Posted by Kyle E. Krull, Esq.
President, Integrity Marketing Solutions
If no, likely AVVO knows you, along with 70,000 other attorneys nationwide. Run this Google search: “Your last name, your primary state of admission to practice, and AVVO.” If the search reveals a link to www.avvo.com with your name in the link, then AVVO knows you. It would be a smart marketing move for you to reciprocate.
Prospective clients and referral sources are turning to the internet to find, compare and select their estate planning attorney. Martindale-Hubbell remains the gold standard for b2b (i.e., attorney to attorney referrals) through www.martindale.com and for prospective clients and referral sources through www.lawyers.com. However, the new vetting resource in the mix is www.avvo.com. While Martindale-Hubbell administers the peer rating system (i.e., AV, BV and CV), AVVO has a proprietary algorithm that assigns a numerical rating, with 10.0 as the highest score.
Legal Business Development Advisor Larry Bodine wrote an excellent blog titled “Love it or hate it – Avvo.com is a force to be reckoned with in Law Firm Marketing”:
Within his blog post, Mr. Bodine provides an insightful webinar on the power of AVVO, as well as the ins-and-outs of maximizing its marketing power. While I commend it to your reading in full, here are a few highlights:
- AVVO has more consumer searches than Findlaw and is just behind Martindale-Hubbell (but AVVO provides more information than either).
- AVVO is free, but there is an AVVO Pro version that provides additional tracking, etc., for a monthly fee.
- Your “profile” on AVVO already exists, but you do need to “claim” it and “beef it up.”
- An AVVO profile with an attorney photo is 6x more likely to be clicked.
Bodine’s webinar also includes some key pointers to increase your odds of landing the coveted AVVO 10.0 “Superb” rating, to include:
- Having your own content-rich firm website and additional information about you elsewhere on the internet.
- Peer attorney “endorsements.
- Content is key… the more information you can add to your AVVO profile about you, your practice, experience, etc., the better.
- Third party recognition (e.g., an AV Martindale peer rating).
Teaching Point: AVVO is an important landing spot for prospective clients and referral sources. It is just one more tool for marketing your practice. And, since it is “free,” what are you waiting for?
* AVVO is derived from the Italian word for attorney: avvocato.
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