If you’re in the legal industry, most probably you’ve heard about Scorpion Marketing. They are one of the oldest and largest legal marketing companies in the digital marketing arena for legal firms. However, does that make them a good choice for your law firm?
You may be looking to get started on putting your business onto the internet. Or you’re looking to improve your existing digital presence by introducing a new strategy or a new website. If that's your goal, then most probably you're considering approaching an affordable alternative for web design or digital marketing services.
At this point, the question is whether you'll get everything you need from Scorpion. In this article, we will discuss both the advantages and disadvantages you’ll get from working with Scorpion. Our goal is to offer you the facts you need to make an informed decision about whether you want to go with Scorpion Marketing for your website.
Review of Scorpion Marketing's Website Designs vs. GoEngine's
A review of Scorpion's web designs shows that the internet marketing company believes attorney websites must be professional and beautiful looking. Our digital marketing specialists agree. In fact, with both firms, you’ll get a professionally designed legal website. Both agencies leverage the following best practices:
- Beautiful web designs. Your law firm's website is the first impression that prospective clients get about your law firm, and both Scorpion and GoEngine excel at developing websites that make the right impression.
- Responsive web designs. Responsive web design technology ensures that your website is viewable with full access to your law firm’s content on all mobile devices.
- Easy contact methods. Touch-enabled phone numbers, along with calls to action to contact your law firm, are placed in the right locations to catch your potential client's attention without getting in the way.
- Horizontal navigation. Attorney websites must have intuitively located horizontal top-level navigation. This kind of navigation is what many prospective clients expect, and it makes it easier for them to locate what they're looking for.
- Appropriately sized images and fonts. Fonts on a legal website mustn't be too small that they're difficult to read or understand. Nor should they be too large that they look goofy. Some WordPress web designers have recently started using oversized images and fonts on attorney websites, which is a bad idea. Further, images on a legal website must be exciting and easily understood, and shouldn't overwhelm or take away from the ability to read and understand your content. Both agencies strike a perfect balance in the sizing of both of these crucial features.
We believe that most of Scorpion's lawyer websites provide well-designed experiences that make attorneys look good. But, the one place where we differ is in the way Scorpion internet marketing approaches some style elements and animations.
Most of the Scorpion websites we reviewed had motion graphics. These motion graphics are counterproductive on legal websites. They distract prospective clients and make it challenging for them to find and absorb information on a legal website. Examples we’ve seen in the past include sub-menus that dramatically slide in from the top or take over the entire screen.
At GoEngine, we take a simple approach when creating law firm website design. We know how prospective clients and referral sources consume information on legal websites. We know what influences their decision to contact or hire a law firm. That approach is baked into all our web designs, so lawyers don’t need not worry about the web design elements of a high-converting website.
Website Development
Scorpion’s web design skills are pretty good. Web development refers to the actual process of creating a website. This is the aspect that involves hundreds of lines of code that go into building a functional website that suits your goals and needs. Development involves putting together all the different pieces that are part of your legal vision to create one cohesive website.
Scorpion produces well-designed and high-quality law firm websites. Over the years we have come across many Scorpion Design websites in the legal marketing space and seen many legal websites that are impressive in terms of usability and design.
Having a website that's fully functional across all devices is a necessity. At GoEngine, we have the expertise and experience to design a website for your law firm that encompasses your marketing goals and offers an excellent user experience. We use a “mobile-first” approach to make sure that your law firm website functions properly on all smaller mobile devices, from tablets to smartphones.
Scorpion's Search Engine Optimization Vs GoEngine's Search Engine Optimization
If you’re considering working with Scorpion, you’re probably interested in what their SEO abilities look like. Scorpion prioritizes paid search methods, such as social medial marketing, Google Adwords, and display advertising over SEO and organic search.
However, for their high-paying clients, Scorpion implements aggressive SEO campaigns with content marketing, local SEO, and link building. Scorpion believes for mid-sized law firms and law firms with smaller budgets ranging between $1k – $5k per month-- are more profitable by managing paid advertising campaigns than they can be with full-service SEO campaigns and organic online marketing.
Scorpion websites have ranked high in organic search results many times. That means the company has capable SEO professionals on board who drive real results with SEO.
SEO is daunting, time-consuming, and there are no shortcuts. If Scorpion Marketing feels that it's more profitable by focusing primarily on paid advertising over organic marketing, then the marketing investment in the latter may dwindle.
Overview of PPC Marketing Campaigns
The two digital marketing companies differ fundamentally based on how much solos and small law firms should spend on their marketing, and what they should be spending it on.
The biggest difference entails the purchase of pay-per-click ads to bring search traffic and prospective clients to the firm’s website. This is also called search engine marketing (SEM).
Unlike free search engine traffic often known as organic traffic), SEM displays search engine results marked as ads. Law firms pay every time one of their adverts is clicked.
Scorpion generates significant revenue selling pay-per-click ads that bring web visitors directly to the legal websites owned by its clients. Conversely, at GoEngine, we shun selling pay-per-click ads as a long term plan to gain clients. We favor helping law firms avoid becoming dependent on pay-per-click adverts to support their legal websites.
PPC ads typically are very expensive when used to drive web traffic to a law firm’s websites. They can't provide long-term value because once a potential client clicks on the ad, your money is gone forever. PPC ads often do create dependence on continued investment and a vulnerability to competitors.
Scorpion Design is an ideal choice for law firms convinced that massive spending on pay-per-click advertising is the best source of web traffic for their legal websites and who have no problem paying management fees in addition to the cost of the ads. While lawyers might pay a premium for Scorpion’s digital marketing services as compared to other affordable PPC providers, they do so knowing that they're working with a reputable internet marketing company.
Lawyers who adopt a PPC-based strategy for their law firm’s website must be ready to increase their ad spend with time as competitive bids skyrocket. This is true whether the law firm buys ads through Scorpion Design, through another marketing agency, or directly from Google. Lawyers who adopt a PPC-based strategy must budget for sudden increases in ad budget as new and existing competitors drive up the cost of customer acquisition.
For lawyers who are unsure about PPC, but want to keep their options without going all-in, the digital marketing specialists at GoEngine have cultivated a network of ethical, strategic, and reasonably priced PPC partners that offer exclusive discounts to our clients. This empowers our clients to safely experiment with pay-per-click ads while creating highly profitable and enduring customer acquisition assets through our sustainable organic content-based search engine optimization strategy.
Contact GoEngine Today for Affordable Internet Advertising Services!
If you’re prepared to spend thousands of dollars and if you’re comfortable handing over control of your law firm’s future to a marketing firm, then you may be a good fit for Scorpion.
However, if you wish to spend less money and easily control and understand your law firm's website with software built exclusively for attorneys, then GoEngine will offer you a better experience and better long-term return on investment (ROI).