Bail Bonds Marketing Strategies: Ideas, Tips, and Plans for Online Lead Generation
January 4, 2019
Looking for tips, ideas, and strategies to improve your bail bond’s online lead generation? Senior Marketing Director Bobby Shell shares some insight on how to win the online marketing battle in the bail bonds industry.
Bail Bond Marketing Idea #1: Develop a Conversion Focused Website
Your website is the focal point of your bail bonds marketing and advertising. In 2018, it’s more important than ever that your design is focused on converting visitors and being mobile responsive.
Clarity is key on a bail bonds website. Be clear about what you do, where you are, and how to contact you. People who need bail don’t want to waste time trying to understand your branding or navigate a confusing site. Here’s an example design on UXI® platform:
You want a clean, modern design that imparts trust, but there’s no need to get fancy. Clarity and ease of use earn you the most leads.
Pro Tip: Use Visuals and Infographics
If you need to explain a process or more complicated idea, try using a visual ad like an infographic. Fast moving online consumers tend to get more out of this type of content. For example:
Bail Bonds Marketing Tip #2: Master Search Marketing
Bail bonds has a pretty specific motivation behind searches. It’s not hard to visualize a panicked parent, getting a call and breaking out their phone to search for a bondsman in the middle of the night.
You need to appear on page one for these online searches. There are three ways to accomplish this.
The first is pay per click advertising or PPC. This is where you bid on auction systems like Google Adwords to appear in top positions on the page. Your budget and placement will depend on your competition. PPC ads give the most control over ranking, ad content, and landing page.
The second is connected to your Google My Business account. You create this through Google to get location-based search results (it is also Google Maps). Optimize for keywords, and photos/business details, and get client reviews to increase your ranking. This is a free listing/clicks.
Last is your organic listing, related to your website SEO. This is the direct listing of your homepage domain, also free ranking/clicks. Optimize your website content for legal keywords, add fresh content to your blog, earn links, and get social media traffic to your website to increase your ranking.
You can rank for all three to dominate the search results page:
Search results are vital for bail bonds lead generation because of the immediacy of the need. People search, do a quick comparison and act. They don’t spend as much time reviewing the business. Make sure you’re doing well on these rankings.
Bail Bonds Marketing Idea #3: Create a Video Commercial
We’ve seen conversion rates for bail bonds websites increase substantially with the use of a video. For example:
This video does a good job of communicating sympathy and letting people know that anyone can find themselves in a situation where they need to bail someone out of jail. It also has a strong call to action to contact them at the end of the video.
Strategic use of video is a great way to stand out against your local competition with a clear message that’s easy to view on a phone screen. One video can be used for years, giving you excellent ROI.
Bail Bonds Marketing Tip #4: Manage Your Reputation
Even people in immediate trouble or trying to secure bond for a family member is likely to check online reviews on bondsmen.
Checking reviews for businesses is a habit for most modern consumers. Just consider the Google My Business listings above. The star-ratings stand out on the page; Google is directing people towards reviews.
There are two things you can do to secure more reviews for your bail bond service.
The first is to make sure your work is exemplary. Show up on time, be responsive, respect your clients, and make sure you execute tasks with precision. Keep in mind that strong work will help your marketing just as subpar work will hurt it. Your clients will have their say.
The second is to ask clients for reviews. People gaining their freedom or seeing loved one emerge from incarceration tend to be happy, and they’re likely to give you a positive review. You can ask on the spot, or follow up with an email structured like this:
If they click on good, it links to a review site. If they click on not good it opens up a feedback form.
Try to spread your reviews out on Google, Yelp, Top Rated Local, and Facebook. When you use Top Rated Local, you’ll get a page that is optimized for the search “business name + reviews”. Review searches are common, so this is a valuable page on a third-party site that will help your cause.
Don’t ignore your online reputation. If you do, you may suddenly find your phone isn’t ringing. You wonder why so you take a look at your reviews and find a couple of one-star bombs are scaring people away.
