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Client Case Study: The Law Office of Caryn Jones

Filed under Application Integration, Blogging, Brand Management, Client Case Studies, SEO | SEM, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Web Design

11 Bridges Client Info:

The Law Office of Caryn Jones

Client Product(s)/Service(s):

The Law Office of Caryn Jones is a Portland law firm that provides legal advocacy to Oregon Women. Their primary practice focuses on delivering legal services to women for divorce, custody disputes, domestic partnerships, employment discrimination and harassment, as well as business incorporation and contracting.

Client Project:

The Law Office of Caryn Jones is run by Caryn Jones. Caryn recently graduated from law school and set out to start her own practice. Based on her experience, Caryn believes she has something more to offer than many other law firms in Portland. She provides personal attention and sound legal advice, from a woman’s perspective, to each of her clients.

Caryn approached 11 Bridges with a blank slate in terms of marketing her business and we helped her get started.

Research:

After researching her business service and potential competition we quickly discovered a large, unfilled niche for legal services in the Portland area: women. Interestingly enough, we found several law firms that focused their practice and service offerings on men, but none who did so for women. Therefore, we concentrated on this angle for all of her business and marketing strategies.

Branding:

Caryn incorporated her business as “The Law Office of Caryn Jones.” We decide to keep this as her primary company name but to also incorporate her messaging to women with the name “Portland Women’s Law.” Portland Women’s Law serves as somewhat of a tagline for her brand and lets her audience quickly know what she’s all about. We used this for her URL choice (http://www.portlandwomenslaw.com) and throughout her messaging. We also created a specific tagline for her “Legal Advocacy for Oregon Women.” These statements combined quickly get her message across to potential clients.

In conducting our research, we also discovered that the web presence of many law firms comes across as being very corporate and “stuffy.” This makes many of them feel very unapproachable. Caryn wanted the exact opposite message to be sent to her potential clients. She wanted to let her clients know that she was one of them and that she is there to work for them. As a single mother who had been through legal battles over divorce and custody disputes, she also wanted to share her experience with others and make the experience for her clients be the best it could be.

The research 11 Bridges performed and information we collected from Caryn helped us to create her brand.

We felt the color, font, message and image choices gave Caryn the right amount of professionalism, class, style and approachability she was going for with her audience. The logo font is: Zapfino.   The primary messaging font is: Arial. The script font is: Saginaw

The color palette we used:

Website:

Continuing with the theme of being approachable, simple and professional we began work on Caryn’s site. Her primary goals were to have people contact her by phone or email and to quickly provide relevant and useful information to potential customers. Therefore, the first thing we did was design a site that made her contact information prominent to every user. We also added a simple contact form right on the home page that had people indicate their legal service need.

We added lots of pictures to her site that we felt would speak to her audience. We also included a slide show with text, on the home page to quickly convey her messaging to potential customers. We built this slide show with javascript to ensure usability on all web and mobile web platforms. For additional design elements, we added a style to each image that made them look like physical pictures placed on a surface to give the site more of a personal feeling.

11 Bridges also created a resources page for the site and made the keyword driven content on several pages feel somewhat conversational and more of a question/answer type of a format. We felt this would also contribute to the helpful, approachable tone to the site.

Caryn also had an interesting approach to her pricing. She wanted to offer flat fees to her clients for many of her services. She also wanted to help keep her client costs low by giving them access to information online that would keep them from having to call and send emails to her and be charged for them. Therefore, we really highlighted the ‘Flat Fee Pricing’ and ‘Free Initial, 30 minute Consultation’ she offers to help increase her prospects.

In an effort to help with keeping her clients online, we recommended the use of an online software application called Basecamp. Basecamp is a web-based project management application. It’s simple, effective and affordable and something we use at 11 Bridges to manage all of our client projects. This application allows Caryn to create ‘folders’ for her clients to which only they have access. These folders contain all the relevant items that pertain to this client’s case, important dates (such as court schedules) and lists of items that need to be and have been done by both Caryn and her clients. Caryn has branded this service ‘My File’ and we integrated the login page for this application right into the home page of the site so her clients can easily access this page.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Most of the research we did for The Law Office of Caryn Jones centered around search engine optimization and analytics. Using relevant tools and research practices we were able to identify a competitive niche, learn the strengths and weaknesses of her competition and find keywords and phrases that would help potential clients find her on the web. We also employed several ‘local SEO’ tactics since Caryn’s business is Oregon based and specifically targeting the Portland Metro area. In particular, the first place we started was ensuring that the Goolge Places page for The Law Office of Caryn Jones was completed and being utilized to its full potential.

After the initial 11 Bridges SEO work was completed, we continued to provide ongoing weekly SEO services for Caryn to improve her page rank in search results and keep her ranking high.

Analytics

We set up Google Analytics to track data, user information and measure conversion goals on the site as well. Google Analytics is a great tool that is free and provides you with all the data you need to measure your sites usability and performance. The main things The Law Office of Caryn Jones was interested in tracking were: site visits, page views, time on site, referral sources, keyword performance and conversion measurement. Since the site has 2 contact forms for users to fill out we set up tracking goals to track each time this happens. We also track certain site visit paths and referring sources (keywords and websites) as goals. The information we’ve gathered has helped up make improvements to their site as well as further optimize their pages for search.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Although we didn’t develop a full social media marketing strategy for The Law Office of Caryn Jones we did create social platforms on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Avvo. We worked with Caryn to create a presence on these sights and advised her on the value of updating and actively using them. The keyword research we conducted  was used to create content on these sites. The links back from these social sites to her main website also contribute to her successful SEO strategy.

Blogging

11 Bridges created a blog for The Law Office of Caryn Jones on the WordPress platform. This is our preferred blogging platform because of its usability and excellent SEO capabilities. We customized an existing theme to match with her branding and included the blog into her domain to further increase her SEO. She is now using her blog to distribute valuable content on the web and broaden her audience.

Brand Management

The Law Office of Caryn Jones has hired 11 Bridges to manage and track their brand on the web. We use a web application that “listens” for specific brand and keyword mentions on websites, blogs, news posts, press releases and social media sites. These listeners find any web posts related to their brand and selected keywords. This application takes screen shots of these posts and then documents and archives them. 11 Bridges then rolls these posts up and sends them to The Law Office of Caryn Jones weekly. These reports provide detailed, statistical information that assist The Law Office of Caryn Jones in finding new business, potential partnerships, competitive information, positive press and customer support opportunities. It’s possibly one of these most valuable services we provide.

Print Design

11 Bridges finished the initial project for The Law Office of Caryn Jones with some print design work. We create business cards for Caryn that were consistent with her message and theme. We printed them with MOO Cards. Moo Cards are very attractive, fully customizable and affordable business cards that you can order online.

Summary

The Law Office of Caryn Jones was a project we really enjoyed working on. Although every project we take on is something we like to do, working on projects that start with a blank slate offer us the ability to do the best and most comprehensive work we can offer a client. It’s an amazing opportunity to help take someone’s concept and turn it into a complete identity, web presence and successful marketing campaign strategy. We’ll check back in with The Law Office of Caryn Jones in a few months and report the latest with their business and brand.