blog home Legal Online Marketing Solicitations from Marketing Companies: Don’t Believe Everything You Read!

At SLS, we let our portfolio do all the talking. We don’t send out solicitation emails, and we don’t make broad general statements to scare potential clients into signing with us. We let them take a look at the work we’ve done for clients, and even encourage them to reach out to those clients to ask their own questions.

That’s right. We encourage potential clients to reach out to our current clients…ANY of our current clients…because we’re that confident in the work we put out and the finished product we give to our clients. But that’s just how WE acquire new business. Overall, it’s safe to say that there are a ton of marketing tactics out there used to attract and obtain new business, with some of the tactics being a little more questionable than the others.

Recently, one of our clients forwarded us an email he received in regard to the penalties his site had recently been hit with due to Google’s algorithm changes. The only problem was that our client’s site hadn’t been hit with any penalties, and his rankings were just as strong as ever. See the body of the email below. We’ve removed names and anything else to identify our client and the marketing company:

Hey [name],

I’ve been doing searches in [city name…and keep in mind that they used the wrong city name…in a completely different state even!] and took a look at your website and noticed you may have been affected by one of the new Google Algorithm updates. We have some suggestions regarding your layout, website speed, and your content that can help increase traffic to your firm by a minimum of 25%.

[Our company] helps law firms increase revenue by marketing online. Each month we help drive thousands of leads to…law firms across the country. Being a smaller online marketing company has enabled us to have a personable approach to each of our client’s while easily adapting to change, in the ever evolving world of online marketing. [Company proceeds to list some of their clients].

If it makes sense to talk, let me know how your calendar looks?

Thanks,

[First Name]

All this particular company has to do is plug the (correct) city name into the email and they’re ready to press send. A generic observation meant to illicit panic in the potential client, this is an extremely common marketing tactic that a large number of marketing firms out there use. Luckily, we make our clients aware of exactly what to look for in marketing solicitations. In fact, many of our clients usually forward these emails to us (if they don’t simply delete them). So be warned, spammy marketing companies out there. Even though you may try to scare our clients into giving you a call, they know better because SLS has already filled them in on your scheme.

Have you ever gotten a generic marketing email with the wrong information on it? Tell us all about it in the comments…

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