How Much Traffic to My Website is Enough Traffic? The Thin Market Concept

Law firms often ask the question "How much traffic should I expect to my website?" To understand my answer to that question, you need to understand the concept of a "thin market" and its implication to the client development strategies of law firms.

Believe it or not, legal marketing and selling refrigerators have a lot in common – both are thin markets characterized by relatively few buyers at any given point in time. Just as only a few households will buy a refrigerator in your area today, only a few prospects will enter the market in your firm's practice areas.

For law firms, the challenges of doing business in a thin market are obvious. Only a few good prospects enter the market on any given day, for any given practice area, in any given geographic area. Law firms typically don't know when new prospects will be entering the market. Many firms compete for the same few prospects.

The implications of the thin market for law firm marketing are far-reaching. From a strategic perspective, firms must maximize their exposure in order to increase their chances of being seen by the best prospects. That means using a "media mix" to deliver their message to the largest possible audience of qualified prospects, and marketing continuously (24/7) to reach new prospects when they enter the market and make buying decisions.

No media meets these critical marketing requirements better than the Internet. Over 66% of all American households use the Internet every day, and those consumers are increasingly relying upon the Internet instead of the Yellow Pages to make buying decisions. Only the Internet provides detailed content on legal issues and complete information on law firms that help consumers make more informed buying decisions. Law firms need to market within the context of those buying decisions, reaching prospects with persistent marketing across multiple consumer venues – FindLaw, AOL, Yahoo!, and others.

Successful firms will focus on attracting the best-qualified prospects to their websites with targeted marketing and value-added content, then converting them with calls to action and intake forms. Those leads will result in the most profitable cases. In the thin market of law firm marketing – and selling refrigerators – quality of prospects will always be more important than quantity.