The Long-Term Internet Marketing Contracts

I understand why a lot of law firm marketing agencies require their lawyer-clients to enter into long-term contracts. In addition to the obvious (more revenue over a longer time), they're also probably concerned that they will make significant up-front investments into website design/development and internet marketing efforts only to have the client quit before they've had a reasonable opportunity to generate some results.

In my experience, these long-term contracts just don't make a lot of sense for lawyers. In fact, on the internet, really any long-term marketing contract doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Especially if there aren't performance goals/measurements/metrics built-in to hold the marketing agency accountable for something.

While there is no question that many web marketing strategies take some time to develop (especially things like organic search visibility), these long-term deals usually turn out pretty ugly.

In fact, I've seen cases where even website design and development ends up taking much longer than it should. Which means that the agency is probably sitting on its hands until it reaches a "critical mass" of frustration from the client.

If you've decided to work with an agency that requires a long-term contract commitment, please make sure that you have built-in some "accountability metrics." These might include specific task metrics (i.e. website launch date, x profiles claimed by date, etc).

Make your internet marketing agency commit to something tangible in terms of performance. Give them a reasonable opportunity to deliver results. If they fail to deliver upon what they promised, find someone new.

The best way to protect yourself is to clearly define goals and objectives from the beginning and maintain regular communication to see that these goals are being met.