Bankruptcy attorneys are often able to prevent the pending foreclosure of property owned by a client filing for bankruptcy. So why not target more foreclosure cases when seeking more bankruptcy clients?

Filing for bankruptcy is just one of many different strategies that enable people to save their homes from pending foreclosure. It may, or may not, be the appropriate and preferred solution for a specific prospect.

When advertising to foreclosure prospects, using “foreclosure”-related keywords, bankruptcy attorneys must compete against other foreclosure-defense firms for attention. Bankruptcy attorneys then have two communication jobs to do: 1) Communicate the benefits of filing bankruptcy to prevent foreclosure (over other prevention options), and 2) Convince the prospect to contact their bankruptcy firm for a consultation (over other bankruptcy firms).

Hunters vs. Gatherers

In the first communication challenge, bankruptcy attorneys are reaching prospects while the prospect is still in an “information gatherer” phase. In the second challenge, prospects are in the “hunter” phase.

Info gathers are not yet ready to make a decision to hire an attorney. They are simply researching options for resolving their problem. Once they’ve concluded that one or more specific paths forward may be worthwhile to pursue, and they are prepared to pay for the professional services required, they will become “hunters”. Hunters hunt for a professional to call that performs their needed services. If they decide bankruptcy is a viable solution, they will start researching local bankruptcy attorneys — and then make a decision on who to call for a consultation appointment.

Spend your marketing dollars where they get the best returns

At LeadQ, we do not recommend spending marketing dollars to target prospects while in the “information gatherer” phase. Dollars spent here produce virtually zero returns. You may get site visitors, but you won’t get calls. The only cost-effective, viable communication task for marketing spending (i.e. lead generation) is to convince “hunters” to contact your firm over other competing firms.

This is an issue of keywords that target info gathers vs. hunters – when it comes to filing bankruptcy to prevent foreclosure.

The bankruptcy firm has to first convince the prospect that filing bankruptcy to prevent foreclosure is the proper solution (out of a variety of different ways to prevent foreclosure) for that particular prospect. Then convince the prospect to hire that firm.

It ends up costing many times more in advertising click costs to reach prospects at this stage – when they are still seeking information about their options. It is much more cost-effective to let them first do their research, and then — after they’ve decided that bankruptcy might be a solution for them and they want to speak to a bankruptcy firm – advertising only to them when they’re ready to make a bk appointment.