential clients can find your site over time. Each time they convert, the content on your site provides more value.
Second, many lead services focus on quantity over quality. If you survey reviews of legal pay per lead services, you’ll find endless complaints from lawyers about low-quality leads.
A pay per lead service may be incentivized to send you as many leads as possible. They may not take the time to properly qualify the leads before sending them to you. While these services have dispute processes, it’s still an unnecessary waste of your time.
Another challenge is one of supply and demand. If more lawyers in your area compete to buy leads, prices will rise. Some lawyers may be priced out of the lead-buying market due to competition.
Buying leads may help you get your practice off the ground, but the alternatives are usually better in the long run.
Tactics like SEO and law firm social media require time and work upfront to yield results. It may be slightly slower to start, but content marketing is far more sustainable and scalable than buying leads from a pay per lead vendor.
As you invest in law firm inbound marketing, you get the added bonus of nurturing and educating your leads. These high-quality leads are more likely to convert, too.
This is especially true when you compare inbound marketing leads with non-exclusive leads. Non-exclusive leads don’t know you or your law firm’s unique value proposition, so it’s harder to make the case that you’re the right choice.
Common Lead Generation Services for Personal Injury Lawyers
There are several different pay per lead services for attorneys. Many of them also serve double duty as legal directories. These directories pull people to their sites using either PPC ads or SEO. Then they either capture leads to sell to partner attorneys or send referrals to attorneys through premium profiles.
Most lawyer lead generation services don’t publish their average costs for legal leads. This may be because of variability in lead price per platform. It may be because of competition between the platforms.
While they don’t publish their pricing per lead, many platforms will tell you the cost of a premium directory profile. These paid profiles mean you might show up more often when people visit the directory.
Below, we’ve listed some of the most common ones for personal injury attorneys.
Nolo
Nolo is both a legal directory and a legal encyclopedia for the average person. They capture leads by attracting people with search engine optimized content. They then funnel visitors over to their directory.
Nolo sells flat-fee leads to lawyers in certain geographic areas. They offer both exclusive and non-exclusive lawyer leads.
They do not publish their pricing, but they do say it varies based on the type of injury lead.
FindLaw
While Nolo uses SEO and content to drive traffic to lawyer profiles, FindLaw uses targeted online ads to push leads to visit landing pages. FindLaw then sells these leads exclusively to one lawyer.
As with other services, they don’t share their pricing, but you can expect them to be higher due to the exclusivity factor.
Lawyer.com
This legal directory allows you to purchase a premium lawyer profile. This pushes up your law firm’s listing in the directory’s search results.
Lawyer.com also offers enhanced promotion profiles, which allow a limited number of lawyers to show up at the top.
A premium profile listing is $119/month. Enhanced promotion in your county is $250/month. Statewide enhanced promotion costs $999/month.
Lawyers.com
Not to be confused with Lawyer.com, Lawyers.com uses both ads and SEO to get traffic to the site. Like any other directory, the site presents multiple lawyer profiles for the reader to choose from.
You can pay a monthly fee for a premium lawyer listing that shows up above other attorneys. There’s a catch to getting the leads, though. Even with a premium listing, lawyers must pay an unpublished cost per lead.
Avvo
Avvo is another option for getting greater exposure for your law firm. A main profile is free, but you could pay more to show up in premium listings. Plan to spend at least $100+ monthly to get featured in listings for prospective clients.
At one point, Avvo was a preeminent lawyer directory. In recent years, traffic to the site has declined significantly. The free profile is still useful for local SEO, but you might pass on a paid one. For most lawyers, it’s not worth it to pay for a premium profile from this site.
Unbundled Attorney
This company captures leads through PPC advertising on Google. Unbundled Attorney tells the leads the average costs for legal services. This sets the lead up for their conversation with a lawyer.
This service does not publish its lead prices online. They do say that the price varies based on location. Positive reviews online claim that these are high-converting leads. This makes Unbundled Attorney a top contender for a personal injury attorney set on buying leads.
Go Beyond Buying Leads
As a personal injury lawyer, you need reliable, long-term, and sustainable ways to bring in new clients.
At Rankings.io, we help you create those marketing strategies through law firm SEO, social media, attorney PPC, and more. Let us leverage our years of experience to get meaningful results for personal injury lawyers.
If you’re ready to step off the lead-buying treadmill, we can help you create your own leads. Contact us today to learn more.
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