How An Intake Receptionist Can Boost Your Next Marketing Campaign

Marketing is among many of the skills law firm owners have to learn on the job. Very few attorneys have marketing experience, and whether you’re a veteran attorney going on your own or just starting out managing your practice, you’ll soon find that legal marketing is a large part of making sure your business is successful.

Legal marketing comes in many forms, and is itself its own sub-branch of the marketing world; there are entire marketing firms that specialize in making sure lawyers get noticed. Some law firms manage their own marketing rather than hiring experts, but either way, law firms put a lot of time, effort, and investment into their lead generation tactics. In law firms and for legal marketers, people are always focused on making sure calls are coming in.

But very few firms give their lead capturing the attention it deserves. As we’ve mentioned before, unlike many businesses, law firms don’t have sales departments! Law firms mostly leave the success of their marketing campaigns up to the work done on the front end.

There’s a much more efficient option out there. With a more robust focus on lead capturing, you can make sure your next marketing campaign is a success. Intake receptionists will be the front line of your firm’s efforts to secure more clients.

You’ll Never Miss A Call

A good marketing campaign will target prospective clients in various stages of engagement with your firm. Those just learning of your firm might look up your online reviews, for example, or engage with any video content or blogs you might have created to engage new leads at the top of your marketing funnel.

The leads that are ready to hire you, however, are going to call you before they do.

71 percent of clients prefer their first contact with a lawyer to be over the phone, but only 1 in 3 phone calls to law firms are picked up live!

Let’s imagine you’re one of those firms, only answering 33 percent of your phone calls live. Why invest in marketing to make sure phone calls are always coming into your firm if you’re just going to let them go to voicemail?

If you’re investing in marketing but not making sure you answer every call, you’re leaving money on the table. Intake receptionists are always available, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Just by answering every call, they’ll provide value in getting a better return on your marketing investment. If you’re only answering one-third of your calls, an intake receptionist will triple the number of secured clients you’ll get throughout your marketing campaign!

Every New Lead Will Undergo A Legal Intake

When prospective clients call a law firm, they’re usually looking to speak to a lawyer right away. Of course, if you were to actually answer every caller who wanted to speak with you, you’d never get any work done. For that reason, many attorneys decline to take unscheduled calls, allowing callers to go to voicemail to be dealt with later.

Of course, “later” can mean later that day, or the next day, or even the next week, whenever you next get the opportunity to dig through your messages. Unfortunately, voicemail just doesn’t give you a lot of leeway to decide when to respond.

According to Clio’s Legal Trends Report, 79 percent of callers expect a response within 24 hours of leaving a voicemail.

Legal intake receptionists bridge that gap. In the event that you can’t or don’t want to take a new client call, intake receptionists can buy you time to seal the deal on your schedule by performing a legal intake. When new client callers explain their legal issue to a compassionate and professional receptionist, they’ll feel like they’ve already begun the process of hiring your firm.

Let’s say you answer one-third of the calls coming into your firm, as discussed above, and you secure another third of those callers as clients. While making sure every call is answered will mean that 33 percent lead capture rate goes a long way, legal intake will bring that lead capture rate way up, providing you with a better return on your marketing campaigns.

With Detailed Message Taking, You’ll Always Be In The Loop

Even if you have intake receptionists answering every call, performing legal intakes for prospective clients, you might still miss out on some business if those intake receptionists aren’t keeping you in the loop. That’s why message taking is an important part of the equation.

Remember, 79 percent of callers expect a call back within 24 hours. An intake receptionist will extend that deadline, but if you’re not aware of every call coming into your firm as it happens, you won’t be able to make the most informed decisions about how to follow up.

Good message taking has two factors: content and delivery. The content of a message is about making sure the message is brief enough to convey all the information it holds at a glance. At the same time, it has to be detailed enough to understand the caller’s needs so that you don’t need anything except the caller’s message to reach out and secure their

Delivery, on the other hand, is about making sure you always have access to the message, as soon as the call concludes, no matter where you are. The best intake receptionists are supported by a service that is as flexible as possible. If you’re only able to access your messages from your computer, for example, you’re not getting the most out of your investment.

If you want to learn more about what makes a message taking service tick, click here.

Suffice to say, though, that messages are the key third factor in making the most of your marketing efforts with an intake receptionist. Ensuring maximum return on your investment involves making sure every caller has a good experience, regardless of whether they are a new client, existing client, or neither of these categories. Instantaneous and detailed messages will allow you to respond to every inquiry on your own time, with the information you need to secure their business.

It All Adds Up To A Stellar Lead Capturing Rate

Each of these three factors leads to the next. Answering every call is great and will lead to better results, but without legal intake, you’re still beholden to a rapid response time and a normal lead capturing rate. Making sure all new client callers get a legal intake will secure more clients, but until that legal intake is in your hands, there’s nothing you can do.

By putting all three of these together, an intake receptionist service will boost your lead capturing rate, making your return on investment much, much higher. Imagine if instead of securing one-third of your leads, for example, you can push that up to 90 percent! If you’re not backing up your marketing push with an intake receptionist, you’re not putting yourself in the best possible position to succeed.

Invest In Your Firm With Answering Legal

If you’re looking for an intake receptionist, you’re better off going with the best. And the best virtual receptionists are at Answering Legal.

Why? Because we answer only for lawyers, which means we can afford to train our receptionists to be specialists. They train for months to be able to perform legal intake for our law firm customers. That specialization makes them experts, and highly effective at securing business. To read more about our legal intake process, click here.

Our messages are delivered instantaneously via our mobile app and CRM. And, of course, our receptionists are available 24/7. If you want to learn more about our app, click here for more information.

Get your money’s worth from your next marketing campaign. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.