Bail Bonds Marketing Tip #5: Develop a Client Retention Strategy
Unfortunately, recidivism remains a huge problem for offenders, which means that one of the best ways to stay in the bonds business is to continue to get business from previous clients.
Use social media channels like Facebook and Twitter to share information useful to anyone who has trouble with the law. Make your material educational, positive, and helpful. Likewise, do an email newsletter with lifestyle tips, upbeat stories, and resources for people trying to right their direction.
Create content with ideas and tips that help people stay out of trouble with the law. Also, provide insights into how to deal with legal issues, the court system, the arrest process, and bail bonds issues.
In most ways, you hope not to have repeat clients. But if someone slips, your previous work and helpful info will keep your brand name top of mind if the call must be made.
Bail Bonds Marketing Tips to Remember
- Your main call-to-action is generating phone calls. Make sure your phone number is always visible on your web page. Highlight it with bold type and colors. Use persuasive language to encourage people to call now.
- Use call-only campaigns. Because of the immediate need involved with bail bonds and the fact that many leads will do their search on a mobile phone, call-only campaigns are very effective for bail bonds advertising. They also prevent you from paying for expensive clicks that go to your website but don’t convert.
- People looking for bail bonds have an immediate, urgent need. Make sure your messaging is clear and concise. You need to provide prospects a strong reason to call you instead of your competition, but don’t expect them to spend long periods of time digesting your website content.
- It’s essential that your bail bonds website be mobile responsive. Many leads will look you up on their phones, so your content must look professional on all devices.
- For search marketing, plan a strategy to use both SEO and PPC. PPC offers faster results and more control over your ads, while SEO offers the long-term advantage of free clicks. PPC also has the advantage of dominating the top results on mobile searches.
- Make sure you understand the time factors involved with online marketing. Some channels drive immediate results, others take time to develop.
- Consider how you engender trust. A professional website design, clear confidentiality policies, and positive online reviews increase your credibility.
- Be aware of typical objections people have to bail bonds. Address them in your website content and be prepared to answer them when leads call.
Key Terms & Ideas
- SEO (search-engine-optimization): Also known as organic search, these are the search results you get based on the authority and relevancy of your content. Importantly, you don’t pay for these clicks. This includes your site ranking on Google maps. While free, it takes time to gain ranking and derive results from SEO.
- PPC (pay-per-click): Paid search marketing done through platforms like Google Adwords. PPC gives you control over ranking, exposure, and ad copy, but works on a bidding system that requires you to pay for every click.
- CPC (cost-per-click): The amount you pay when a lead clicks on a PPC ad. The cost fluctuates depending on the quality of your ads, landing page content, and competitor bids. The goal of Top Placement Ads® is to get you the highest rankings for lowest CPC.
- Keyword Research: The process of discovering the best bail bonds related keywords to target for your SEO and PPC campaigns. The best keywords are relevant, location-based, and are actively searched for by bail bonds leads.
- Conversion: The action you want a website visitor to take. With bail bonds, the most targeted conversion is a phone call.
- Conversion-based design: Website design/content planned and modified to get as many conversions as possible.
- Trust: The sense of trust your website content engenders in a lead. Professional design, clarity, transparency, social proof, and refraining from gimmicky sales tactics create trust.
- Social proof: The positive influence generated by testimonials and reviews that give leads the sense you’ve successfuly serviced other bail bond clients.
- Return on investment (ROI): A calculation for a marketing campaign that compares what you put in versus what you’re getting back. ROI helps you allocate resources and make better decisions on what campaigns to favor.
- Mobile responsive website design: A website design that automatically formats content to display on any size screen, including all mobile devices.
- Landing page: A webpage designed to go with a specific advertising campaign and keyword targets. For example, if you wanted to target DUI arrests specifically, you would design a page with content related only to those services.
- Retargeting: Advertising that targets previous website visitors or prospects who indicated they have an interest but have not yet converted. Lists are generated from your website visitors, then ads are run to them via your PPC campaigns.
- Unique sales proposition (USP): A statement that describes the benefits you offer as a bail bonds service, how you solve client’s immediate needs, and what differentiates you from the competition.
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